Hello dear reader of Warm Visions dot net, and welcome to my favorite time of the year: Best of 2024 season. This season has fully passed for nearly every other music site on the planet, but I am but just one little man, trying his hardest to put together something that will enrich you as a music listener and a reader of this blog. Either that or I’ve just been incredibly lazy and procrastinating putting the final touches on this thing, along with listening to more albums with thoughts of “ooh should this be in my list instead of so and so?” It never ends.

Music in 2024 felt good overall, albeit I was decently checked out for a good portion of it. Plus the tension in the world is at an all-time high. I feel like this comes through in some of my choices later on in my list, but for the most part the records you’ll find below are in line with my Warm Visions taste. Familiar faces abound, along with some inspiring newcomers and juicy surprises (what the surprises are… I’m not quite sure yet). You’ll find the album art, “Warm Visions Description”, a little music writer-esque blurb, and a streaming link. You can also click the album art to be taken to that artist’s Bandcamp page, if they have one.

OK let’s go! Happy 2024! Let it end please!

HONORABLE MENTIONS::

• ANGÉLICA GARCIA – Gemelo [Partisan]
• BOBBIE LOVESONG – Shadow of a Cloud [Self-Released]
• THE BODY & DIS FIG – Orchards of a Futile Heaven [Thrill Jockey]
• DISCOVERY ZONE – Quantum Web [RVNG Intl.]
• DOROTHEA PAAS – Think of Mist [Telephone Explosion]
• FINE – Rocky Top Ballads [Escho]
• MARIA CHIARA ARGIRÒ – Closer [Innovative Leisure]
• PRIORI – This but More [Naff]
• SHABASON, KRGOVICH, SAGE – Shabason, Krgovich, Sage [Ideé Fixe]
• THE SOFTIES – The Bed I Made [Father / Daughter]

50. CONTRAHOUSE
Contrahouse [Ulyssa]

Emerging from a club after a long night of dancing and listening to records, you realize the club has drifted away with a cloud into the sky, so you just go back inside and keep dancing in the early morning light and wispy high-altitude clouds.
—
Oh yeah baby, we’re starting off the list with a certified groover. Four tracks, each over seven minutes. Jazzy, jammy and heady, Contrahouse’s wicked lineup of Brazilian groove wizards Gabriel Guerra & Luis de Paiva, THE Bruce Hornsby, and vocals from Konradsen’s Jenny Konradsen (more on her later) goes longform to explore hazy moods and rhythms, echoing across landscapes of jazz, trance, new age, and more. It’s a bit cheeky, but I haven’t been able to deny it for the entirety of the year. Clearly it’s a plush environment to get lost in.

49. MO DOTTI
Opaque [Self-Released]

Caught in a tight whirlwind of sparkling snowflakes, bright sunlight glinting off each individual flake. The onslaught of light distorts your sense of space and time.
—
Sometimes you just need a good whirl of eviscerating guitar pop noise. Los Angeles’ Mo Dotti cooks up all that and more on Opaque, one of the best shoegaze + dream pop records of the year. It’ll hit you hard with thunderous walls of guitar, and keep you holding on for the sweet melodies glimmering underneath.

48. MARINA ALLEN
Eight Pointed Star [Fire]

The first day spent in a summer cabin you haven’t returned to in years, warm dust and memories enveloping you in the thick sunset glow.
—
Already feeling comfortable and worn-in, Marina Allen’s cozy folk takes its time and makes space for the listener to get accustomed to her dreamy, surreal world she creates throughout Eight Pointed Star. Titled after the image of a quilt, the album achieves the same effect, a weighted comfort that will enrich your listening history.

47. BIBI CLUB
Feu de garde [Secret City]

A anthropological study of the volume, energy, and overall vibe of each room during a house party, studying occupants of the basement, various parlors, decks or balconies, front stoops, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens and more, coalescing into one beautiful organism.
—
Tightly-wound jangle pop from Montreal that does it so right, I cannot deny it a high list spot. Sharp guitar melodies interplay with drum machine percussion and chintzy synth work, and of course I love all that. A good amount of slow-building crescendos in the back half of the record, but the bangers go hard.

46. DUMMY
Free Energy [Trouble In Mind]

Vibrant light cuts from inside your body through your pores in an orb-like shape, casting nervous, agile shadows and light refractions across the room.
—
Vibrant N64-era platform game levels chock full of broken assets, clipping textures distorting across the sky, and a totally psychedelic plot. But the movement is pretty slick. Motorik rhythms, blasts of bright noise, timebomb guitars, delicious electronic soundscapes. Maybe the most escapist record on the whole list.

45. ADRIANNE LENKER
Bright Future [4AD]

A sleet grey sky and harsh cold wind cannot stifle the optimism felt when seeing the first buds of spring start to emerge, and the shreds of muted sunlight breaking through the dreary exterior.
—
Adrianne Lenker continues her streak of being one of the most vital songwriters of our generation, weaving more tales of sadness, relationships, grieving, finding happiness, time passing and more. While not an album I’m able to listen to all the time, it was a perfectly timed release to binge as the trees start to blossom in the spring.

