The Best of 2024

I really shouldn't call it the "Best of". Maybe "My Favorites of 2024" would be better. I've looked at the lists on most of the major music publications, and there's a lot that I haven't heard. I actually got through Charli XCX's Brat, and Beyonce's Cowboy Carter (Beyonce was mildly entertaining). I couldn't make it through Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet. Hey, I don't really like music that is manufactured rather than performed, so there's that. I did appreciate a few songs from contemporary popular artists on a stroll through The Best Songs of 2024 from a mainstream publication, but not enough to run out and buy or bookmark anything. So, here's the one's I liked a lot this year:

The Lemon Twigs A Dream Is All We Know

New York's finest power-poppers come through in spades. Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds, Raspberries, they do it all and make it sound fresh and new.

Fantastic Cat Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cat

An indie rock "super group" of singer songwriter multi-instrumentalists makes a rollicking fun record with a positive attitude. Only slightly more rocking than power-pop, think Rockpile, Cheap Trick and a touch of Americana.

The Weeklings Raspberry Park

This one forms a great power-pop triumvirate with the two previous. Weeklings have made their mark as a Beatles cover band, and a really good one. The originals are all solid pop/rock. Super covers of She's Leaving Home and I've Just Seen A Face, and a mash-up of Satisfaction and Mr. Soul that is brilliant.

Nick Lowe Indoor Safari

Not really a new record, but a collection of singles and EPs from the last ten years or so, all done with Los Straightjackets. It's nice to have it all in one place, and they have really become a great band together. The excellent Trombone and Don't Be Nice To Me are standouts, but it's all solid Nick Lowe after ten years since his last LP. 

Bill Charlap Trio And Then Again

Just one great jazz trio doing standards. But with Charlap and his talented sidemen, it is inventive and spontaneous jazz with what Downbeat magazine calls "seamless interaction and extrasensory communication". Great jazz.

Jenny Scheinman All Species Parade

Scheinman has been making interestingly unique jazz for quite a while, and almost all of it is easy to approach and yet challenging in it's own way. Featuring a cast of greats that Scheinmen has worked with before, everything comes out very fine. The sound of a mature artist with ideas to spare.

The Palomar Trio The Song In Our Soul

Hearkening back to the early swing jazz of the 1920s and 1930s, and featuring songs from that era, this record is just a joy. Tap your foot, sway in your chair, and smile, smile smile. 

Louis Cole nothing

Jazz fusion/pop/funk/ electronic/orchestral music. When have you heard that combination before? Louis Cole teams up with the Metropole Orkest jazz orchestra to produce a great record that is a genre to itself.

Continental Drifters White Noise & Lightening: The Best of Continental Drifters

A "best of" from a band that last recorded in 2001. I really loved everything they did (all four records). One of my favorite neglected bands of all time.

Shelby Lynn Consequences of the Crown

We've been waiting for twenty years for I Am Shelby Lynn #2. This isn't quite that, but it is closer than she's ever come, and one heck of a great record. 

St. Vincent All Born Screaming

Another solid outing from Ms. Clark, with great songs, killer vocals, and scary aggression. What can't this woman do with a guitar? 

Vampire Weekend Only God Was Above Us

The smartest indie rock band around gives us a great one, the best since Contra. If you were a little disappointed with Father of the Bride, they are back in spades.

Willis, Carper, Leigh Wonder Women of Country

A six-song EP that lives up to the title. Everything's good, and there's two new ones from Kelly Willis' pen. Carper and Leigh hold up their end of the bargain just fine.

Lance Cowen So Far, So Good

A respected Nashville publicist makes his first record in his sixties. A little bit like a new Guy Clark album sometimes, and of course that is high praise. He can sound a bit like John Denver, and he can get a little twee, but there are lots of great songs and beautifully recorded acoustic instrumentation.

Wings Band On The Run (Underdubbed Mixes)

Often considered McCartney's best Wings/solo effort, it sounds even better stripped of the orchestration. The live-in-the-studio One Hand Clapping from the same time period is big fun too.

John Leventhal Rumble Strip

After producing a gazillion great records, Leventhal steps out on his own. Gentle, lovely, mostly instrumental acoustic gems with two vocals by wife Rosanne Cash. Relax and listen to some darn good music. 

Mark Knopfler One Deep River

Craftsmanship. Since 1996, Knopfler has made one subtly great record after another. Yes, he's a wonderful guitarist, but he's also an equally gifted songwriter, and his singing has a heartfelt and well-worn comfort to it. You can get just over Dire Straits by now. 

Vampire Weekend Father of the Bride 2019

There is a new Vampire Weekend record, and it's both different and much the same, and it's good, if not the perfect summer bauble that the first two were.

In the years since ModernVampires of the City 2013, Rostam Batmanglij has left the band, and he is certainly missed, even though he contributes to at least two songs here. So Ezra Koenig is on his own for the ideas on the record, and Batmanglij's ideas have always spiced things up.

I did something I don't do very often, I read reviews of this record as I was preparing my own, and I'm apparently not deep enough, or full of myself enough (which I thought I had covered), to even understand the deep stuff going on with this band. Read the reviews at Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME, Spin or The Guardian, and there is apparently a whole Freudian level of BS that can be applied to listening to this pop record and comparing it to their previous work.

Me, I'm just going to do it like I usually do. Listen to it, make notes, discuss the music.

Hold You Now, one of three duets with Danielle Haim, kicks things off with a great sentimental ballad about the guy that wants her back too late. Harmony Hall follows, and is a highlight with sparkly acoustic guitar and a laid back rhythm that gains momentum as the song builds. Bambina features the quirky percussion that has been one of the the band's hallmarks. This Life is a big pop song the VW way, tinkling melody, high vocals, driving beat and hooks thanks to Mark Ronson, who seems to have an endless supply of them.

