The Skinny's Albums of 2024
We polled our music team for their favourite albums of the year, and while their individual lists were hugely varied, one bright green record in particular dominated like never before...
#20 Wunderhorse – Midas [Communion]
#19 Nala Sinephro – Endlessness [Warp]
#18 Kim Gordon – The Collective [Matador]
#17 Godspeed You! Black Emperor – NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024, 28,340 DEAD [Constellation]
#16 Mermaid Chunky – slif slaf slof [DFA]
#15 Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven [Epitaph]
#14 Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us [Columbia]
#13 Waxahatchee – Tiger Blood [ANTI-]
#12 English Teacher – This Could Be Texas [Island]
#11 MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks [ANTI-]
10. Still House Plants – If I don't make it, I love u
If I don’t make it, I love u, the title of Still House Plants' third album, could be read as a tearful farewell or a tender apology. Either way, it’s a fitting choice for a record that feels like a longstanding correspondence between kindred spirits. The trio of Finlay Clark, Jess Hickie-Kallenbach, and David Kennedy have been playing together for a decade, but this is the first album they’ve recorded while living in the same city. The result is an idiosyncratic record that bursts with emotion and a hunger for human connection.
Combining freeform jazz, discordant rock and a disregard for conventional song structures, there’s an organic beauty to these tracks, as though they’re being written in real-time. Hickie-Kallenbach’s vocals anchor the group’s sound, her soulful voice direct, yet vulnerable. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s explorative drumming and Clark’s responsive guitar surround her words like scribbles in the margins of a dog-eared novella that’s been passed lovingly between friends. It may sound like the band are composing on the fly, but no matter how chaotic their playing gets, they never lose their groove. Like the strange silence between a letter's departure and its delivery, Still House Plants’ music hovers delicately between longing and fulfilment. [Patrick Gamble]
If I don't make it, I love u was released on 12 Apr via Bison Records
instagram.com/stillhouseplants
9. Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
Why do we constantly have to reach for authenticity? Can we not fully realise ourselves in performance? On Diamond Jubilee, Cindy Lee whacks a crowbar into authenticity with her perfectly manicured hand. Like the hair of Patrick Flegel’s drag alter ego, this two-plus hour opus of retro-fetishistic, psychedelic pop is pristine, precise and impeccably paced, not a strand out of place, appearing as some unmarked relic on a website that looked like it was still loading, prompting you to send money into the ether for it, or not if you preferred.
'All I’ve got is the truth, all I want is you', Cindy Lee sings. Diamond Jubilee’s stories are all about dreams and journeys, about love and loss and loving again, about being with your baby or finding yourself alone. In these absolutes and archetypes, with her voice and her guitar, Cindy Lee communicates longing with the directness and containment of a spotlight. These are songs which feel like they’ve existed for decades. Performing femininity, actualising a wormhole out of the music industry rat race, making art as a way to be outside of time – Diamond Jubilee is Cindy Lee’s realisation of herself, showing that sometimes performance can be more real than the truth. [Tony Inglis]
Diamond Jubilee was released on 29 Mar via Realistik Studios
cindylee.bandcamp.com
8. Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk
When LA Pop duo Magdalena Bay released their debut record in 2021, it was such a refreshing blend of indie-rock, art-pop and synth-futurism, that I remarked to myself Grimes, and an industry of pop-plants, wasn’t needed anymore. As with all forms of radical progress, their sophomore record Imaginal Disk substitutes even their past successes; the past has no roadmap for where they’re heading. Imaginal Disk should be visualised as a butcher knife separating the promises of 2010s pop music to this present fulfillment.
In a year replete with global cultural backsliding into the arms of neo-fascism, leave it to Mag Bay to catch escaping utopic dreams and release them as auditory bliss. Ear candy is a gross understatement, no producer or writer treated sounds the way the duo did in 2024, full-stop. Propulsion, distortion, ambience, and romance gained new meanings as Magdalena Bay jettisoned pop into the future it forgot it had for itself (somewhere in the TikTok fire, no doubt). They are savants of sound, and Imaginal Disk is the future realising itself in front of our eyes and stretching out into the endless ether. With this, they understand why we make pop: for when despair needs a kick in the ass. [Noah Barker]
Imaginal Disk was released on 23 Aug via Mom + Pop Music
imaginaldisk.world
7. Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia
Tyler, the Creator's albums always seem to sit within a very specific cinematic universe, where he interrogates different elements of his own personality via alter egos. We've met Tyler Baudelaire, Igor and Flower Boy, to name a few, and now with his latest release Chromakopia, we enter the world of St. Chroma, a masked man pushing the boundaries of what he is capable of while simultaneously grappling with the paranoia of reaching midlife. Militaristic opening track St. Chroma sets the tone for an album that is sonically diverse and introspective, beginning with a voiceover from Tyler's mother Bonita Smith urging, 'Don't you ever in your motherfucking life dim your light for nobody'.
