In 2022, Legendary Pink Dots released The Museum of Human Happiness, their first album since the pandemic. It was one of my favorite albums of that year and, really, one of the finest releases from a band who celebrated their 40th anniversary just before lockdown. Now, two weeks into 2025, they’ve dropped the follow-up, So Lonely in Heaven, via Metropolis Records and I humbly recommend that you listen to the two albums back-to-back. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but from the listener’s perspective, The Museum of Human Happiness and So Lonely in Heaven sound as if they are part of the same extended body of work.
In the four or five times that I’ve listened to The Human Fear, the latest album from Franz Ferdinand, since it was released on January 10, I keep going back to one song. “Black Eyelashes” is the band’s take on rembetiko (also spelled rebetiko), a style of Greek music that was particularly popular in the first half of the 20th century, and I’m hooked on it.
It’s sounds like there have been a Greek influence on Franz Ferdinand’s music from the get-go. I can’t really pinpoint exactly what it is, but something in the guitar tones and the rhythms they use has struck me as very eastern Mediterranean since I first heard “Take Me Out” 20+ years ago. On, “Black Eyelashes,” though, the influence is so blatant that you might start imagining that final dance scene in Zorba the Greek. I did.
Spoiler alert: Romance by Fontaines D.C. is the album of the year.
Year-end lists are tough. I don’t even know how many versions of my top 2024 albums I drafted before settling on this one. It was, originally, a 10 album list. That just wasn’t working, though, so I expanded it to 15 and still ended up cutting a bunch of albums that are fantastic. What I’m getting at is that I’m not going to argue with anyone about what isn’t or isn’t on here. I already spent a few weeks arguing with myself and will probably continue to second-guess every choice until it’s time to make the 2025 list. If you don’t like it, make your own list.
All of these are albums that I like to listen to in full. A few of the picks have songs that turn up in my club sets, but club-friendly music is not a requirement here. I’ll have another list for that and, likely, a mix as well, so keep checking back between now and New Year’s Eve. Until then, read on for my top 15 albums of 2024.
I was on the treadmill the first time I listened to 3 AM (La La La), the latest album from Confidence Man, walking at 3.5 miles an hour, a brisk pace, but not quite enough to keep up with the strobelight pulse of songs like “I Can’t Lose You” and “Control.” Maybe I could have stepped up my own speed to a run, or at least a jog, but I didn’t feel like it, so I kept walking off beat, waiting to see if the vibe would shift somewhere over the course of an album that, four songs in, was starting to sound a little too much like a late ‘90s Eurodance throwback.
Confidence Man is the Australian four-piece fronted by Janet Planet and Suga Bones and backed by the veiled and cloaked individuals Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie. I first heard them during lockdown when someone DMed me Yuksek’s track “Gorgeous,” which features Confidence Man. Two years later, the band released Tilt, their second full-length, which quickly became a personal favorite. “Angry Girl” is the song that has appeared most often in my sets since 2022 because it has a dance punk vibe that works very well at L.A. clubs and it mixes seamlessly with The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers.” But, the thing that made Tilt one of my favorite albums of that year was that it was super cheeky and the music was all over the place, kind of like a cross between Bis and Chicks on Speed back at the turn of the millennium. Given the new album’s title, which definitely alludes to both KLF (“3 AM Eternal”) and maybe also references ATC (“Around the World (La La La La La)”), it seemed like Confidence Man would continue that vibe. Fifteen minutes into 3 AM (La La La), though, I started to think that the spirit driving TILT was lacking on this album.
If I were tuned into Spotify, I would have just skipped through tracks or moved on to another album, but I actually purchased 3 AM (La La La) and downloaded it without hearing more than a couple preview Reels on Instagram. I had to stick it out for the whole album.
To be honest, I wasn’t a huge Molchat Doma fan. I could hang with a few songs, enough to oblige the frequent requests at clubs, but their albums just didn’t really resonate with me. Then, last Friday, I gave Belaya Polosa a listen and immediately bought it on Bandcamp. Molchat Doma’s fourth album is their best so far.
But, I’ve been hesitant to write about the album because even AP has done that, on account of Molchat Doma’s now four-year-old TikTok hit, and there’s a digital stack of music that I’ve been meaning to write about, but haven’t. So, I’ll just try to squeeze as much as possible about all of it here.
It was before noon on the first day of July when I listened to Sleep, the new album from Daphne Guinness, for the third time that day. I’m not one to play albums on repeat, but this one resonated with me in a particular way. By the third listen, I had already started to memorize a few of the songs, but had yet to decide which ones will end up in my DJ sets. This album is disco perfection and there are songs suited for nearly every kind of set I might play.
Cover art for Get There, the new album from Model Child
It’s always a good idea to sign up for band mailing lists. If I hadn’t added my info to Zoot Woman’s mailing list, I wouldn’t have known that the band dropped a new album, Maxidrama, this month.
In April of 2021, I saw L’Impératrice live at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. Three years later, the thing that stands out about that show is how hard everyone danced.. There was one point when singer Flore Benguigui got low and the audience did the same.
I was in the balcony that night and, from my vantage point, I saw a broken heart totem and a crown totem bouncing above bobbing heads. When L’impératrice turned songs from Tako Tsubo, like “Submarine” and “Peur des filles” into full-blown disco jams — the latter sounding like “Love to Love You, Baby”— it felt like the crowd was moving as a single body. Before that night, I had spent more than a month listening to Tako Tsubo on repeat, partially because I interviewed L’Impératrice for Audiofemme, but also because the album quickly became a favorite of mine for that year. But, L’Impératrice live is a whole other level of wild energy that I hadn’t heard in their recordings, at least until now.
On Memorial Day, right after turning in my last writing assignment of the month, I headed over to Bandcamp and played the new DIIV album. It was the first time I listened to Frogs in Boiling Water.Typically, I don’t like writing about an album unless I’ve given it a few spins, but, in that moment, DIIV resonated with me and I started typing.
Frogs in Boiling Water is an album that sounds amazing when you’re eyes are about to fall shut at 11:30 a.m. because you had a DJ gig the previous night— your third over the holiday weekend— and you had to wake up early enough to finish some work. That is a very specific situation, but it’s one that I can hear reflected in the tough, hazy sound of the album. This album is not dreamy, as people often refer to shoegaze bands. It’s the sound of pushing forward even when your shoulders slump and you have to close your eyes ever couple minutes.
I’m home on a Thursday night trying to finish a story that I need to turn in tomorrow. Since it’s already tomorrow in the U.K., the new Pet Shop Boys album, Nonetheless, is up on Spotify. So, I listen as I write and I listen again after I decide that 700 words is enough words for now and I can finish that article in the morning, when my eyelids aren’t quite as heavy and the chocolate mini Easter eggs I popped into my mouth one after the other aren’t weighing me down.
To recap: I flipped over “Loneliness,” the first single and opening track from Nonetheless, when it was released earlier this year. It’s been doing really well in my sets too. It’s a classic Pet Shop Boys club track, the kind of that reminds you that life is sad, but you’re happy on the dance floor. They followed up “Loneliness” with the single “Dancing Star,” which I haven’t played yet, but I do quite like. It’s slightly reminiscent of “Domino Dancing,” which is probably why I picked up that vintage 12” at Rubycon last weekend.
