My favorite songs from the first half of 2024
Plus some honorable mentions
I realize I spend most of my time on this Substack talking about older music, but I do listen to new music as well, I swear! Actually, I try to maintain a good balance of new & old in my daily listening, unlike most people my age. So, I wanted to share some favorites from the first half of 2024 with you. I’m omitting any music that I am currently professionally involved with (please see THIS PLAYLIST if you want a snapshot of what I’ve been working so far this year).
10- Wishy - “Triple Seven” (W1nSpear)
Indiana band Wishy is a shoegaze revival band, plain and simple, but they execute the sound extremely well, with Lush or Pale Saints as the primary blueprints. If you didn’t know any better, you could easily mistake this for a lost 4AD band from 1991, and this is their best song to date.
9- Buck Meek - “Cuero Dudes” (4AD)
Buck Meek is the guitarist in the band Big Thief and I’m partially including this solo single from him instead of Big Thief’s vocalist Adrianne Lenker’s solo work simply because I think Meek’s solo material gets overlooked and it is BRILLIANT and deserves more attention. This song come from the sessions for his 2023 LP but was just released as a single this year and it just makes me very happy whenever I hear it.
8- Four Tet - “Daydream Repeat” (Text)
Sometimes the YouTube comments really say it all - “I felt my soul lifted from my body while listening to this” or “the soundtrack to a rave in heaven” — these read like hyperbole until you actually LISTEN to it. It’s been inspiring to see Four Tet reach new levels of popularity (mainly due to his team-ups with Skrillex and Fred Again) while still releasing amazing tracks like this one. (Full disclosure, in my previous life as a radio plugger I worked with Four Tet).
7- Fake Fruit - “Mucho Mistrust” (Carpark)
I was a huge fan of Fake Fruit’s first LP because A) they seem legitimately weird and B) they remind me of a lot of other bands that I really love from different eras, like Suburban Lawns, The Fiery Furnaces, Life Without Buildings or even TFUL 282 (on songs like “Milkman”). Excited to hear their second album which is due in Aug.
6- Arushi Jain - “Imagine An Orchestra” (Leaving)
Arushi Jain is a modular synth wiz but her latest album ventures way beyond your typical modular synth or even ambient genre boundaries - “Imagine An Orchestra” is a thing of pure beauty.
5- This Is Lorelei - “I’m All F****d Up” (Double Double Whammy)
I didn’t want to like this band when I first hear about them, mainly because I am such a huge fan of the 90s band Lorelei (true story, this band was HUGE in my hometown of Jacksonville, FL because of a couple DJs there who played them incessantly - they were bigger in Jax than in their own city). It pains me when a band re-uses a name that’s already been claimed. But when I heard this song and realized it’s Nate from Water From Your Eyes / My Idea, I gave in. This song just RULES, you can’t deny it. It’s a song that feels like it’s existed forever - if this band didn’t write it, someone else would have eventually gotten to it.
4- Madlib feat. Your Old Droog & Black Thought - “REEKYOD” (Madlib Invazion)
Madlib and Your Old Droog have already teamed up on two singles this year, the other is “DBZ” which also features Method Man and Denzel Curry. This one also features Black Thought of The Roots. I picked “REEKYOD” to include here because it has the more sinister beat, and YOD and Black Thought both turn in flawless verses here. Hoping for a full MADYOD collab album ASAP.
3- SHELLAC - “WSOD” (Touch & Go)
I don’t need to say too much about this one as everyone else has already covered Steve Albini’s passing extensively but he has left us with one last excellent Shellac album, and “WSOD” to me is the perfect distillation of the Albini aesthetic.
2- inuha - “病気の子どもたち” (Siren For Charlotte)
I really don’t know anything about this band inuha except that they are a Japanese shoegaze band and they’re exactly what I want out of a Japanese shoegaze band. If that intrigues you, you should definitely listen to this song.
1- Waxahatchee feat. MJ Lenderman - “Right Back To It” (ANTI)
Another song that’s already been written about so much that there isn’t much else to say. It’s a perfect song, which is why I’m not even slightly annoyed that this song has been permanently lodged in my brain on a loop since the day it first came out.
Honorable mentions
The playlist below is a more extensive list of the tracks I’ve been enjoying from the first half of 2024 (all of the songs on this top ten list are included). Some of the songs that almost made it on my top ten list are from The Lemon Twigs, Bodega, Helado Negro, Kim Gordon, Tomato Flower, Eliza McLamb, Squid, Gulfer, Hana Vu, claire rousay, Ty Segall, Mdou Moctar, Wild Pink, Kamasi Washington, Nat Harvie, Mount Kimbie, Bad Bad Hats and Horse Jumper of Love.
What a great list! I love it.