50
OREN AMBARCHI/JOHAN BERTHLING/ANDREAS WERLIIN
Ghosted II
DRAG CITY
2022’s improvised mindmeld between Aussie experimental guitarist Ambarchi and the Swedish jazz rhythm section of Berthling and Werliin proved so successful that the trio reconvened for this lively sequel. Their telepathy now honed, Ghosted II was groovier and hookier than its predecessor, Berthling’s propulsive basslines providing structure and drive for Ambarchi’s shimmering bliss-outs.
49
STILL HOUSE PLANTS
If I Don’t Make It, I Love U
BISON
The post-rock trio, formed a decade ago at the Glasgow School Of Art, rocketed out of the improv underground with a fissile breakthrough album that recalled Life Without Buildings, Labradford and the slanted, enchanted skronk of Bill Orcutt. But tracks like the standout “Silver Grit Passes Thru My Teeth” were thrillingly all their own work.
48
DAVID GILMOUR
Luck And Strange
SONY
Working with a new producer (Charlie Andrew, notable for his work with prog upstarts Alt-J) and new musicians (including Tom Herbert, bass player with Polar Bear), Gilmour sounded reinvigorated on his fifth solo album – never more so than on a startling cover of the Montgolfier Brothers’ magnificently bleak “Between Two Points”, beautifully sung by his daughter Romany.
47
SARAH DAVACHI
The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir
LATE MUSIC
Her 12th long-player was the most impressive statement yet from the ‘slow music’ figurehead: an exploration of the myth of Orpheus, recorded on four different pipe organs from across the world, not to mention an array of other keyboards and synthesisers, plus choir, trombones, bass clarinets and medieval string instruments. Deep, mysterious and genuinely awe-inspiring.
46
CHARLES LLOYD
The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
BLUE NOTE
The flower-power jazz veteran extended his late-career renaissance with this album of mellifluous sax and flute marvels. Released on Lloyd’s 86th birthday, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow sounded as fresh and engaged as any of the new-school spiritual jazz touchstones, with “The Water Is Rising” and “Defiant, Tender Warrior” carrying a subtle yet potent political message.
45
LAURA MARLING
Patterns In Repeat
CHRYSALIS
Written and recorded in stray, snatched moments at home with producer Dom Monks when Marling was “high as fuck” after the birth of her first daughter, Patterns In Repeat charted the journey from postpartum euphoria to deeper questions about family and ageing, mortality and memory. These beautifully fingerpicked lullabies were occasionally graced by the elegant strings of violinist Rob Moose.
44
CHRISTOPHER OWENS
I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
TRUE PANTHER
Perhaps only former Girls frontman Christopher Owens could imbue an album with so much personal tragedy – heartbreak, homelessness, hospitalisation – and still make it sound uplifting. “I died the day you left me/ I die again every day”, he sang desperately on opener “No Good”, and yet the overriding emotions were joy, redemption and a sense that everything was ultimately OK. A truly life- affirming comeback.
43
RICHARD THOMPSON
Ship To Shore
NEW WEST
On his first album in six years, Thompson sang from the perspective of
a traumatised squaddie (“The Fear Never Leaves You”), a lovestruck Jack Tar (“Singapore Sadie”), and even Donald Trump (“Life’s A Bloody Show”). Throughout all this, he kept his musical compass set on the miraculously consistent course of excellence he’s maintained for six decades now.
42
KIM DEAL
Nobody Loves You More
4AD
The Breeders’ records always contained more stubborn variety than the band’s status as alt.rock hellraisers gave them credit for. On her first ever solo album, Kim Deal expanded those horizons in all directions: from mariachi-tinged swooners to electro-rock thumpers, featuring Brian Wilson’s musical director, as well members of Slint, Savages and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Deal’s unique charisma ensured it all cohered perfectly.
41
PAUL WELLER
66
POLYDOR
1966 may have been the white-hot peak of popular modernism, but 66 the album saw an elegiac mood overtaking the Modfather, with songs like “I Woke Up”, “Sleepy Hollow” and “My Best Friend’s Coat” evoking a Kinksy autumn almanac. Best of a host of co-writes (with Noel Gallagher, Bobby Gillespie, Richard Hawley and Suggs, among others) was “Ship Of Fools”, an unsentimental farewell to the Tories.
