Best music albums: new releases of 2024
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M.J. Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
"M.J. Lenderman is Americana's golden boy right now," said Mia Hughes on NME. The North Carolina singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist plays lead guitar in the country-rock band Wednesday, who released last year's excellent album "Rat Saw God". He was also an "impactful sideman" on this year's "equally brilliant" Waxahatchee album "Tigers Blood". And on his three albums to date as a solo artist, the 25-year-old writes "alt-country songs that are both sorrowful and hilarious, and sings them with a sort of warbling drawl reminiscent of Neil Young or Jason Molina". His terrific new collection, "Manning Fireworks", provides more "literary magic".
His album "Boat Songs", in 2022, was a real breakthrough, said Damien Morris in The Observer – and this slightly darker collection is a "worthy successor" to it. As the album progresses, "increasingly searing guitar solos and distortion accentuate the uneasiness in Lenderman's lyrics. Superb single "She's Leaving You" could be his best song yet, and epic drone freakout "Bark at the Moon" is a joyously weird closer."
Anti, ￡12
Floating Points: Cascade
Sam Shepherd (who records as Floating Points) released an album in 2021 that was hailed as among the decade's best. "Promises" was a beguiling electro-acoustic masterpiece made in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra and featured the final appearance by the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. It's a tough act to follow, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times. His solution has been to produce an album of glorious music that "aims for a different type of heightened state, one involving muscle, sinew, motor neurons, energy and dopamine – in short, the dancefloor".
Cascade is "made up almost entirely of dancefloor-adjacent bangers, each unique in their tinkering with genre, tempo and chosen instrumentation", said Kitty Empire in The Observer. The nearly nine-minute "Ocotillo" features the Austrian-Ethiopian harpist Miriam Adefris and a clavichord that belonged to Shepherd's great-aunt. The "absolutely slapping" synths of "Birth4000", meanwhile, pay "cheeky tribute" to Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love". It's an enthralling, giddy collection.
Ninja Tune ￡10
Huw Montague Rendall: Contemplation
Huw Montague Rendall is the son of "two distinguished singers", said Gramophone: the mezzo-soprano Diana Montague and the tenor David Rendall. Now, at 30, the British baritone is "making waves" of his own, and this debut album – made with Opéra de Rouen Normandie and conductor Ben Glassberg, and consisting of an effective and wide-ranging programme of songs and opera excerpts – provides a "superb showcase" for his talents.
The album certainly "justifies the buzz" around Montague Rendall: he is a major talent, agreed Erica Jeal in The Guardian. Hamlet's soliloquy from Ambroise Thomas's opera is "velvet-toned" and nuanced, with "beautifully floated high notes". In the "Serenade" from "Don Giovanni", "each syllable is as carefully placed as the notes of the tender mandolin". He is "heartbreakingly engaging as Britten's Billy Budd". And in a perfectly judged rendition of Fritz's song from Korngold's "Die tote Stadt", you can "almost hear the orchestra's thoughts as he holds the final note: who is this guy? Does he ever need to breathe?"
Erato, ￡28
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: Woodland
Nashville's Woodland Sound Studios has for decades been the "seedbed of classic country, rock and soul sessions", said Arwa Haider in the Financial Times. But after a tornado "ripped through the building" in 2020, its owners, acclaimed singer-songwriters Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, found themselves "salvaging archive treasures, then recording a folk covers album" – the Grammy-winning "All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone)". Four years of rebuilding later, they've produced a new collection of original songs in which "roots and emotions run deep".
Much here will be familiar to fans of this "Americana-royalty couple", said Tony Clayton-Lea in The Irish Times. Like its predecessors, their latest album is "delicate, textured" and "delivered unobtrusively with nuggets of storytelling expertise and wisdom". Theirs is a world in which guitars are "gently strummed", and melodies are sometimes "as simple and beguiling as old-world rustic Americana/folk can get". The result is a set of "impressionistic songs underscored by despair, anxiety and the will to overcome whatever life throws".