Then the record slows down for a while, and while Big Blue, How Long?, Rich Man, and My Mistake are pretty good, they expand the sound in a relatively small way, and sound like the first Ezra Koenig solo album more than they should. In the midst of all that stands Unbearably White, a gentle lyrical grenade of a song that still needs a good hook, and Gold Rush (with Haim again), a fine duet with all the right flourishes.

Then back to what the band does best. Sympathy is an excellent tune energized by drummer Chris Thomson and the bass of Chris Baio. This band would be nowhere without the rhythm section, and Thomson is about as good as a drummer can be. Sunflower has another great rhythm with an odd scat vocal and cool pop weirdness. Flower Moon has some of the Juju influence this record could use more of. The third with Haim, We Belong Together is a pretty love song that may include some irony. Strangers is the upbeat rhythm rocker we should expect from VW, with great vocals and drumming.

There's three more middling efforts in 2021, Spring Snow, and the closer Jerusalem, New York, Berlin, and all three have their merits, but again add a bit too many smaller ideas to the fray. One wonders if Batmanglij could have added some interesting gilding on all three.

So I count eleven great songs that equal everything their reputation stands on. But seven lessor efforts, some smaller songs, some ballads, some gentle introspection, but seven when two would have been fine. It's an hour long, and maybe a more concise effort would have been more perfect. I miss the Talking Heads/African rhythms that the earlier records featured more prominently than on this one. And I like it a lot.

I've said before that all a band really needs is a singer, a song writer, and a great drummer. Vampire Weekend still has all of that. You'll have to decide if the softer side is a worthy expansion of their sound or there's songs that should have been left off. Either way there's a bunch of killer pop here for the taking.

Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires of the City 2013

I should have been telling you how great this record is about a year ago when it first came out, but instead of just buying the thing, I decided to check out the samples on Amazon or iTunes, one of them.

If I had purchased the CD or the vinyl, I'd have told you that while the record seems to have less to offer than 2010's amazing Contra at first listen, it really grows on you after just a few more spins.

Like Contra, there's interesting, sometimes Afro-centric rhythms, and Ezra Koenig's bright high register and intelligent lyrics. Like Contra, there's great melodies, fine playing and arranging, varied tempos and ideas. They just seem so much smarter than the average bear. In contrast to Contra, there's just a little less pop sparkle. But it is replaced with deeper ideas that linger longer, and reward multiple listenings. It is a very fine piece of work, indeed. Five stars, ten stars, whatever the scale is.

I'd be telling you how great it is.

A year ago.

Instead, I just listened to the samples, and I didn't think much of the record.

So the moral of the story is don't trust samples.

Vampire Weekend Contra 2010

What does a band need to be good? I've thought about this from time to time, and there's three things that every good pop/rock band needs. First, you need a good singer. For many listeners, this person does not have to actually have a good voice as long as they have attitude. I prefer those singers that are actually good singers, but I like some of those attitude guys, too. Next you need good songwriting. It's a big plus if you have at least two songwriters, since any one writer has maybe 5-6 rock songs in them, and if you only have one writer, then you have to repeat ideas just to finish one record. Third, you need a drummer. The drummer needs to keep time well at a minimum, and they also need to add interesting touches or unusual rhythms. That's all you really need.

Plenty of bands have gotten by with no more than the above essential elements. I hope I haven't offended bass players, since my brother is a bass player. You really don't need a great guitar player (think Grand Funk). Mostly any skilled keyboard player will do, unless the band is keyboard based (Bruce Hornsby, Ben Folds, Elton John). My point is that the above three ingredients are essential for any good band, and these ingredients are the only truly essential elements.

Vampire Weekend is an excellent example of this theory. They have a delightful, high tenor in singer Ezra Koenig. The songwriting is credited to all four band members, and it certainly sounds to me like at least two of them write melodies. The lyrics are fairly cryptic most of the time (at least I don't usually know what they're about), but they work well within the music and Koenig's phrasing helps them work. Christopher Tomson is a fine drummer. The band uses African and Reggae derived rhythms quite a bit, and this adds a significant level of interest to their music. If everything was basic rock rhythms, this record would be just another decent pop record. With Tomson on the kit, the songs sound fresh and different, especially since these rhythms are being put to use in what are otherwise modern pop songs, which is unusual. Chris Baio is fine on bass, and Rostam Batmanglij is the keyboard/multi-instrumentalist that makes the vast majority of the music heard here.

Horchata opens with one of those African rhythms, and there's that staccato plucked guitar/marimba sound so common to Nigerian music. White Sky follows in a similar vein and is accented with excellent percussion and a wordless chorus that is great fun. Holiday is a fast ska/reggae rhythm with a cool keyboard part and driving guitar, all with fun vacation lyrics. California English is another quick-paced ditty that uses that African plucked guitar sound and big backup vocals on the chorus. Taxi Cab, Run, Cousins, and Giving Up The Gun are all strong songs with interesting instrumental and rhythmic touches, and good lyrics and vocals.

Diplomat's Son milks it's Reggae light thing a bit too long, and I Think Ur A Contra ends the record on a low note, a slow ballad that features Koenig's vocals and adds a string section that can't save the song from it's own inertia.

That's ten songs, and the first eight are very good to excellent. This should be the soundtrack to the coming summer. It's fun, poppy, and clean pop/rock with interesting songwriting, solid singing, and a great drummer. Batmanglij adds plenty of interesting little sounds to the mix, and is a creative keyboard player as well as a good guitarist. It's not deep or heavy or particularly important. And that spells great pop in my book.