44. CHRISTOPHER OWENS
I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair [True Panther]

Ashes of someone you used to know scattered through the air, passing through you like a familiar cloud.
—
We are very lucky to have Christopher Owens back in our lives. The ex-Girls frontman returned to form with a wistful record submerged in the harrowing times he’s experienced since the band’s heyday of the early 10s. Country, soul blues-touched rock done in a big way, with hulking soundstages dripping with emotion and catharsis from fatigue.

43. FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE
Rong Weicknes [Fat Possum]

A person you know explains everything like the person NEEDS to understand what they’re talking about immediately, not realizing how complex the personal lore, longform equations, spacetime physics, knowledge of tradewind patterns, etc are needed to baseline understand.
—
The jazz-pop duo keep the ideas meter maxed out on their new album, which sees the group of immensely talented musicians worm their ways through perilous melodic situations with tact, ultimately resolving in brilliant harmonies at every turn. It’s admirable like a shoestring crew putting together a high-concept, deep small stage production. How can you not smile to this?

42. KONRADSEN
Michael’s Book On Bears [777 Music]

The sweetest memories of each season, distilled. Lay out flat in a wide-open, indoor space on a dreary day to trip into the most vivid memories of your past.
—
The second mention of Konradsen on this list! The Norwegian duo let the hygge energy simmer with deeply restorative pop ballads on their sophomore album, where most songs gently pulse with a cheek-reddening warmth, a considered optimism and rosy nostalgia woven through each song. Even when the volume and tempo increase, it still feels as though you’re connected to friends, family and more, surging through darkness & embracing the light.

41. CARIBOU
Honey [Merge]

A mad scientist has made a spacecraft fueled purely by club dancers, their body heat helping launch the invention, in the shape of the inventors head, into deep space.
—
The line between Dan Snaith’s Caribou and Daphni projects potentially has never been thinner, but whatever he’s doing behind the boards is A-OK with me at this point. Honey is a glitzy and glammy dance record that feels like it’s either getting ready to blast into deep space, or burst someone’s heart open with overwhelming romantic excitement overflowing from every artery. Dizzying arrays of synths and electronics, along with the help of a few convenient near-whole samples, take the euphoria of early 80s disco and electro into the present, leading to a record that by the end will make you feel ready to make that change you’ve been sitting on for too long.

40. HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF
The Past Is Still Alive [Nonesuch]

Finding notes you’ve left yourself tucked in all the secret corners of places you visit across the world. Little transmissions from the past to comfort the present.
—
Deeply confessional and moving, Hurray for the Riff Raff taps into the heaviest elements of their past to confront the present and soothsay the future. Alynda Segarra’s raw voice is still at center stage, backed up by rootsy country-rock and folk instrumentals. An album where paying attention to the lyrics will deliver dividends.

39. TOTAL BLUE
Total Blue [Music From Memory]

Accidentally fell into the scanner and found a bizarro dimension in the middle of a workday.
—
Tap in. Did you feel the entry point? No? Ok, that’s good, a smooth transfer. Open your eyes. You are here, amongst the creamy textures, the fine linen, the natural sunlight. Potted fauna explode from tasteful corners, the skylight has a dreamcatcher hanging above, past that is one shy cloud, escaping confrontation. There’s an exquisite CD player soundsystem encased in a light wood console, connected to large floor speakers resting upon plush, spotless carpet. You’re now sitting on a large futon, the speakers positioned perfectly in front of you to hear every detail. You hear the winds, they caress you. You hear zero frets, you carry zero frets about you. Smoky wilderness echos from a room beyond, keys cascade out from the downstairs workshop. Filtering in are new memories, you just spent yesterday by the beach, walking amongst tall grasses. But it’s time to go now. Life marches on. Feel free to visit again soon.

38. BEING DEAD
EELS [Bayonet]

A puppet show made for kids about two explorers that search for the entrance to hell.
—
Gotta hand it to Being Dead for having the most magnetic personality in the game, in an age where it seems like the saturation of indie rock bands feels more and more homogenous by the day. Being Dead’s music feels like a band of friendly freaks has just pulled up on you, opened their van door and beckoned you in. They’re your new best friends. Roadtrip-ready, lite psych garage rock with so many lovely warts and aspirations, you’ll be bought in before the album hits its halfway point.

37. PEARL & THE OYSTERS
Planet Pearl [Stones Throw]

Launching into space in search of an undiscovered planet to help alleviate an existential crisis, listening to your favorite jams along the way.
—
My darlings of 2023 Pearl & The Oysters quickly follow up their transportive Coast 2 Coast with an intergalactic exploration of the outer reaches of space and chilling. Layers of psychedelic grooves and electronics still wiggle their way under and around pristine pop melodies, obscuring otherwise pristine and chippy songs that dive into existential and climate crises. Constantly stocked with the best players, I can always count on P&tO for a good time even in the bad times.