Acony, ￡9
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God
Few stars have "processed grief more eloquently" than Nick Cave, said Kitty Empire in The Observer. Since the death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015, the "former hellraiser" has explored his deep feelings of loss (another son, Jethro, died in 2022) over three quietly reflective studio albums, plus "two documentaries, film soundtracks, a memoir and an agony uncle column" (The Red Hand Files). Here, he is reunited with the Bad Seeds, his band of 40 years, and the result is less muted, allowing for a "different kind of transcendence".
"Wild God" is a "widescreen, uplifting piece", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Its nine songs have shades of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and an "overriding message on the value of life itself". Cave reckons here with mortality: "It was rape and pillage in the retirement village," he croons on the title track. But it's not all doom and gloom: "Frogs" even finds him "contemplating the happy sight of a frog leaping off the road and into the water". Overall, this is a "rich, involving album, as hopeful as it is melancholic".
Pias ￡14
Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet
"Fun and flirty, with a frothy hook and bitter little kick", Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" has been hailed as the Song of the Summer, said Helen Brown in The Independent. With its follow-up, "Please Please Please", also a hit, this album – the sixth from the 25-year-old Disney Channel graduate – "has a lot riding on it". The good news? "Those punchy little song-shots aren't the only cool moments." This is a collection that "confidently hair-flips" between "TikTok pop, yacht rock, country and R&B".
Carpenter has followed the "well-lit Britney Spears/Miley Cyrus path" from Disney to the charts, said Victoria Segal in The Times. And "Short n' Sweet" proves she is now a "smart pop star". Some of the "best songs" ("Coincidence", "Slim Pickins") show her playing a "kind of Gen Z Dolly Parton"; others ("Sharpest Tool") stay "the right side of anime Lana Del Rey". With "breadcrumbs that fans can pick up in the confessional tumble" and moments "just X-rated enough to subvert her cupcake-frosted image", "Short n' Sweet" suggests she is "here for the long haul".
Island ￡13
Fontaines DC: Romance
"Dogrel", the raucous 2019 debut album from Irish post-punk rockers Fontaines DC, announced them as major talents, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Their third album, 2022's "Skinty Fia", was "murky, demanding" and "funereally paced, yet it still made No. 1". Now comes their most "straightforwardly approachable" record to date. "Romance" is more "brightly coloured" and more melodic, with some "lush orchestration" and string-laden ballads thrown into the mix. But it "doesn't sacrifice any of the band's potency in the process: thrillingly, it still carries the same grimy, careworn, aggressive qualities" as before.
The title track is a "slow-burn Cure-like delight", said Tony Clayton-Lea in The Irish Times. "Starburster" is a "bouncing ball of words and rhythms interspersed with strings, piano and Blur-adjacent vocals; "Desire" is like Pink Floyd filtered through Depeche Mode". Best of all is the closer, "Favourite", "rammed with irresistible jangly guitars". This is an "incredibly compelling" collection, which should fuel the band's rise to "arena-sized" success.
XL Recordings ￡12
Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding: Milton + Esperanza
In 1972, Milton Nascimento released "one of the great Brazilian albums", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. "Clube da Esquina" paired samba-funk with jazz, classical and psychedelia to magnificent effect. This new venture with the US jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding is firmly in the spirit of that eclectic, joyful approach. It features compositions from Nascimento's catalogue, cover versions – including a "variously languid, urgent and impassioned reading" of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" – and new material from starry collaborators including Paul Simon and Lianne La Havas. Simon "tries out his best Portuguese for "Um Vento Passou", the kind of melancholic but romantic ballad that makes you want to sip a caipirinha at sunset".
Now aged 81, Nascimento's voice has "developed into a beautifully rich and vibrato-laden baritone", which pairs beautifully with Spalding's crisp falsetto, said Ammar Kalia in The Guardian. Spalding has helped Nascimento create "a late-career masterpiece that highlights the beautiful changes wrought by age".
Concord ￡16
Beabadoobee: This Is How Tomorrow Moves
On her terrific new album, the Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee (real name Beatrice Laus) "seems to have grown up", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. The 24-year-old offers "hazy, lo-fi pop" and angsty, witty lyrics, delivered in a breathy voice that makes her sound "almost like a cross between Regina Spektor and a Disney princess". On this third album, though, the "soft vocals remain, but notes of maturity and strength simmer from beneath the surface". Veteran producer Rick Rubin has imbued the record "with a skeletal beauty, its central acoustic guitars possessing a steeliness" that stop it from sounding twee.