40
GRANDADDY
Blu Wav
DANGERBIRD
Inspired by the sound of Patti Page’s 1950 hit “Tennessee Waltz”, Jason Lytle returned with an enchanted album of new-wave bluegrass. These were songs of loss, regret and heartbreak in the mall parking lot (“Jukebox App”), the office cubicle (“Watercooler”) and out on the wide-open American highway, with Max Hart’s pedal steel guitar duetting with the burble of analogue arpeggiators – the sound of cosmic consolation.
39
BROWN HORSE
Reservoir
LOOSE MUSIC
You would have got fairly long odds on this year’s best country-rock debut emerging from the fine city of Norwich, but Brown Horse’s assured take on East Angliana made a whole lot of sense. On Reservoir, their gripping vignettes of stolen horses and “feet wet in the mudflats” were delivered by powerful twin vocals, backed up by rousing guitars, fiddle, accordion and pedal steel.
38
DIRTY THREE
Love Changes Everything
BELLA UNION
It’s been another busy year for Warren Ellis, what with the Wild God album and tour, various film soundtracks and his animal sanctuary on Sumatra. Thankfully he also made time to reconvene his much-loved instrumental trio Dirty Three. Inspired by Alice Coltrane, their first music in a decade was an extended improvised suite, unmoored from conventional structures but full of rapture.
37
SHELLAC
To All Trains
TOUCH AND GO
Steve Albini’s unexpected death just days before its release cast a long shadow over To All Trains, but this was the most unsentimental farewell possible, with Shellac’s metallic machine music at its intense, thrilling best. “I’ll leap in my grave like the arms of a lover”, Albini sang on his final exit. “If there’s a hell, I’m gonna know everyone…”
36
MYRIAM GENDRON
Mayday
THRILL JOCKEY/FEEDING TUBE
Myriam Gendron has made her name as an inspired interpreter of other people’s words – particularly the poems of Dorothy Parker – but Mayday prioritised her own sad, stoical lyrics, sung in both English and French. Jim White and Marisa Anderson applied some subtle shading, though Gendron held fast to her spartan approach – until, right at the end of final song “Berceuse”, all that contained emotion burst out in an ecstatic sax solo by Zoh Amba.
35
BRITTANY HOWARD
What Now
ISLAND
Having successfully established herself as a solo artist with 2019’s raw and personal Jaime, the former Alabama Shake decided it was time to cut loose. What Now was a hard-hitting party record of the type Prince used to make in his prime: funky but thoughtful, and sonically adventurous too: “Another Day” rode a confounding industrial-soul groove, while “Prove It To You” even dabbled in house music.
34
ROSALI
Bite Down
MERGE
After last year’s intriguing solo guitar excursions as Edsel Axle, Rosali Middleman made a triumphant return to the big stage with Bite Down. Featuring staunch backing from Omaha’s Mowed Sound, her fourth album was hard-rocking yet tender, experimental yet anthemic, funny yet sad, exposing the fearless vulnerability of the songwriter behind it all: “I’m letting things come as they may/ Hope you know why I do it this way…”
33
WILLIE NELSON
The Border
LEGACY
At the age of 91, Nelson is still showing few signs of slowing down. This was his 75th album, and his 10th in the last seven years. Rodney Crowell’s two song contributions – the title track and “Many A Long And Lonesome Highway” – struck an ominous tone, but Willie’s restless maverick spirit was still alive on the jauntily madcap “What If I’m Out Of My Mind?”
32
BEAK>
>>>>
INVADA
Beak>’s fourth album turned out to be Geoff Barrow’s swansong with the band, the “mumbling drummer” recently announcing his plan to step down after their current tour. His parting gift was a telling contribution to an album of typically dank Bristolian grooves and ’70s sci-fi dread, but with a surprisingly rich seam of wistful, folky reflection.
31
MABE FRATTI
Sentir Que No Sabes
UNHEARD OF HOPE
Is this pop? Experimental? Post-classical indie jazz? Mexico City-based Guatemalan Mabe Fratti actively embraces such confusion. The title of this album translated as ‘Feel Like You Don’t Know’, which neatly summarised her playful, open-hearted approach, finding kinship with Björk, Julia Holter and fellow cellist Arthur Russell.
30
KIM GORDON
The Collective
MATADOR
Kim Gordon embarked on her seventh decade with an album of savagely satirical sawtooth synthpop, partly inspired by Jennifer Egan’s dystopic novel The Candy House. “Tongues hanging out/ Bodies on the sidewalk/ Driving down Sunset/ Zombie meditation”, she sang on “Psychedelic Orgasm”, like a 21st-century Joan Didion cruising through LA on her way to the apocalypse.