36. DEHD
Poetry [Fat Possum]

Sun-baked and exhausted after spending a whole day outdoors, but feeling a pure love-fueled second wind once the sun has almost set past the horizon.
—
Sometimes writing a good, simple song is harder than writing a multifaceted one. Not to say Dehd’s music is simple, but they boil down rock n roll fun into its most essential, fragrant syrup. Jangling, endlessly sticky tunes at every turn that are made for blasting with the car windows down. Sometimes you just gotta go back to the golden 2010s era of summery indie. I’m a sucker, what can I say.

35. SKEE MASK
Resort [Ilian Tape]

Watching snowboarding highlights from the 2002 Winter Olympics in the year 2202, a desolate planet now so envious of bountiful snow and mountains that its residents cosplay as y2k-era snowboarders in a cybernetic, post-climate world.
—
Skee Mask is consistently one of the best voices in electronic music, and he delivers again with Resort, a plush and balmy jaunt of an album compared to some of his recent releases. Leaning more into free-floating ambient structures rather than more rigid dance tracks, the Ilian Tape boss explores gorgeous textures that exist upon huge soundstages, uncovering pockets of hazy breaks, rogue swells of bass, rolls of percussion that shimmer like schools of fish and more. Resort still brings the head-rattling, elastic bass hits that Skee Mask is known for, but in this gauzy pool, there’s more to discover than just the quick rushes.

34. CAROLINE SAYS
The Lucky One [Western Vinyl]

Each window of the house lets in a bold ray of golden sunset light during a three-week stretch of late fall.
—
Blissful, melancholic folk that examines the empty spaces left by those we’ve lost, along with the endurance of memory and perception of time. The guitar textures are rich, Caroline’s airy vocals add an element of wistfulness to the already nostalgic lyrics, casting a golden glow over the whole project. Put it on at sunrise or sunset, open a window, let it all in, let it all out.

33. MABE FRATTI
Sentir que no sabes [TA / MM / UOH]

Observing yourself in a mirror in a dream, you do not look like yourself, and not entirely human. You exist as a set of shifting realities as a nest of flowering vines creep through the windows.
—
A rising presence in the dream pop landscape, cellist and composer Mabe Fratti lands another fabulous record – her fourth in four years. Her brand of dream pop doesn’t just employ lithe textures, sweet melodies and blissed out production, rather adding in the bizarre, uncanny twists and turns in reality that you experience in dreams. An album equally as beautiful as it is ersatz.

32. FLOATING POINTS
Cascade [Ninja Tune]

Rippling currents ricochet across a scrapyard, reanimating discarded robots and android pieces into a beautiful, albeit stilted, lumbering convertible monstrosity.
—
Knotted and squirming, Floating Points brings it back to the mutant dancefloor on his first proper LP after his collaboration with Pharoah Sanders in 2021. Can easily flip smooth, glittering electronics textures into gripping, eyelash-blasting and brain contorting rhythms as each track progresses. Also I mentioned dancefloor earlier. I can’t picture dancing some of these tracks, but man they make my brain feel all scrambled up like I’m on a dancefloor. So there’s that.

31. CONFIDENCE MAN
3AM (LA LA LA) [Chaos / Polydor]

A genie grants your wish to be transported back to an early 00s trance rave but in return takes half of your braincells. You have an even better time than when you had brains.
—
There are elements of capitalism that relies on the consumer to turn their brain off and become a money-spending drone that inhales its content no matter what. But sometimes it’s fun to willingly flip that brain-off switch. Confidence Man allows me to do that. Sugary sweet trance pop chock full of addictive synth patterns, classic breakbeats, bright textures, and brain-massaging bass. It’ll bring you right back to the glory of pre-9/11 y2k pop a la jock jams, Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” and the like. Plus “I Can’t Lose You” is by far my most-listened to song from this year. A sugar rush with no hangover.

30. THE CURE
Songs Of A Lost World [Polydor]

An ancient call bellows from beneath the Earth’s crust, a power hidden from human sight for millennia still calls forth a gloomy disposition.
—
One of the first vinyl records I ever bought for myself was The Cure’s 4:13 Dream from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. I had never listened to The Cure before that. I never put the LP on my turntable, and I wouldn’t give The Cure an honest chance until after college. After surveying the field, Songs of a Lost World, The Cure’s first album since 4:13 Dream, is somehow one of their best yet. Tapping into the darknesses of our time, but sounding like they’re calling back from a dimension like the one referenced in the album title. It’s a voyager record they launched from their late 80s heyday and is just now reaching us. A time capsule that predicts the future and its own current demise.

