Song of the year This year had a lot of songs in the running for my song of the year— from the Jamie XX and Robyn club banger “Life”, to Shannon & The Clams’ spooky garage track “Moon Is in the Wrong Place”, to Suzanna Vega’s return to form “Rats”—but the song that spoke to me the most is Chicagoan Steve Slagg’s “Heaven (Yet)”. It’s a song about hiking, according to his BandCamp page… but when he sings “Honey, there’s a panther in the backyard / One of us should probably learn to kill / Guys like us don’t go to Heaven yet / But I don’t wanna die in Provincetown”, well, I think he’s also singing about inhabiting this word as a gay person, carving out a space for ourselves. Listen on BandCamp
2024: another year of excellent music in the books! While I haven't numbered my list this year, the order is somewhat suggestive of my ranking (from 1-10). Here are a few of the albums that I really connected to this year.
2024 was another year when many great albums were released. Here’s a list of my top ten favorites from the year (not ranked). Hopefully you’ll give them a listen and purchase some of the albums at a local independent record store.
2024 was a mess, but musically it was exceptional, especially if you error on the side of shoegaze, as I do. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I veer toward the side of shoegaze. At least a third of my top 10 albums for the year ventured into that territory or are shoegaze-adjacent.
When I’m not verring (or erring) in that direction, I’m a sucker for some catchy melodies and harmonies. There were no shortage of them this year.
Throughout December,