2024 Top 40 Albums: #31-40
Count backwards from forty
We’re jumping into the Top 40 countdown today with the first ten albums on the list.
40: Nada Surf - Moon Mirror
One of the best Indie Rock albums in 2024 was Nada Surf’s Moon Mirror. The songs contained here are catchy and hooky, but also completely atypical from what you typically find in popular music, especially in regards to mixing and production. And it’s important to note that there is a lot of subtlety on the album — it’s a grower, not a shower. It takes a few listens to fully appreciate, and I highly recommend headphones for this one when you’re set for an active listen.
If you like an audible bass line, Daniel Lorca’s work sits very forward in the mix and provides a great contrast to Matthew Caws’ vocals. It’s very refreshing.
The album’s thematics center on aging — but not just the getting older part. At its core, its an introspective study focused on growth, gaining experience and wisdom and applying all of that to one’s daily life. The album is grateful for the journey, rather than jaded about how little time may be left.
39: Kamasi Washington - Fearless Movement
So much of what this album is, thematically and spiritually, is captured in its cover image — Kamasi in this statuesque, regal stance, holding a cane and draped in traditional garb; his daughter, Asha, running joyously in her astronaut outfit, her figure blurred by movement.
I’ve always been fascinated by generational storytelling and this notion of passing the torch and sustaining progress, trying to improve the world for those who come after us. It’s a large part of why Caligula’s Horse won my 2020 AOTY, as the album sort of focused in on that, and the final suite, to this day, demolishes me.
Fearless Movement is everything that good jazz should be: passionate and intense and, above all else, technical. Kamasi puts all of himself into his music, and all of the featured artists included on Fearless Movement follow his lead. Halfway through “Asha the First”, linked below, Taj and Ras Austin come in and set the bars ablaze.
There’s a stupid amount of depth and variety on this album — the intricate and cerebral jazz is only the start. The album’s twelve tracks run the gamut over its 86-minute runtime. If you aren’t accustomed to longer song lengths, it may take some acclimating; if you aren’t sure, just trust me that Kamasi Washington is worth investing your time in.
38: Devin Townsend - PowerNerd
(Progressive Metal | Progressive Rock | Hard Rock)
Devin Townsend is back with the heaviest music he’s produced in a decade. Some fans may still wish for heavier, but the hard rock and prog metal vibes here are still satisfying.
The wildest thing about this album is that he wrote the whole thing in eleven days. See, Townsend is so absurdly prolific that he decided he needed to challenge himself. He gave himself two weeks to write a full album, and PowerNerd is the result.
Let me assure you: it is as zany and whimsical as you might expect from an album written in such a short amount of time — it starts with a song about a regular nerd doing irregular nerd things (please, watch the video below) and ends with an ode to coffee. The rest of the album waxes philosophical and wanes into raging against troglodytes who promote harmful ideologies.
That song, specifically, “Knuckledragger”, plays on hard rock tropes while also subverting them in order to make its point. And! There’s a gap in the song’s guitar line — Townsend issued a challenge to fans to write and record their own solos and submit them. Eventually, he is meant to respond to at least one of his favorites, but it doesn’t appear he has done so as of the time of this writing.
PowerNerd is heavily layered, especially with what seems to have become Townsend’s signature blend of heavy and light elements which give the soundscape a firm foundation and a light atmosphere. If you’re unfamiliar with Metal, you could have much worse entry points than Devin Townsend.
37: Jess Glynne - Jess
I’ve been a fan of Jess Glynne since her debut album. Her rich, soulful voice (with just a sprinkling of gravel) just elevates her music by default. Unfortunately, she had a dispute with her label and decided to wait out her contract, resulting in a 6-year hiatus between releases.
If you aren’t familiar with Glynne, her brand of Soul- and R&B-infused Pop is frequently both energetic and emotive. Jess is exemplary of that in every respect. Even the most downbeat songs here have an easy, vibrant groove. The album presents a collection of songs with solid writing and well-applied polish without feeling plasticky, resulting in an excellent casual listening experience where you have to fight the urge to repeat each song as it plays.
36: Oceans of Slumber - Where Gods Fear to Speak
(Progressive Metal | Melodic Death Metal | Southern Gothic | Doom Metal)
Last Appearance: Starlight and Ash (2022); #3
Oceans of Slumber are perennial favorites for me now. This Texas-based Death/Doom/Prog group has been evolving their sound with every release. Their last outing straddled the line between Rock and Metal and presented itself as a Southern Gothic album. They’ve wrapped that descriptor into their identity moving forward, and turned everything up to 11 for Where Gods Fear to Speak, which is a dystopian concept album set in an evangelical wasteland where outgroups are hunted and persecuted.
So….Texas.
All of the more intense Doom and Death elements which Starlight and Ash seemed to abandon have returned bigger and better here in Where Gods Fear to Speak. Vocalist Cammie Gilbert-Beverly (who deserves to be recognized as a Metal Goddess, and is also one of very few black women in the supergenre) learned to do Death growls for the album. But the majority of lines are delivered in her gorgeous clean voice.
One of the more impressive things about this album is that the production value is kept at an absolute minimum — all of the songs were recorded in a single take. So what you hear on the record is exactly what you should hear live. And it’s incredible.