29. MOIN
You Never End [AD 93]

Eternally slate skies emit a dull light off the spindly, steel spikes that protrude out of your spine, grown out of self-protection in a boring world.
—
When I try to imagine what we’ll think 2024 sounded like in the future, I think You Never End will be a good sonic portrait of the vibe. A pot you’d just turned your back to has immediately begun to boil over, silently spilling its boiling contents into a hate fueled gas flame. It’s the sound of a naturally buoyant being forcibly pushed underwater one too many times. The most efficient model achieved, slimmest margins barely scraping through a progressively tightening tube. Exhausted, sitting at the dinner table, no food, half-finished art project. Fumed out guitars and Valentina Magaletti’s mechanical percussion set the scene, one I think adequately sums up the vibes at large in 2024 and will reflect appropriately when looking back.

28. BLOOD INCANTATION
Absolute Elsewhere [Century Media / Stargate Research Society]

A person goes insane trying to find an alternate dimension they’ve spent their whole life researching. They end up entering a portal taking them there, and go fully insane, but uses their remaining wits to help them find their way back to their reality.
—
A rare metal record making my Top 50 list – joining a very select group. Denver’s Blood Incantation leans further into their prog and psych rock interests on Absolute Elsewhere, consistently shifting into spacier soundscapes mixed between periods of absolute hellfire heaviness. Over two three-movement tracks, the band opens rifts in time, showing the listener a world of diabolical riffs and sweet, pastoral melodies. The Pink Floyd comparisons are obviously there, but Blood Incantation more carries the torch incredibly well for the supremely nerdy metal bands that have been conjuring up realms beyond our comprehension for decades.

27. KASSIE KRUT
Kassie Krut [Fire Talk]

Putting in all the cheat codes in an open-world game, allowing your character to rampage through the game with supersized weapons plus infinite health and mana.
—
Much like two of three members’ previous incarnation, Palm, Kassie Krut makes music that exists on the fringe. Not in terms of fringe genre, or outsider art, but rather they make music that feels like it exists for the moments in video games where you can clip, or slide your character through a gap in a level’s geometry to escape and get into mischievous hijinks out of bounds. Frantic instrumentals explode at every angle, as cavernous synthetic drums pummel the listener while rickety feedback careens songs around wide corners and caffeinated + muscular electronics hold contests to see how much reality they can bend in one sitting. Singer Eve Alpert then coolly simmers amongst the din, candidly and even jollily cheering on the aural apocalypse around her. Seems par for the course with the fever pitch of life these days.

26. NALA SINEPHRO
Endlessness [Warp]

The space equivalent to a letter in a bottle washing up on the beach: a tightly-wound confection of stardust drifting past the window of a distant space station.
—
Have you ever imagined what a future of casual space travel, or even space lodging would feel like? Nala Sinephro surely has at this point, as her 2021 Space 1.8, and her follow-up Endlessness, twinkles like arrays of luminescent cosmic dust floating in the outer banks of our galaxy. Sublime strings mesh with a plush jazz ensemble, all wrapped in suites of glittering electronic and synth work, which help give the record its sci-fi sheen. This record is even more electronic-heavy compared to her first, helping set the records apart instrumentally, but conceptually as well. Whereas Space 1.8 was like viewing distant cosmos out of a space station-like hotel, Endlessness is like exploring those far out realms firsthand, your hands caressing the stardust that made us who we are, millions of light years away from Earth.

25. BETH GIBBONS
Lives Outgrown [Domino]

Storms approach a lonely cliffside house where its reclusive resident grapples with dread and possible freedom from the potential impending changes.
—
The return of illustrious singer Beth Gibbons (of Portishead) elicits the ghosts of a past life and the endurance of a burning artistic spirit. Haunting strings and booming percussion layer the entire record, as dusty instrumental flourishes hint at a magnificent, parallel world she’s been existing in all this time since the last Portishead album. It’s a touching, emotional listen that is less doom and gloom and more delight in the absurdness of time passing.

24. MOUNT EERIE
Night Palace [P.W. Elverum & Sun]

The cold wind racing down from the mountain’s peak yells first, you must yell back.
—
Phil Elverum returns to his subject matter of choice, the immenseness and wild powers of nature, impending death, and the like, on the gargantuan Night Palace. He sounds more revitalized as he revisits these realms, tackling 26 songs across 80+ minutes of material. Gentle folk meditations share space with blown-out, black metal inspired rock freakouts. I wouldn’t call it a return to form since no one does it like Phil. It’s just a fantastic record, showing he’s still all the way got it.

23. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING [Saddle Creek]

Mistakenly falling onto a boiling surface and feeling the fabric of your being atomize in slow motion, allowing you time to reflect on your personal isolation and fragmented friendships.
—
After their monumental yet harrowing 2021 album ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH, I for one am glad the band took a step back from the insomniac paranoid delusions to meander a bit on this new album. There are still flashes of their doomsday visions, but the band leaves room to explore other sonic textures and ideas within and in between meatier, more hooky ideas. There’s a dreamy, blissful mood that extends over multiple songs; a cathartic, “you’ve reached the end of your road, it’s time to reflect” kind of peacefulness. Real idyllic pop song and melody-writing, too. This of course is undercut with creeping dissonance, usually languishing below the surface only to rear its engorged head and thrash about. With these added wrinkles, SPIRIT continues to set themselves apart in a noisy crowd of imitators.