Laus's voice is now more "grounded" and her songwriting is more confident, said Helen Brown in The Independent – allowing her to "embrace the sweet, hooky melodies which swell above her 1990s-indie-inspired sound". She's also more experimental, with a greater range of musical textures. "Beautifully crafted" standout tracks include "One Time" – "loaded with woozy George Harrison-style guitar lines" and slinky brass, and the lovely piano ballad Girl Song.
Dirty Hit ￡13
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer
"For the uninitiated, Cassandra Jenkins is a New York-based singer-songwriter with a pristine voice, precise enunciation and a tone that at times recalls St. Vincent," said Jem Aswad in Variety. Her second album, 2021's "An Overview on Phenomenal Nature", paired her "finely honed lyrics with subtle acoustic instruments and atmospherics", and won due acclaim.
But this glorious new album, "My Light, My Destroyer", is "such a leap forward that it vaults her into a whole different league". Confident, eclectic and adventurous, it is "one of the best albums of the year so far". Although the lyrical themes of the songs here are thick with loneliness, sadness and seclusion, these tracks (five of them instrumentals) are "remarkably easy listening", said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The music slips between genres with "apparent effortlessness", from acoustic atmospherics to distorted alt- rock; from "synth-y 80s progressive pop" to soft rock and even hints of drum'n'bass – "none of which seem to jar". It's "doleful but beautiful, a brooding delight".
Dead Oceans ￡12
Mishka Rushdie Momen: Reformation
The British pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen's debut solo recital is "a triumph", said Geoff Brown in The Times. Rather than "repertoire warhorses", she has selected for it 77 minutes of 16th century harpsichord and organ music – William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons – which is played "without apology" on a modern Steinway. Her hope is that these "fantasias, pavans and complex ruminations on popular songs" will "become part of the modern pianist's canon" – and they deserve to be. Highlights includeinclude Byrd’s "The Bells" ("contrapuntal dazzler") and Bull's "My Grief" ("a tender snippet that immediately pierces your heart").
Rushdie Momen's "beguiling" playing has a light touch that makes the music of the English Reformation feel "fresh and new", said Erica Jeal in The Guardian. She is "virtuosic" in the dense variations of Bull's Walsingham, and introspective in Gibbons's darkly beautiful Lord Salisbury Pavan. And she weaves "the music through with fine-spun threads of trills and embellishments... It's beautifully done."
Hyperion ￡14
Soft Play: Heavy Jelly
Soft Play is the Kentish punk-metal duo formerly known as Slaves, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times. In the "abrasive traditions of punk", their original name was intended to refer to the drudgery of wage slavery. And though it was no bar to success – they had three UK top ten albums – the band were attacked for "cultural insensitivity". "Heavy Jelly", the first album under their new moniker, follows a six-year break for reasons relating to mental illness and bereavement.
It's a brilliant comeback, the music both "heavier and funnier": Soft Play "get a hard yes from me". And from me too, said Olly Thomas in Kerrang!. The duo, Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent, are a "compelling prospect wholly reinvigorated". The overarching tone remains "spiky humour", but musically the sound has got harder, with pronounced nu-metal influences, and hip hop-inflected vocals. The best track, though, is the "almost folky" closer, "Everything and Nothing", a "moving tribute to lost loved ones". It's the "crowning glory of a comeback that delivers beyond all expectation".