Tyler is a phenomenal storyteller and through the world of Chromakopia, we witness a progression in his lyricism, with the album emphasising how he excels at creating unique narratives. We hear this in the emotional Hey Jane which offers two perspectives on an accidental pregnancy, and the raw and complicated Like Him, where he questions whether he's destined to end up like his absent father. Through Chromakopia, Tyler deconstructs his past self and the various versions we've come to know for the purpose of unpacking his present and what comes next. [Arusa Qureshi]
Chromakopia was released on 28 Oct via Columbia Records
chromakopia.com
6. Adrienne Lenker – Bright Future
The medium is the message in Adrianne Lenker’s exquisite Bright Future, an album so haunted by the ephemerality of love and memory that the soft whoosh of the analogue tape on which it was recorded feels as much part of its lyricism as Lenker’s words. Charting the rise and fall of a relationship, Bright Future is run through with a gentle kind of vertigo: Lenker invites us into a love caught simultaneously in the promise of the past and the crushed hope of the present, where desire and heartache tangle in strange and incongruent ways.
Love here is both quotidian and miraculous ('Stove light glows like a fire / We're sitting on the kitchen floor / Just when I thought I couldn't feel more / I feel a little more', Lenker sings on Free Treasure), yet the solidity of its narrative can collapse so easily ('The seasons go so fast / Thinking that this one was gonna last', she says plaintively on Sadness as a Gift). The bright future of its title, we come to understand, isn’t in the assurance of what is to come, but in the possibility that such a thing could exist, and did exist, at all. [Anahit Behrooz]
Bright Future was released on 22 Mar via 4AD
adriannelenker.com
5. The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
'This is the end of every song that we sing', Robert Smith declares on Alone, the opening track to The Cure’s first album in 16 years. It sounds like both an in-joke and a threat, as well as a chilling obituary for a world he describes as 'burned out to ash'. Forty-five years of the Sussex goths, and still no band does existential dread better.
Songs of a Lost World is a record about time; how unpredictably it moves, how inevitably it passes, and how easily it is wasted. From the clattering anxiety of Drone:Nodrone to the romantic, memory-stained All I Ever Am, these tracks are made of classic Cure stuff – but everything has changed.
Ghosts of Smith’s past haunt this album, from lost family members to his younger selves. The lush, swooning And Nothing Is Forever could be a wedding march, a sister to Disintegration’s Plainsong, yet it’s a deathbed promise. Smith’s voice, still boyish, holds a fearsome new grandeur, while the album’s slow-motion instrumentals are like watching an Antarctic ice shelf collapse into freezing seas. Closing epic Endsong is unrushed, spending six minutes lost in dreamy organ synthesisers and stately percussion before Smith promises, with just a flicker of a smile: 'I will lose myself in time'. [Katie Hawthorne]
Songs of a Lost World was released on 1 Nov via Fiction
thecure.com
4. Kneecap – Fine Art
When Belfast rap trio Kneecap came screaming onto the scene with their record 3CAG in 2018, an entire generation of young Irish people’s lives were irrevocably changed. Here was Irish like we never knew it: funny, sharp and actually cool. Fine Art only builds on that legacy, with big swings – from the dubstep banger title track to more reflective moments like Better Way To Live (featuring Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten), to the noughties vibes of Love Making. These are swings that pay off, taking Kneecap from being the funny guys-next-door of rap to something a lot more elevated.
A concept album of sorts, we follow the lads on a meandering night out, replete with skits and interludes, on a no-holds-barred ride – we air grievances in the pub in Belfast, get hounded by an English record exec and taken to London (Interlude: Kneecap Chaps is genuinely laugh out loud funny), before winding up back home in time for last orders. Losing none of their trademark wit on their debut, Kneecap have been unleashed on the world, solidifying themselves alongside other great Irish exports of legend: Guinness, hating Bono, and Paul Mescal’s tiny, tiny shorts. It’s parful stuff. [Emilie Roberts]
Fine Art was released on 14 Jun via Heavenly Recordings
kneecap.ie
3. The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy
Let’s start by saying that lead guitarist Emily Roberts used to perform as Brian May in a Queen tribute band. This fact alone should give you an idea of the dramatics and bravado we’re talking about with The Last Dinner Party and their dazzling debut, Prelude To Ecstasy. Before the hedonistic rise of Brat Summer, music fans were experiencing a lavish spring renaissance. Reddit threads were overrun with users looking for baroque bodices and ‘Mori girl’ gowns. And, after a year like 2024, these poster girls for the ethereal aesthetic have every right to stride out in lavish silks and taffetas.
