2024 was a year rich with new music, particularly albums, typified by the success of Charli XCX’s Brat and its prominence in last year’s pop culture. Other significant works included Taylor Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, Sabrina Carpenter’s infectiously catchy Short n’ Sweet, and Billie Eilish’s first record for three years, Hit Me Hard and Soft.  

I wanted to use the turn of the new year to reflect on my own favourite albums from 2024. 

Gary (Blossoms)

Blossoms’ fifth album is an authentic display of their extravagant best, delivered in 80s-style suave indie pop. Inspired by an eight-foot-tall fibreglass gorilla stolen from a garden centre in Scotland, lead singer and songwriter Tom Ogden makes a great case for the arbitrary nature of creative genius, spinning this bizarre news story into the album’s aesthetic. 

Sonically, standout tracks include the titular single ‘Gary’ and its relentlessly catchy melody, the lamenting, Jungle-inspired ‘What Can I Say After I’m Sorry?’ and ‘I Like Your Look,’ an 80s pop-style ode to fashion co-written with CMAT. Lyrically, I resonated with ‘Perfect Me,’ a candid deconstruction of the expectations of modern life perpetuated by the social media experience. 

Overall, Gary felt like authentic Blossoms, arguably their most authentic record yet. With its chilled-out, jovial tones and the favouring of an acoustic underlay closer to Ribbon Around the Bomb than earlier synth-heavy records, Gary felt like an undeniably original record, revitalising Blossom’s significance within their genre. 

PRATTS & PAIN (Royel Otis)

Kicking off the year with an astutely timed cover of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ which would go on to be a triple-platinum single, Royel Otis stamped their name into the world of music in 2024. Despite their evident knack for an indie-fied cover of a pop classic, further reinforced by a later cover of ‘Linger’ by the Cranberries, their own album, PRATTS & PAIN, was a definitive record in its own right. 

Boasting the picks of their 2023 EP Going Kokomo ‘Sofa King’ and ‘Kool Aid’, PRATTS & PAIN is an album capable of inducing an acute sense of nostalgia with its stripped-back rhythmic guitar parts alluding to a bygone era of indie pop. ‘Foam’, a personal favourite album track, showcases the Australian duo in a moody and sullen light, juxtaposing other chirpier songs. 

The extended version of the album arguably provides the pick of the bunch, ‘If Our Love is Dead’, which epitomises the catchy, breezy pop sound Royel Otis do best. A further noticeable track from the extended version is the cleverly written ‘Merry Mary Marry Me’, which essentially turns a tongue twister into a catchy campfire-esque singalong with a beautiful riff. Utilising a play on words is something familiar to the duo’s songwriting, as anyone who has listened to ‘Sofa King’ will appreciate. 

Prelude to Ecstasy (The Last Dinner Party)

Some new music has the unmistakable characteristic of being able to cement itself as original and innovative within its genre from its first play. I think that would be the consensus of most listeners following the release of ‘Nothing Matters’, the first single from The Last Dinner Party, in 2023. The baroque and classical-infused indie rock, ba-rock, if you will, was, in my opinion, the most original sound to take hold of the alternative genre in 2024. 

The triumphant and elegantly chaotic sounds of singles ‘Nothing Matters’ and ‘Sinner’ were reinforced in Prelude to Ecstasy by tracks like ‘Burn Alive’, a tailor-made show opener, and ‘Caesar on a TV Screen’, a personal favourite. Beyond a novel soundscape, The Last Dinner Party do so well at interweaving important issues into emphatic-sounding songs; take ‘Sinner’ and its evocation of a queer experience in the environment of an all-girls Catholic school or the critique of male privilege found in ‘Beautiful Boy.’

Prelude to Ecstasy has all the hallmarks of a timeless record and a culturally important one, too, given the spotlight afforded to queer, non-binary, and female musicians in a genre heavily populated with male bands. 

Romance (Fontaines DC) 

Fontaines’ third album, Skinty Fia, would be a mainstay on my Mount Rushmore of albums, so with Romance,I was equally expectant and unsure of the direction the band would take. From the release of the first single, ‘Starburster’, with its hip-hop-infused rap style littered with incessant rhymes, it was clear that the band were moving in a new direction sonically. 

Though, arguably, the two best tracks, ‘Favourite’ and ‘Bug’, are somewhat incongruous to the overall mood. ‘Bug’ is profound and has a clean and stripped-back acoustic sound, and ‘Favourite’ is a timeless indie-rock classic, undoubtedly one of the songs of 2024 with its hypnotic riff. Overall, Romance is a phenomenal record and one that will live far beyond the 2020s. 

Midas (Wunderhorse)

There will always exist a category of bands that are untouchable for their definitive place within a genre. Often it does not do any favours to compare emergent bands to cult favourites, but there is something about Wunderhorse that exudes cult-heroes in the making.

Midas is an angry, powerful follow-up to its predecessor, Cub, which oscillated between beautiful and pained in equal measure. From the relentless tempo of the opening single ‘Midas’ and its percussive riff, tracks like ‘Rain’, ‘Silver’, and ‘July’ sow the seeds of an aggressive, guitar-driven indie-rock record, both original and distinct within British indie-rock. Jacob Slater’s sometimes eloquent, sometimes angry songwriting and dominant riffs make for a record evocative of pain, aggression, and hurtful reminiscence. 

That is not to say that the record does not capture the gentle and the delicate; both ‘Arizona’ and ‘Superman’ point towards the noticeable vulnerability in Slater’s songwriting. My personal favourite track is ‘Cathedrals’, an oxymoronic fusion of the two distinct spheres of the record, pain and beauty, carried by a delicate riff overlayed with longing vocals. Undoubtedly, my record of 2024, Midas has all the hallmarks of a timeless album, but perhaps one that will err on the side of obscurity over time, an if you know, you know, type record.  

Image: Midas by Wunderhorse via Spotify.