Every year I complain that I didn’t really listen to as much music as I wanted to, and every year I manage to scrape together some sort of list of music that I did listen to. This year was not different except that I was even more distracted than usual for most of the year and I often found that I was not in the mood, or did not have the opportunity to really explore new music. Work and some personal matters were kicking my ass, and when I was in the proper headspace a much more important project took my focus. Somehow though I ended up with a long list of about two dozen albums, so I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
However, I have to say that I found this year’s crop of releases less than compelling. Nothing really blows me away. This is not to say that there aren’t good albums on the list, but overall The Year in Music feels a bit underwhelming. However, it is also The Year of the Vocalist: man, there are some great singers on some of these albums! Manuel Gagneux, Yann Ligner, Patryk Zwoliński… you guys killed it.
In terms of genres: 2024 has made up for last year’s dearth of metal. I heard quite a bit of it this year, along with prog and prog-related, industrial, and some art-rock. There was no Steven Wilson this year, so no pop. (/jk)
I have nine solid contenders, and if I had to pick one more to make it an even 10… well, there are four leftovers of roughly equal merit so I might say something about those, too. I’m still not real sure about the order though, or which album I would make “Number 1”. There are two or three that could take that spot.