29
OISIN LEECH
Cold Sea
OUTSIDE MUSIC/TREMONE
After a decade-and-a-half in folk duo The Lost Brothers, Dublin’s Oisin Leech announced himself as a singer-songwriter of some distinction with this stunning solo debut. As crisp and clear as the North Atlantic ocean beside which it was recorded, Cold Sea benefitted from the subtle presence of some stellar musicians, namely Steve Gunn, M Ward, Planxty’s Dónal Lunny and Dylan bassist Tony Garnier. But the acute sense of yearning was all Leech’s own.
28
JAKE XERXES FUSSELL
When I’m Called
FAT POSSUM
The discovery of a discarded school journal by the side of a California highway inspired this North Carolina folklorist to make his most enthralling album to date, bringing together songs of wildly disparate origin – Scottish traditionals, Benjamin Britten, cowboy artist Gerald ‘The Maestro’ Gaxiola – for a collection that was not only cohesive but often incredibly moving.
27
ENGLISH TEACHER
This Could Be Texas
ISLAND
The Leeds four-piece delivered one of the most distinctive debuts of the year, a radiant collection of tumbling, twisting prog-pop songs that charted a fiercely lyrical path through the squall of England’s ongoing civil wars. Somewhere at the heart of it, “You Blister My Paint” was an unexpectedly touching ballad, like the sun coming out on a rainy Bank Holiday.
26
MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC BAND
Loophole
MODERN SKY
The Mick Head renaissance continued with the former Pale Fountains frontman’s third album in seven years, another inspired collection of acoustic reveries set adrift on memory bliss, produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. With “Tout Suite!” and “You Smiled At Me”, he casually crafted the sweetest, most swoonsome love songs of the year.
25
NALA SINEPHRO
Endlessness
WARP
Sinephro’s blissful 2021 debut Space 1.8 placed the London-based harpist and modular synthesist at the vanguard of the new cosmic jazz movement. This filmic follow-up made fine use of some of the scene’s most expressive players – Sheila Maurice-Grey, Nubya Garcia and Natcyet Wakili among them – but it never felt like a jam session, instead radiating a unanimous sense of wonder and calm.
24
PHOSPHORESCENT
Revelator
VERVE
Matthew Houck’s eighth album as Phosphorescent, and his debut for Verve, was a beautiful refinement of the elegant melancholy he has been steadily crafting since 2013’s Muchacho. A standout was “Poem On The Men’s Room Wall”, which found some respite from the end of the world in a cold beer and the underappreciated erotic charm of Phyllis Diller.
23
HIGH LLAMAS
Hey Panda
DRAG CITY
Turns out you can teach an old Llama new tricks. After three decades of exquisite retro orchestration, Sean O’Hagan took an unexpected left-turn here into digital production and avant-R&B. The results were spectacular, retaining all of O’Hagan’s beloved quirks while allowing guest vocalists like Bonnie “Prince” Billy to indulge their inner pop freak.
22
ALAN SPARHAWK
White Roses, My God
SUB POP
Written and recorded after the loss of wife and bandmate Mimi Parker
in 2022, Sparhawk’s first post-Low release was an astonishing, artful transmutation of grief into cybernetic gospel via the medium of the Helicon VoiceTone pedal. It sounded, on the closing “Project 4 Ever”, like PC Music producing the Book Of Job.
21
JOHN CALE
POPtical Illusion
DOMINO
After the jagged future-shock of last year’s heavily collaborative Mercy, this impressively swift follow-up found Cale in more contemplative mode – though he still sounded more vital than most artists a quarter of his age, dispensing the sagest of wisdoms over dreamily inventive electronic beats: “If you’ve done things you’d wished you’ve never done/ Think of the things you’re going to do tonight…”
20
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF
The Past Is Still Alive
NONESUCH
“Say goodbye to America, I wanna see it dissolve,” sang Alynda Segarra on “Colossus Of The Roads” – amid stiff competition, the most devastating track on the ninth Riff Raff album. But on songs like the Conor Oberst collaboration “The World is Dangerous”, they remained committed to making astonishing music while the ship goes down.