BMG ￡13
Wagner: Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann)
For reasons of economy, "all-star" studio recordings of operas have largely been replaced by recordings of live theatre performances, said Richard Fairman in the Financial Times. Some are rather modestly cast, but Kirill Serebrennikov's 2021 production of "Parsifal" for the Vienna State Opera featured world-class talent. On this recording of it, Jonas Kaufmann brings his "burnished tenor sound, musicality and good sense" to the title role; Georg Zeppenfeld delivers "artistry at a high level"; while Elīna Garan?a as Kundry is "wondrously luminous and seductive of voice". Serebrennikov, a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, directed the production by video link while under house arrest in Moscow, said Geoff Brown in The Times. His staging had lots of prison bars and strip lighting, an odd setting for a medieval romance about an Arthurian knight's quest for the Holy Grail. But happily, the musicianship is superb and the singing "marvellous" – especially in the later acts, when Kaufmann's "passions fly, top notes ping, and dark timbres shake the rafters".
Sony Classical, ￡45
Piotr Anderszewski: Bartók, Janácek, Szymanowski
Recordings by the great Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski are few and far between, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian – much to the frustration of his many admirers. His new album is a "beautiful collection of miniatures" from three eastern European composers and, for the most part, it is "utterly beguiling". On the six mazurkas from Szymanowski's "Op. 50", a "vast range of seductive colour is conjured from the keyboard, every dart and twist of the phrasing precisely fixed". Bartók's "Bagatelles Op. 6" are "perfectly realised too, each one inhabiting its own tiny emotional space". On five pieces from the second book of Janácek's "On an Overgrown Path", however, I felt that Anderszewski pushed the sense of distancing too far, so that the result seems "chilly and impersonal". This is a "splendid collection" that highlights the regional connections between the composers, and on which the rhythms of folk music are all-pervasive, said Richard Fairman in the FT. "It seems the piano music of eastern Europe is at last getting the wider recognition it deserves."
Warner Classics, ￡11.50
Ruby Hughes/Manchester Collective: End of My Days
I was beguiled both by the British soprano Ruby Hughes's "vocal magic" and the Manchester Collective's "gorgeously expressive" playing on this new disc, said Geoff Brown in The Times. Featuring a wide range of songs – by Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy, Errollyn Wallen, Deborah Pritchard and others – this is a collection that is full of pleasures. It deals in part "with loss and death, but resonates most of all with the joy of loving and living". The clarity and intensity of Hughes's singing is a "glory", and nothing on the disc "appears out of place, everything is deeply felt, and I sat happily throughout, basking in beauty and wonder".
It's an "intriguing, eclectic" collection, said Erica Jeal in The Guardian. "Music of quiet stillness, often nodding to folk or spiritual traditions, dominates early on." The title track, a 1994 song by Errollyn Wallen, hits an "exultant if fleeting climax". And following on from Mahler's "Urlicht", Pritchard's specially commissioned song "Peace" makes for an "effective valediction".
BIS, ￡13
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes
It is 40 years since The Jesus and Mary Chain burst onto the indie rock scene, said Jeremy Allen in Record Collector. An autobiography, a world tour and a documentary are in the works. "But the thing that they'll surely feel happiest about is just how good the new record is." The relationship between the band's core duo, Glaswegian brothers Jim and William Reid, is famously turbulent: this is only their second album since their 2007 reunion tour, 10 years after a bitter split. But it's a "staggering, swaggering achievement, more vital than anything they've done" since the 1980s – and will make fans pray that the "fragile detente" holds. 2017's "Damage and Joy" was "enjoyable enough", said Keith Cameron in Mojo. But here the brothers feel "much more emotionally invested". The album's "liberal use of electronic textures is a renewing force, and a kind of homecoming too". And the songwriting offers a "bright, shivery, razor-sharp exposition of the love and devotion which boils" at the band's heart. "Whatever next – a happy ending?"
Fuzz Club, ￡12
Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine
Ariana Grande's "powerhouse vocals" and "chameleonic ability to fuse R&B, electronica and retro-pop have made her one of pop's biggest players", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. Her latest album is her first in four years – a period that has seen her married, divorced, and subjected to much lurid media speculation about supposed misdemeanours in her private life. Her response, as evidenced on this "silky, catchy" collection, is to stop caring about what outsiders think. This is "pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not".
On "Eternal Sunshine", Grande wipes away the tears and tackles the "big questions of adult life with maturity, compassion – and delicious gossip", said Laura Snapes in The Guardian. The lyrics toy "with perceptions of victimhood and villainy" that the singer knows she can't control; and the sound here is "opulent" and more "full-bodied" than on the "silvery, breathy" "Positions" (2020). It's a "beatific, mature" and impressive collection.