22. KIT SEBASTIAN
New Internationale [Brainfeeder]

A fantastic vision of a distant West Asian cityscape that wasn’t repeatedly led to ruin by Western powers, dripping with untethered romance and intrigue.
—
Dripping with the intrigue of a 70s international thriller, Kit Sebastian strike the same raw nerves that had me obsessed with their 2019 debut on New Internationale. The band continues to tap into the lavish Turkish psych funk that they’ve built their last two records around and dive further into cinematic song structures and lush arrangements. This can be exemplified with the album closer, with climactic horns and strings, scorched guitar and chiming piano hammering home scenes of a final chase scene, the heist being a success, the whirlwind romance revealing a double cross despite a wink at the camera and a kiss on the cheek.

21. MARY LATTIMORE & WALT MCCLEMENTS
Rain On The Road [Thrill Jockey]

Checking a book out of the library and finding nearly everyone who had read it before you had pressed a flower inside it, its stories augmented by dried petals and blank fragrances.
—
Blog favorite harpist Mary Lattimore teamed up with frequent collaborator guitarist Walt McClements on this rather under the radar LP, Rain on the Road, an especially dreamy piece of Lattimore’s already prolific catalog. The two centerpieces of the record, “The Poppies, The Mustard, The Blue-Eyed Grass” and “We Waited For The Bears To Leave” are delicately unfurling pieces that tell their stories with simple, long-developing melodic patterns, taking their time revealing their beauty to you. It felt like a lot of records I favored this year engaged the caustic, decaying nature of our current moment, whereas Rain on the Road allowed me a space to breathe amongst the downpour.

20. JAMIE XX
In Waves [XL]

The pulsed waves that emanate from the Earth’s natural energy are now bouncing back from the distant, deep space satellites that were placed in past civilizations. The currents that survived are ones of prosperity.
—
There was no way that Jamie xx could one-up the vibrant blast of his solo debut In Colour, but conveniently he did sculpt a record that feels wholly unique compared to his first effort with In Waves, and it’s tough to even attempt a comparison. In Waves revels in nightlife moments, whether you’re surrounded by friends on the dancefloor, being pushed about in a crowd of strangers, or surging ahead alone in the early hours of the morning. When Jamie goes for a jubilant, body-freeing moment, the results are as spectacular as ever. There are a few cerebral / sentimental moments on the album that fall flat a bit to me, but the closer “Falling Together” feat. Oona Doherty puts things in perspective well – “there’s a whole world in that dancer”.

19. FABIANA PALLADINO
Fabiana Palladino [XL]

The last shreds of dusk reflect off the polished chrome of your motorcycle, dousing the speeding vehicle in velvet purples, extinguished oranges and midnight blue.
—
A pop album that doesn’t get caught up in the current moment, or tries too hard to be something it isn’t. UK singer (introduced to me through Jai Paul’s Paul Institute program) crafted one of the year’s best pop albums of the year with her debut, one that references golden grooves of the 80s and 90s (see Prince, Janet Jackson, etc), but doesn’t get lost in being those things or banging you over the head with “hey I’m making a throwback album” like many major pop records recently. I’m now realizing I’m mostly just complaining. This album is very good, and should be a salve for anyone who’s burnt out on samey pop albums.

18. BRIJEAN
Macro [Ghostly International]

Someone spiked the essential oil diffuser with lite psychedelics and now your aromatherapy session at the beachside resort has turned into a humid journey to find your inner self.
—
On Brijean’s last album, I wrote that it was like entering a delicious spa that could melt all your worries away. Macro is your experience after the spa, utilizing lessons you’ve learned during your time at the reparative outpost to ease into the uncomfortable real world. You can just “Breathe” and get through it. Taking comfort in “Counting Sheep” and drifting off into a lovely sleep. Your skin feels soft and dewy. You feel at one with your body. The essential oil-laden grooves will elevate you, make you lighter. Just breathe. Let it flow.

17. KELLY LEE OWENS
Dreamstate [dh2]

A late-night speedbike ride through smooth, rolling hills in a centuries-passed post-cataclysmic landscape, the lights of thousands of fireflies smear into streaks in the periphery of your vision, the bioluminescence shining for miles.
—
Incredibly tactile, satisfyingly sequenced and dreamy trance and electronic from a master of the evolving groove, Kelly Lee Owens does it again with Dreamstate. I need to hear this record played LOUD in a big room with a great light show, especially the first five tracks. I will truly lose my mind in their dazzling array. Despite some sequencing nitpicks I have, this record was on the heaviest rotation possible for most of the fall and I anticipate coming back to it time and time again when the feeling’s right.

16. GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
“NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” [Constellation]

No description as of 24 November 2024 44,970 dead. Free Palestine.
—
Green sprouts emerging from the ground in a hellish world. The persistence of the human spirit despite overwhelming evil. The fact some people had the gall to call GY!BE “woke” after this album came out, clearly not listening or paying attention to any of the band’s previous material. Just shows how stupid people are out there. No further description needed, as of 25 December 2024 46,194 dead. At least.

15. NILÜFER YANYA
My Method Actor [Ninja Tune]

Emerging from the frost-melted ground after a breakup-induced hibernation, steam rippling off your skin in the dawn sunlight.
—
Going into My Method Actor, I had high expectations. Nilüfer Yanya blew me away with her 2022 record Painless, an album that felt like it was constantly tearing at the seams, even in its slowest moments. My Method Actor is a quieter, more subtle listen, but still roiling with an underlying angst, along with motions to solve or make peace with this unresolved grievance. It’s methodical and efficient, expending energy with a loud moment or lick of fire in opportune moments. It’s a record that I found myself growing to love more and more as little details and melodies got under my skin.

14. CASSANDRA JENKINS
My Light, My Destroyer [Dead Oceans]

As we’re all made from stardust, the ancient stars above have already picked out what we’re destined for in life. Letting ourselves be swept up into the prophecies of our own starborne fate.
—
Warm, gently pulsing folk and rock that feels more bound to the sun than any other record on this list. Whether it be blown out bliss cast in the bright winter sun, or nocturnal adventures waking up in the deep sunset, or weary meditations at early sunrise, the planets, the sun, the sky, the universe is all at play in our lives and in this record. Absolutely gorgeous and moving.

13. CORRIDOR
Mimi [Sub Pop]

Archival film footage of a famous skier attempting to break a world record of jumping over the palatial mountain resort of the region, but after enlisting the help of a local astronomer to lower the gravity, the skier launches themselves into the atmosphere, never to be seen again.
—
Just when I thought I was out, something pulls me back in. I’ve been sour on “jagged”, “angular”, “cathartic” post punk since the late 10s, so whenever a new flavor of the month post punk band emerges, I usually don’t even give it the time of day. I did happen to check out Corridor’s Mimi, and uh, I think it’s obvious that this record bucks the trend. Sure they have the ricocheting guitars and thunderous, minimal drums that a lot of other similar bands employ, but these Canadiens tap into electronic and live-mixed elements of sound, somewhat similar to legends of the genre Mission of Burma. The result is a gripping, at times sinister and foreboding listen that explodes with ideas with poise.

12. GINGER ROOT
SHINBANGUMI [Ghostly International]

A two-part radio drama about a salaryman rushing to make the last train of the night, running into too many of his drinking companions that want to just hang out and chat.
—
You ever wish that city pop was real and not just some fictional thing that terminally online music losers invented? Miharu Koshi? YMO? Tatsuro Yamashita? That’s a psyop. Gimme SHINBANGUMI, packed with groovy banger after banger, recorded in a studio that sounds like its technology is melting and warping due to the heat coming off the instruments. Bandleader Cameron Lew is a magnetic vocal presence, his frenzied charisma winning over any audience. This is a winner folks. Don’t let the Big City Pop Is Real lobby try and sway you.

11. KIM GORDON
The Collective [Matador]

Radiation from cellphone batteries or satellites or whatever we were worried about 20 years ago is true and our faces will soon turn into red, blistered, weeping husks as we scroll for a third hour straight.
—
I don’t think I need to say much about this one, as it speaks for itself well. If you haven’t heard it yet, punk icon Kim Gordon (formerly of Sonic Youth) pairs her icy delivery with foundation-shaking trap beats. The result is no “Rapture”, rather another notch in Gordon’s resume of being the coolest goddamn person alive. The lyrics of “BYE BYE” is literally a packing list. It’s one of the hardest songs of the year. This thing goes absolutely stupid hard.

10. FONTAINES D.C.
Romance [XL]

Young men on the outskirts of town and their youth struggling to find a place in this world, rebelling in violent and self-destructive ways.
—
One of the great rock records of the 20s so far. Shedding the post punk trappings they’d begun to grow out of on their last record, FDC made their most accessible record yet while still sounding exquisitely THEM. Some jangle pop here, some nu-metal inspiration there, some haunting ruminations elsewhere, blood-pumping arena-rock there… it’s the whole package.

