Queen City Sounds: December 2024 by Tom Murphy

Published Issue 132, December 2024

Despite 2024 ending on a fairly ominous note, more thrilling and inspiring music was on hand and these selections are a mere vibrant slice of that sonic rainbow.

A Place to Bury Strangers – Synthesizer

Harrowing emotional clarity through radical spontaneous musical combustion.

Bloodhype – Trendoids

Vaporwave electroclash subversion of corporate training video sounds.

The Body & Dis Fig – Orchards of a Futile Heaven

A scorched and vulnerable portrait of personal and civilizational transcendence.

Charli XCX – Brat

Self-aware swagger synth pop supreme.

Chat Pile – Cool World

The poignant noise rock evocation of America’s cultural and societal failings and nightmares in the current century.

The Children… – A Sudden Craving

Dark, art folk post-punk theatrical poetics.

Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee

Sprawling triple album pastoral hypnogogic psych pop masterpiece and swan song.

The Drin – Elude the Torch

Weirdo psych folk kosmische akin to Ghost from Japan.

Einstürzende Neubauten – Rampen (apm: alien pop music)

Born of liminal improv, an entire record of heavenly creative industrial solvents of the international fash.

Fontaines D.C. – Romance

A moody and manga-and-beat-inspired cinematic post-punk odyssey.

The Jesus Lizard – Rack

Front to back splintery lunacy against dullard foolishness.

J.R.C.G. – Grim Iconic…(Sadistic Mantra)

Engrossing polyrhythmic psychedelic prog dub punk.

Julia Holter – Something in the Room She Moves

Guided by organic, intuitive flow, rhythm and structure, a fascinating work of ambient futuristic dream pop.

Kamasi Washington – Fearless Movement

Densely dynamic, cinematic, transporting, cosmic post-bop orchestral jazz embodiment of collective liberation.

Karen Haglof – One Hand Up

Masterful New Wave art rock Americana with massive chops.

Kontravoid – Detachment

The sound of dancing off the dissociating instinct of surviving in dystopian times.

Lesser Care – HEEL TURN

Gloriously melancholic and vulnerable shoegaze-infused post-punk.

Letting Up Despite Great Faults – Reveries

Most memorable melodic hooks on an album, dream pop or otherwise, of 2024.

Luna Honey – Bound

Brooding, visceral catharsis swimming in darkly mystical goth psychedelia.

Mamaleek – Vida Blue

Downtempo and mournful-free jazz black metal meditation on loss.

Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven

Scathing and uplifting punk bangers about yearning and scorching of religious indoctrination.

Meatbodies – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom

Kaleidoscopic fuzz-drenched heavy psych excursions into the surreal.

Melt-Banana – 3+5

Hyperkinetic bursts of joyful industrialized noise rock like a soundtrack to an intense sidescroller.

Molchat Doma – Belaya Polosa

The most representative of the band’s rich and engulfing live sound and expansive gloomy moods to date.

Morgan Garrett – Purity

Brilliantly deconstructed and fractured No Wave nü metal industrial noise folk.

Mount Kimbie – The Sunset Violent

A measured yet entrancing vacation from overstimulation through tender minimalism.

Pharmakon – Maggot Mass

A tribal power electronics equivalent of the most disorienting passages of an Alex Garland film.

Pissed Jeans – Half Divorced

A caustic and urgent dismantling of the multifold manifestations of American hubris.

The Prids – I Only Care About You and Me

Elegiac dream pop snapshots of regret and romantic fervor.

Sex Swing – Golden Triangle

Like a Krautrock Butthole Surfers UK in its psychedelic intensity and lunatic calm.

Shellac – To All Trains

Insightful, wryly and starkly humorous sketches of American angst cast in wiry minimalism.

Street Fever – Absolution

Hard darkrave anthems of recovery and perseverance in exorcising religious trauma and cycles of abuse.

Studded Left – Casual Flexer

The hypnotic mutant creative offspring of mid-70s Eno, Magazine, industrial psych, New Wave romanticism and Pink Reason-esque revolution rock with chill vibes.