Republic Records, ￡12
The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy
Last year, the London-based all-female quintet The Last Dinner Party were "hailed as the heirs to everyone from Kate Bush to Sparks and Roxy Music, thanks to their raucous live gigs and gothic, romanticised aesthetic", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. Before even releasing an album, they'd won the Brit Award for Rising Star, supported The Rolling Stones and played Glastonbury. The deafening buzz around the group makes the release of their debut studio album "one of the biggest musical events" of the year. "And, phew" – it's great! All "curtsy to the new queens of pop".
This release "gleefully delivers" on the group's promise, agreed Helen Brown in The Independent. "Burn Alive" has a "hooky bombast" and riffs that recall Pink Floyd. "Sinner" sees them go "full glam rock" with "punchy-perky synth notes and multi-tracked back-to-back vocals". And their breakthrough smash "Nothing Matters" marries the "camp-crisp pronunciation and melodic smarts of Abba to the dirty bacchanalia of indie rock". This is music that "makes being young sound fun again".
Island, ￡8
Yard Act: Where's My Utopia?
Yard Act's debut album "The Overload" was a "shot in the moribund arm of British indie rock with its mix of northern wit, social observation and self-laceration", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. This "superb" follow-up is even funnier and funkier. The "Alan Bennett-meets-Mark E. Smith spoken-word monologues" favoured by frontman James Smith are as "incisive as ever", but the band's sound has moved on from post-punk to the "kind of loops, beats and samples associated" with the likes of Gorillaz. "Less surreal than The Fall, less miserable than The Smiths", Yard Act are earning their place "in the canon of clever, literate northern bands" – now with added groove.
The Gorillaz influence is no accident, said Rishi Shah in NME: Remi Kabaka Jr of Gorillaz co-produced the album, and it's "sonically playful from the get-go". "The Undertow" scurries between "hurried string sections and a throbbing bassline". "Grifter's Grief" marries light shades of disco with artrock. It's an album packed with surprises – and a "weird and wonderful leap forward".
Island Records, ￡12
Faye Webster: Underdressed at the Symphony
The beautifully "daydreamy" songs on Faye Webster's new album coast along in a fashion that's "almost drowsy", said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. These are unhurried songs "about time from the vantage-point of a 26-year-old who has a nagging suspicion that she should be doing something more with it". But in real life the Atlanta-based singer-songwriter is a "paragon of productivity": this is her fifth album. And under the "placid surface" of her music, there's a lot going on: subtle orchestrations and lyrical connections that repay the listener's close attention.
The belated popularity on TikTok of Webster's 2017 song "I Know You" has won her a wider audience, said David Smyth in the London Evening Standard. Now the "gorgeous country-pop fare" on this new collection should turn her into the major star "she deserves to be". Webster's "exceptionally beautiful voice" is "soft and intimate, comfortable sitting back when the music gets busier". And her writing is a winning mix of the "complex and the casual", "understated yet heartbreaking".
Secretly Canadian, ￡12
Brittany Howard: What Now
Brittany Howard won fame and multiple Grammys fronting Alabama Shakes, said Kitty Empire in The Observer – and her 2019 debut solo collection, "Jaime", "earned her more of both". Now she's back with an "outrageously great" second album, mixing "dancefloor bangers", vintage soul and joyous funk on a record that "never puts a foot wrong musically". "Earth Sign" opens the album "as ordinary mortals might strive hard to close theirs – with a transcendent sunburst of hope gilded by complex vocal harmonies, jazz drums and unconventional instrumentation". Howard shows more "flexibility, focus and potency" here than ever, agreed Grayson Haver Currin in Mojo. On "Prove It to You", she "saunters" above a disco pulse as "she pledges her devotion like Donna Summer in the summer of '77". "Another Day" is an "unapologetic slab of futuristic funk". And "Every Color in Blue" is a "beautiful and complicated song for a beautiful and complicated subject – how to make your heart available without having it hurt beyond repair".
EMI, ￡12