19
PETER PERRETT
The Cleansing
DOMINO
Perhaps as astonished as anyone to still be here, the mercurial former Only Ones frontman joked about outstaying his welcome on nagging punk earworms “Do Not Resuscitate” and “I Wanna Go With Dignity”. The irony being, of course, that Perrett was in the form of his life, decrying our morally bankrupt leaders and the evils of WhatsApp in his bone-dry south London drawl.
18
SHABAKA
Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
IMPULSE!
Swapping his trusty saxophone for an array of Japanese and South American flutes naturally led Shabaka Hutchings towards more serene waters. But just as you’d hope from the former Comet/Kemet firebreather, he approached this seemingly tranquil music with gripping intensity, the introspective mood matched by guest vocalists including Lianne La Havas and Moses Sumney.
17
JOHNNY BLUE SKIES
Passage Du Desir
HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN
He’s thrown a few curveballs in his time, but country renegade Sturgill Simpson – for it was he – pulled off his greatest trick yet by absconding to Europe and adopting the Johnny Blue Skies moniker to consider the lot of the semi-famous musician from a position of wry remove. Beautifully sung and played, these were also some of the finest songs he’s ever written: soulful, wistful, funny and tender.
16
BILL RYDER-JONES
Iechyd Da
DOMINO
The title is Welsh for ‘good health’, and on his first album in five years the former Coral man set sail from lockdown anguish to calmer waters, buoyed by the kindred spirits of Gal Costa, Echo & The Bunnymen, and – on the gorgeous orchestral interlude “…And The Sea” – the inspired combination of Michael Head and James Joyce.
15
JACK WHITE
No Name
THIRD MAN
“Nothin’ in this world is free”, warned Jack White on No Name’s taut, prowling opener “Old Scratch Blues”. That is, unless you were lucky enough to visit the Third Man store on July 19 to have a copy of this unmarked LP slipped into your bag. But if the release was discreet, the music itself was anything but: a relentless barrage of garage-rock bangers with White in blistering, rabble-rousing form.
14
MDOU MOCTAR
Funeral For Justice
MATADOR
Though recorded thousands of miles from Moctar’s Niger homeland, Funeral For Justice went in hard on both the country’s current leaders (the title track) and its malign colonial overlords (“Oh France”). Suffice to say, this fiery rhetoric was more than matched by some incendiary guitar-playing; while to underline the strength of the songwriting, an acoustic version of the album – Tears Of Injustice – is due early next year.
13
FONTAINES DC
Romance
XL
With their colossal fourth album, the Irish post-punkers hooked up with a new label (XL) and a new producer (James Ford) to venture far from the Dublin cobblestones. They drew on the cityscapes of Tokyo, the fashion sense of Korn and apocalyptic arthouse cinema to create an IMAX-scale album of dystopian lovesongs, fit for the stadiums they increasingly seem destined to fill.
12
JULIA HOLTER
Something In The Room She Moves
DOMINO
When Julia Holter topped this chart in 2015 with Have You In My Wilderness, we described its unique sound as “Aphex Twin meets The Beach Boys”. If anything, this album pushed that glorious dichotomy even further as Holter’s psychedelic nursery rhymes inhabited an alluring fourth-world wonderland full of squelching electronics, stacked voices, fluttering flutes and fretless bass.
11
CASSANDRA JENKINS
My Light, My Destroyer
DEAD OCEANS
Cassandra Jenkins proved that An Overview On Phenomenal Nature was no fluke with a cosmic third album that roamed from Betelgeuse to Aurora, Illinois, via the pet shops of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Throughout, her quizzical sprechstimme and calmly forensic eye rooted her in the reality of everyday heartaches.
10
WAXAHATCHEE
Tigers Blood
ANTI-
“You just settle in like a song with no end”, sang Katie Crutchfield, harmonising beautifully with 2024’s MVP MJ Lenderman on “Right Back To It”, the lead single from her boldest, most accessible record yet. Tigers Blood was an album that saw her burnishing the romantic hooks that always lurked in her songwriting and laying a reasonable claim to being the millennial Lucinda Williams.
9
CINDY LEE
Diamond Jubilee
REALISTIK
Patrick Flegel’s seventh release under his indie-drag alias Cindy Lee was a tour de force of lo-fi Lynchian guitar soul lasting more than two hours. Astonishingly for a 32-track album, there were no space-filling goofs and hardly any drop-off in song quality: witness, around 83 minutes in, the heart-tugging triptych of “To Heal This Wounded Heart”, “Golden Microphone” and “If You Hear Me Crying”.