When describing standout single Nothing Matters, lead singer Abigail Morris insisted: “We didn’t want a limpid love song. We wanted something carnal and free.” The album revels in this liberation, dripping candle wax over banquet tables (Burn Alive) as they cosplay Roman emperors (Caesar On a TV Screen). But for all its bombast, there’s real skill in Prelude To Ecstasy’s compositions artfully steered by keyboard player Aurora Nishevci who composed a full score for the eponymous opening track. Forget the brohemian rhapsodies and feast on those feminine urges (corsetry optional). [Cheri Amour]
Prelude to Ecstasy was released on 2 Feb via Island Records
thelastdinnerparty.co.uk
2. Fontaines D.C. – Romance
Fontaines D.C. are at the peak of their powers. With their fourth album Romance, released in August, the Irish five-piece have gone from rawness to flair, naïvety to maturity, and dreams of becoming big to impending festival headliners. But Romance doesn’t just show how far they’ve come, it also encapsulates everything that guitar music can be in the modern day… it’s truly a rare feat.
Frontman Grian Chatten previously snarled at the mic during the band’s Dogrel days. Now, he’s melodic, effortlessly poetic and brimming with inimitability. From the suffocating energy of Starburster to the detachment of In The Modern World and the melancholic nostalgia of Favourite, Chatten’s lyrical craftsmanship is of the highest order.
Directors Luna Carmoon, Andrea Arnold and fellow Irish actor Barry Keoghan have all contributed to the album’s music videos, steeped in shadowy mystique. Pair these with the band’s most expansive sonic range to date, and it evokes the sense that Romance isn’t just an album, but an entire world of its own. Blending their authentic brand of dark in a vivid new light, the crux of Romance lies in its shapeshifting unpredictability, and it’s this which makes Fontaines D.C. the most exciting they’ve ever been. [Jamie Wilde]
Romance was released on 23 Aug via XL Recordings
fontainesdc.com
1. Charli xcx – BRAT
Okay, okay... okay, okay, okay. Here we go! That’s right. BRAT is our album of the year, and it’s with delight that we sit down and look back on all things Pantone 3507C.
Released on 7 June 2024, BRAT is Charli xcx’s ascension to global megastar via left-field pop provocateur. BRAT is at once a celebration of Charli’s roots in underground UK rave culture and a sensitive appraisal of navigating success in a cutthroat industry. BRAT is the culmination of the work begun with the legendary SOPHIE on the iconic Vroom Vroom EP, 2020’s hyperpop masterpiece How I’m Feeling Now, and slick marketing of 2022’s commercial pop banger, Crash. BRAT is vital, it’s irresistible, and it’s changed the landscape of pop music.
BRAT throws us back to trashy 2000s electro-pop; think Princess Superstar, Bodyrox and the Ed Banger label roster. That said, there is a minimal, clean feel to the record that is clearly the product of the partnership with chart pop’s master distiller, A. G. Cook. Lyrically, Charli runs the gamut from doing lines to contemplating motherhood. Heaters 360, 365 and Club classics are all name drops, slut-drops and bass drops, while self-aware moments emerge on Sympathy is a knife and I might say something stupid: ‘Guess I’m a mess and play the role’. The record’s narrative weaves between moments of excess and the inner monologue of a 365 partygirl growing up and considering her legacy.
Whatever you feel about BRAT, its impact is undeniable. Let’s look back at the brattiest moments: brat summer; endless memes; a BRAT wall in Brooklyn; an enormous gate-fold vinyl sculpture in LA; the Apple TikTok dance; word of the year in the English Dictionary; an iconic SNL appearance; that tweet by Azealia Banks; Boiler Room Ibiza, BRAT-inspired club nights, T-shirts, club edits and A-list celebrity remixes. Kamala Harris centred her entire presidential campaign on BRAT. The record was nominated for seven Grammys. No wonder Charli is considering a change in direction for the next record, apparently ‘a Lou Reed album’; how does one follow BRAT?
It seems certain we’ll be talking about BRAT for decades to come, which makes it perfect for album of the year. Charli xcx has set herself apart as an artist who has found commercial success through being entirely herself, bringing a devoted fan base along with her and some much-needed levity in an increasingly grave world. Long live BRAT! [Vicky Kavanagh]
BRAT was released on 7 Jun via Atlantic Records
https://charlixcx.com