There are loads of music fans over here at Broad Street Hockey, so why not give a little look into what we enjoyed listening to this year?
Here are just some of the albums we really liked:
Jason M.: Royel Otis – Pratts & Pains. This Australian duo set 2024 off on the right foot with a horde of infectious pop hooks and ear candy galore. Although their cover of Sophie Ellis-Baxter’s “Murder On The Dancefloor” wasn’t on the record but released as a separate single, the album was a short but terribly sweet listen from start to finish.
The Cure – Songs of a Lost World. It took a while but this latest batch of songs from Robert Smith and crew was so worth the wait. Almost half of the album was road tested in 2022 and 2023 while the band toured the world, delivering three-plus hours of new gems and old favorites. Facing the end and death head on with all its glorious gloom and doom, The Cure haven’t sounded this good in ages.
The National – Rome. The first proper live release for The National (now roughly 25 years young) is filled with deep cuts, signature tunes and material from both Laugh Track and The First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It’s not the entire concert from start to finish but it’s a fantastic 21-track salute to one of the better “Sad Dad” bands around.
Thomas: Missing Link – Watch Me Bleed. Of all heavy music releases that I enjoyed this year (there was a lot), none of them were as catchy and ear-grabbing as Missing Link’s debut LP Watch Me Bleed from this year. I’ve been infatuated with the East Coast hardcore band ever since their first EP was released during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, and with their second EP, No Saving Grace, released two years later, and now this LP two years after that, they are just reminding people that they are the next thing.
Almost immediately, you know Missing Link’s sound. Punishing-but-thoughtful riffs, vocals that tear through any track, and just such a large sound that instantly grabs anyone. And, as I already mentioned, it’s catchy. I caught myself singing “and who’s that peekin’ in my windowwwwwww” from “New York Minute” so often since this album has been released. It just simply rocks. I could go on and on about this album, but I don’t want to be greedy.
Joe D: Charli xcx – BRAT. I mean, what else could it be? It’s been great to see Charli finally get her flowers; I first saw her in a dingy San Francisco bar in 2012, and now she’s one of the pop stars of the moment. No other release this year had such a profound impact on the cultural zeitgeist. I went as brat for Halloween. Brat summer is over, long live brat winter. Even 2025 will be brat, if I have my way. The original album’s great (“Sympathy is a knife” rips), and the remix album is the rare time the interpolations and bonus tracks are as good as or better than the originals (“Guess” is exactly the kind of silly song your release when you’re on top of the world). In a year I mostly listened to daylists and my ever-growing record collection, BRAT was on repeat in all capacities.
Maddie: I was able to be incredibly decisive in talking about just one single favorite thing that I read and saw this year for the rest of our series, but that decisiveness has kind of run out. Spotify tells me that my top artist of the year was the Japanese House, and I’ve definitely been spending a lot of time with their release from last year In the End, It Always Does. As far as new releases go, I’ve really been enjoying the new album from Valley – one of my favorite bands already – Water The Flowers, Pray For A Garden. It’s a pretty typical release for them, not a big stylistic overhaul, but it’s them doing fun indie-pop in the way they do best, and it was a perfect summer release for me. Beyond that, I really enjoyed Mk.gee’s latest Two Star & The Dream Police (which somehow only came out back in February, but it feels like it’s been ages), as well as From Indian Lakes’s Head Void.
Aoife: Chappell Roan – The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. All five of my top songs this year in my Spotify Wrapped came directly from this album. I was never much of an album listener before I began listening to this (heathenish, I know), but Chappell Roan altered my brain chemistry irrevocably. There is not a single skip on it, from this generation’s YMCA in ‘HOT TO GO’, to the emotional devastation of a situationship in ‘Casual’, to my personal favourite, Pink Pony Club. That song is an heartbreaking yet eternally hopeful anthem for every lonely repressed queer kid who ever was. Chappell Roan, you can yell at whatever paparazzi you want– I’ll follow you and your music anywhere.
Matt: Now that I’m into my 30s, I’ve somewhat stopped my voracious searching for new artists and have sort of settled into just listening to new music from my old favorites. So my list doesn’t have anything that I felt were gems to me when I found them, a high I have chased throughout much of my life, and instead just the obvious ones from my “guys”: Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend, Oh Brother by Dawes, Tiger’s Blood by Waxahatchee, Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman, American Primitive by Old 97s, Fate & Alcohol by Japandroids, Good Together by Lake Street Dive, and Something Is Working Up Above Me by Shovels & Rope. Truthfully, my most-listened to songs were from Toy Story, Moana, Tangled, The Muppets, and Sesame Street. Fatherhood truly ravages Spotify Wrappeds.