8
MJ LENDERMAN
Manning Fireworks
ANTI-
Still only 25, Jake “MJ” Lenderman is already wiser than most of us
will ever be. On his fourth solo studio album – he’s also notched up another couple as guitarist for the equally excellent Wednesday – he skilfully deployed classic rock references to paint vivid portraits of smalltown ennui (“How many roads must a man walk down ’til he learns/ He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns”). Great solos, too.
7
THE SMILE
Wall Of Eyes
XL
The first of two terrific albums The Smile released in 2024, emphasising the purple-ness of the patch in which Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner currently find themselves. Here, their agitated rhythms were often wreathed in lush orchestral arrangements, though that only seemed to heighten the ever-present sense of threat (“I am going to count to three/ Keep this shit away from me”). Next stop: a rumoured Radiohead live reunion in 2025…
6
ADRIANNE LENKER
Bright Future
4AD
Lenker’s solo career is the opposite of a diversion from her main gig fronting Big Thief. “Real House” continued the raw, autobiographical tale of “Mythological Beauty” from the band’s 2017 album Capacity, while recent single “Vampire Empire” was presented in a radically different form. Yet beyond these fan-pleasing callbacks and overlaps, there is much to be said for hearing Lenker’s precise melodies and perennially wise words in their most unadorned state.
5
JESSICA PRATT
Here In The Pitch
CITY SLANG
Even when playing these songs live in the flesh at a bewitching Union Chapel gig earlier this year, there remained something apparitional about Jessica Pratt, the ghost of LA’s Gold Star Studios. Ingenious arrangements – brass, Mellotron, Brazilian percussion, whole caverns full of echo – warped these songs so far out of time to be completely discombobulating, yet Pratt’s piercing melodies cut straight to the core.
4
AROOJ AFTAB
Night Reign
VERVE
Keen to puncture the myth of the “Sufi goddess” while maintaining the intense and rarified emotion of 2021 breakthrough Vulture Prince, Aftab found the perfect blend of earthiness and otherworldliness in Night Reign’s rich, seductive ambience. A splash of Auto-Tune here and a filthy bassline there showed that she could bend pop techniques to her will, rather than the other way around. And, oh, that voice…
3
BETH GIBBONS
Lives Outgrown
DOMINO
A decade in the making, released as she was about to turn 60, Beth Gibbons’ solo debut proved worth the wait in gold. Working with producer James Ford, she drew upon all the bitter wisdom of midlife. On songs like “Reaching Out” and “Rewind”, she constructed an awesome orchestra of loss from corrugaphone, recorder, folksong and her indomitable, astonishingly wracked voice.
2
GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS
Woodland
ANCONY
Thirty years into their musical partnership, Welch and Rawlings released the first original record credited to the two of them. Maybe it was disaster that strengthened their union? Woodland was full of the stuff, from the 2020 tornado that destroyed their studio to an apocalyptic vision of the Mississippi run dry. They’ve certainly never sounded so attuned, their harmonies blending to uncanny effect on the desolate “What We Had” and the closing “Howdy Howdy”.
1
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Wild God
PIAS
“We’ve all had too much sorrow/ Now is the time for joy”. For the first time since 2016, Nick Cave properly reconvened The Bad Seeds – Thomas Wydler on drums, Martyn Casey on bass, Warren Ellis a one-man orchestrator of chaos and grace – and the result was a surging, storming work of radical, Blakean exuberance. It had the form of the blues but felt more like a rapture, full of “bright, triumphant metaphors of love”, with producer Dave Fridmann arranging the tumult like a man conducting a storm-tossed ocean.
Like so much of Cave’s work since 2016, it was addressed to his lost sons, but there were also heartfelt songs of devotion to his wife (“Final Rescue Attempt”), his dear, departed exes (“O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)”) and songs of praise for any creator who saw fit to invent Anita Lane’s panties, cinnamon horses and Kris Kristofferson.
Since the mid-1980s, Nick Cave has been trying on the vestments of these lay preachers – Glen Campbell, Neil Diamond, the Elvis of “An American Trilogy” – and a large part of the charm has been the gall and gumption of this skinny Aussie goth to assume their orphic mantle. But now the robes finally fit, with Cave returning from the drag of hell to ascend to the heavens like… a prehistoric bird? An awestruck frog? A joyful rabbit? Never mind, never mind. Wild God was Nick Cave’s latest, great, indisputable masterpiece. Amen.