9. CHARLI XCX
brat [Atlantic]

Meeting a party girl in a club bathroom on your first visit to a major big city who shows you so much kindness but also plunges you into an endless well of debauchery, changing your life forever.
—
Why isn’t the lyric “I’m so Warm Visions”? Honestly feeling kind of blindsided right now…

8. WINGED WHEEL
Big Hotel [12XU]

Tales of aliens that crash landed in a small, middle-of-nowhere midwestern town, who experience harrowing, psychedelic hallucinations thanks to Earth’s thick, polluted air while they rebuild their craft with rusting junk, but are greatly unnoticed by the townsfolk, their eyes having glazed over years ago.
—
An all-star cast of musicians assemble once again as Winged Wheel, this time all together in one room instead of cast apart due to covid, as heard on their 2022 debut, No Island. The result is Big Hotel, a raucous and reverberating alchemical reaction where mutated rock emerge from heady, psychedelic jams. Thick, soupy guitars and bass put in a tough spin cycle by tight, snappy drums from none other than Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley. Blissful, big country noise envelops tracks, with murky melodies echoing from beyond and into the foreground. A true shredder’s delight, a trek through a shimmering swamp to find nothing but the good stuff.

7. LAURA MARLING
Patterns In Repeat [Partisan / Chrysalis]

After a family party, you stay away, sitting by the fire. Laughter and tears from years past still echo in everyday objects.
—
After totally flooring me in 2020 with Song For Our Daughter, prolific singer/songwriter Laura Marling goes deeper into the themes of motherhood, family, relationships, the passage of time and love on her new album Patterns In Repeat. Romantic and melancholic, Patterns is a rich album that doesn’t need a lot to feel satisfying. Most of the tracks feature just Laura singing and playing guitar, which lets the more fleshed-out instrumental tracks lay their appropriate impact. It’s an intimate listen that’ll make you cry, make you think of a past or present lover, about family, about life itself. We are so lucky to have this genius in our lives.

6. STILL HOUSE PLANTS
If i don’t make it, i love u [Bison]

Delirious after staying up for 36 hours, you pass by a television store with vintage CRTs stacked in the window, all of them transmitting messages to you from loved ones.
—
Still House Plants nabbed my attention at the end of 2020 with their confounding LP Fast Edit, showcasing themselves as another solid UK post punk band with unique vocal talent and absolutely spindly, awkward instrumentals; enough to make an impression. In 2024, they’ve made one of the best “rock” records. Utilizing minimal, precise drumming, Matisse-like cutouts of guitar, and the seismic vocals of singer Jess Hickie-Kallenbach, the three-piece captures undulating waves of momentum that ensnares its listeners, first catching them in their whirlpool and then paves them over with repeated, crushing grooves. I mentioned this word earlier but I have to say it again: momentum. Swinging from side-to-side, it will shimmy you into a stupor, bound to sway in its current.

5. LIP CRITIC
Hex Dealer [Partisan]

Openly acknowledging and taunting the secret capitalism sensor drone that’s been tasked to you (like every person) to make sure we support the consumer empire efficiently. Your wanton defiance even causes the surveillance to glitch and its AI to consider self-termination.
—
Lip Critic floored me with their debut album Hex Dealer, an aggressive record that feels deeply planted in the fatigue and rage that we’ve been sitting upon since the start of the pandemic. An intense distrust of government figures (due to their lack of action, two-faced demeanor, etc), a rise of fascism, the disappearing concept of “choice”, mass death splattered on the fringes of our vision, surveillance capitalism consuming every sector of our lives, among other factors that lobotomize our souls daily. This aggression is blasted through a setup of two on drums and two on electronics, making for a heavy-hitting, mutant hardcore / dance hybrid, as the thunderous percussion lights the fire and the squelching electronics boil under your skin. Not to mention the doomsday sermon singing from frontman Bret Kaser, who feels like he’s ripping out your skeleton if your brain is refusing to act. I’ve been off the aggressive music tip for a minute, so this felt like a dire alarm.

4. IGLOOGHOST
Tidal Memory Exo [LuckyMe]

Grinding across a rail made of pieces of old, decrepit A/V equipment in the underbelly of a crumbling future metropolis, its shantytown-like dwellings shadowed by empty towers and covered with soot from the skies above.
—
I could simply say that this album perfectly sounds like its cover and that should be enough for you to check it out if you haven’t. But I’ll go beyond that, because this album builds an entire world and you know I’m a fan of world-building records. Through series of dizzying electronics, threads of pastoral + warehouse UK raves, pirate radio broadcasts and rapidly accumulating tech junk, Iglooghost portrays, to me, some kind of crumbling megacity in the future where the climate has collapsed and the rich elites have escaped to some faraway planet or space station, letting the bulk of the populace fend for themselves in maze-like city corridors, the toxic ocean water lapping up further every day. Utilizing salvaged satellite technology, DJs and ravers have made networks of pirate radio stations across this bleak metropolis, providing a sonic escape for these waning, poisoned days. This is just my vision for the record, but in a summer that felt hotter than ever and a world government that felt equally as dystopian, it was hard not to make some connections to a potential future timeline here.

