Album of the Year 2024

2:54 am • posted by Admin.

I’ve heard it said many times before that your music taste crystalizes as you get older and stop listening to new things. I had previously been able to disregard this—I hadn’t stopped listening to new music yet—but now I think I need to confront the fact that my music listening habits are changing. I can’t verify this by numbers, but I don’t listen to as many new artists in a year as I used to. Partly, I just know more artists than I used to. There is less room to discover more when you’ve already explored a fair amount. I’ve also found myself going backward and listening to artists and albums I passed over when I was younger. Still, when I listen to new hyped artists, I often find that either: their sound references something familiar or I’m not particularly interested.

This is my 15th album of the year list (I think). The earliest example of my rankings I could find was this Tumblr post from 2010 that I pretty much stand by. It’s from when I was deep in the blog world – when I wanted to be a blogger. I would spend hours every day listening to clips from songs and pirating the best of the best. Every artist discovery felt so fresh and new and important. My friends and I all communicated through music. Hanging out would be hours of passing back and forth the aux cable and showing each other our most recent finds.

In the years since I’ve lost a lot of my music community. Tastes changed, friendships changed, things are just different. Discovering a new artist usually doesn’t carry the added dopamine hit of waiting to share it with all of my friends. I don’t even go out to hear live shows anymore. Music has become something that I do more in private – while I’m cooking or working. Maybe that has allowed me to be more honest about my tastes? Maybe that’s why I’m not constantly digging for something new? I only notice the difference when I go to do something public like this list.

Something I’m always learning about ‘the things they say will happen when you get older’ is that you don’t have to go kicking and screaming. In fact, a lot of the changes will happen because you don’t mind.

Heems – LAFANDAR

If there was an album that got me excited in the way that I used to get about new releases, it was this one. In fact, I did hit up a couple of the homies from the NYC days and put them on to this. Heems bars and Lapgans production just flow together so well.

Cowboy Sadness – Selected Jambient Works, Vol. 1

As a white former music blogger of a certain age, I had to listen to this to know whether it was worthy of a name referencing Aphex Twin’s iconic Selected Ambient Works. I don’t know if this is going to have the cultural relevance of its namesake, but it has been an undeniable go-to this year – perfect to just throw on and space out.

Skee Mask – Resort

Speaking of Aphex Twin, Pitchfork wrote about Skee Mask’s Resort that “In its best moments, the LP sounds beamed in from a slightly different universe, one in which Warp and Rephlex never left the mid-’90s and every sample arrived blanketed in a thin layer of dust.”

Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubliee

I discovered ‘hypnagogic pop’ the same summer I first watched Twin Peaks. I was coming to the end of my college years and the oncoming world felt very strange and scary and full of possibility. Listening to this album brings me right back there.