35: Ben Platt - Honeymind
(Americana | Pop Country | Folk-Pop)
Last Appearance: Reverie (2021); #18
“Ben Platt releasing his third album on the Pop-to-Country bandwagon” was not on my 2024 Bingo card, but as far as curveballs go…this one was a home run.
Okay, lumping it with the Pop-to-Country bandwagon is a bit of an oversimplification. The album is truly more in the Folk/Americana vibe than true Country, but there are a lot of sonic similarities there; I don’t really have the room here to go on one of my trademark genric rants, but suffice it to say that the album leans into the rustic acousticism, if you will, which brings to mind rural America.
But the album is also incredibly and unapologetically gay. It’s filled with gorgeous love songs in which he, a man, is clearly singing about another man. Because, as a fan of this old school SImon & Garfunkel style Americana, he has always lamented the dearth of Queer-representative music in the space.
That’s what Honeymind is — a statement that being gay is just as American as [insert your favorite ‘MURICA stereotype here]. Obviously, the statement is intended to also cover the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community by association; but Platt could not, authentically, directly represent anybody else.
There are fantastic anthems and gorgeous, heart-rending love songs (yes, I already said that but it bears repeating), and so much more here. Platt’s voice is as incredible as is always has been. Honeymind is a beautiful album and an incredible statement of belonging.
34: Accept - Humanoid
Accept are the Metal legends who helped to drive inspiration and innovation ahead of the arrival of other huge early-80s bands like Metallica, Megadeth, and others. They’ve been around for forever, and Humanoid is their 17th LP.
They haven’t lost a step. Humanoid is everything that Heavy Metal is meant to be — fast, aggressive, and impossible to ignore. So if you know anybody who insists that there’s no good Metal in the 2020s, this should shut them up; if this doesn’t scratch their classic Heavy Metal itch, then you can just write them off.
There’s no pleasing some people. Though, I should specify that if you’re looking for good Thrash Metal, this is not that. Heavy predates Thrash.
If you just need something to bang your head to, this will more than do the trick.
33: Caravan Palace - Gangbusters Melody Club
(Electroswing | Neo-Swing | Jazz)
Gangbusters Melody Club represents a significant shift in Caravan Palace’s approach to songwriting. Their focus is tighter here than on their previous albums. Of course, that’s vaguely akin to gushing over how much roomier your new sedan is after ditching a SmartCar. It’s a highly specific improvement in which the bar was literally on the floor.
Still, it’s laudable. Especially as Caravan Palace has, for ten years now, had a cult hit in “Lone Digger” — I’ve seen it recommended from several different people since discovering it and there’s always this moment of mutual gushing over how fucking fire that song is, and literally nothing else in their discography comes near replicating that tone.
Until Gangbusters Melody Club.
That said, there is still plenty of variety here, from upbeat bops to get you moving to relaxing easy-listening tracks. This is like a box of chocolates for your ears — you don’t know what you’re going to get next except that it’s going to be delicious. Please watch the below video for one of the most whimsical animated music videos you’ll ever see.
32: Missy Higgins - The Second Act
(Indie Pop | Chamber Pop)
I want to be clear when I say that The Second Act is one of 2024’s biggest surprises. At least for me. I really didn’t expect this album to make any waves, much less to live in my head the way it does.
The Second Act is a painfully real and raw breakup album. Higgins opens with a visceral gut-punch in “You Should Run”:
You should run while you can
This isn't a life you wanna take on
Look at this mess
You should run while you can
I tend to cry in the kitchen once the kids are in bed
Wake up and do it all again
That’s the first verse. The song builds and evolves, then peaks in the bridge with the line “Now show me what kind of man you are”; and when I say it “peaks”, I don’t just mean that it’s the high point of the song — it’s the high point of every album I heard in 2024. It is an emotional plea so raw that it’s bleeding, gushing with every heartbeat. The minimal production on the album, as a whole, justifies itself in this one aching moment when Higgins gives her husband this pleading ultimatum.
All of this in just the first song.
The rest of the album involves explaining the break-up to the kids (“A Complicated Truth”), dealing with the aftermath (“When 4 Became 3”), acclimating to the new normal (“Craters”), and then the whole second half of the album is trying to move on.
It’s a truly incredible album.
31: Twenty One Pilots - Clancy
Last Appearance: Scaled and Icy (2021); #381
I think Clancy might be the best album we’ve gotten from 21P. There’s this fresh lushness to the production which gives it a fuller, dreamier vibe that permeates every track. And while I haven’t taken the time yet to really brush up on the band’s lore (yes, lore; read the original review, linked in the #31 heading above, for more details if this is also news to you), the story contained within Clancy is inherently compelling. With our titular protagonist making the decision to stop running and go back and confront the antagonists in an attempt to save others, Clancy has subtle psychedelic undertones and sets up the next album to potentially be an incredibly wild affair.
The story is difficult to follow casually, but the songs are all phenomenal. This is an album that is great for blasting on road trips; some of these should definitely become car karaoke classics.
Next, we’ll wrap up the first half of the list with Albums 21-30.
The links below will work once each article has gone live.
AOTY | #2-10 | #11-20 | #21-30 | #31-40 | Honorable Mentions
Scaled and Icy was rated Green, but still made the list; 2021 was the last year where I reviewed too few albums to fill the list with 8+ ratings.