3. JESSICA PRATT
Here In The Pitch [Mexican Summer]

At the thought of a passed loved one, an open window facing a quiet, tree-lined street brings in a gentle, evening breeze that billows out an inherited lace curtain and diffuses your incense further across the room.
—
Warm Visions forever favorite Jessica Pratt did it again on Here In The Pitch, adding another rich tapestry of sound to her illustrious catalog. Again the music sounds beamed in from some vintage photograph, or lost reel-to-reel tape found at the bottom of a dry well, or in the built-in wooden liquor cabinet of a smoky bar, or found atop of a dusty library shelf. A place where the carpet and wallpaper hasn’t been replaced since smoking indoors was banned. Lots of natural sunlight passing through untreated windowpanes. Delicate, all-enveloping webs of sound flickering in limited light. Pure magic, distilled.

2. MK.GEE
Two Star & The Dream Police [R&R Digital]

Soft, smooth plastic delicately wraps around a railing leading from an emptying stripmall night club at the end of the night, a man sitting out front and wearing a torn up suit smoking a blue cigarette silently begs for the sun to rise. Glossy skyscrapers echo in the immediate distance, their curved reflections hinting at a granted wish.
—
At the end of the day, people just want a weird man shredding for them. Mk.gee does this exceptionally well, putting together sounds that the general listening populace hasn’t heard in a while (or ever) (although some of the textures on here being similar to that of ML Buch’s Suntub made my brain happy) with plenty of guitar wackery and studio tricksterisms, alongside absolutely wicked pop hooks and dynamic, top 40 pop-friendly vocal delivery. It’s an album of pop that feels like those dreams where you find a door leading to a whole new room in your apartment. “Has this been here the whole time? I can’t believe this existed without me knowing this whole time”. His magnetic appeal isn’t hard to comprehend. And I’ll say it again. The shredding. People want the shredding.

1. CINDY LEE 
Diamond Jubilee [Realistik / Superior Viaduct]

Riding by Greyhound across the high plains of Canada to different mining town dive bars in the 80s that haven’t been renovated since the 50s, to perform open mics and karaoke. Your time spent with gruff regulars and looking at the vast emptiness of the prairie with nothing but one suitcase and dwindling payphone money echoes within you.
—
A surplus of brilliance too pure for this world, too immaculate for most of the music-consuming public to understand. A Geocities website?? 32 tracks?? Abandoning the tour?? A drag persona calling back to the golden harmonies of 50s and 60s girl groups?? So much didn’t compute with people this year, turning it into a discourse thing. Kill me. We don’t need any of that.

While I would have loved for Cindy Lee to have turned the dial a little more into the noise zones like they did on their last record What’s Tonight To Eternity (my AOTY in 2020, mind you), no one else does it like Cindy. The mutated memories conjured in her retro pop are like nothing else, from its wistful manufactured nostalgia, to the windswept, howling loneliness, to the romantic isolation, you’re more likely to hear this in a greasy spoon diner local talent night in a truckstop town rather than the hippest new indie club on the block. Like the Jessica Pratt record, it’s beamed in from pages of the past that have been mostly taped over by the sands of time, chipping away at the dusty fringes until a completely new epidermis is formed. Calling from the past, a candle flame flickering in the stale darkness. When life presents you with a portal, you have to accept its journey.

Thanks for reading! Check out the full list below here.

FULL LIST:

1. Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
2. Mk.gee – Two Star & The Dream Police
3. Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch
4. Iglooghost – Tidal Memory Exo
5. Lip Critic – Hex Dealer
6. Still House Plants – If i don’t make it, i love you
7. Laura Marling – Patterns In Repeat
8. Winged Wheel – Big Hotel
9. Charli XCX – brat
10. Fontaines D.C. – Romance
11. Kim Gordon – The Collective
12. Ginger Root – SHINBANGUMI
13. Corridor – Mimi
14. Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer
15. Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor
16. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
17. Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate
18. Brijean – Macro
19. Fabiana Palladino – Fabiana Palladino
20. Jamie xx – In Waves
21. Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements – Rain on the Road
22. Kit Sebastian – New Internationale
23. SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING
24. Mount Eerie – Night Palace
25. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
26. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness
27. Kassie Krut – Kassie Krut EP
28. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere
29. Moin – You Never End
30. The Cure – Songs of the Lost World
31. Confidence Man – 3AM (LA LA LA)
32. Floating Points – Cascade
33. Mabe Fratti – Sentir que no sabes
34. Caroline Says – The Lucky One
35. Skee Mask – Resort
36. Dehd – Poetry
37. Pearl & The Oysters – Planet Pearl
38. Being Dead – EELS
39. Total Blue – Total Blue
40. Hurray for the Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive
41. Caribou – Honey
42. Konradsen – Michael’s Book On Bears
43. Fievel Is Glauque – Rong Weicknes
44. Christopher Owens – I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
45. Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
46. Dummy – Free Energy
47. Bibi Club – Feu de garde
48. Marina Allen – Eight Pointed Star
49. Mo Dotti – Opaque
50. Contrahouse – Contrahouse