IDK how much I should explain here, but I’m just going to assume that we don’t have the same timeline and don’t hear all the same music in our scrolls. Confidence Man is an Australian dance-pop group with a weirdo KLF sensibility. If you go to my DJ gigs, you’ve probably heard “Angry Girl” many, many times, often with The Rapture “House of Jealous Lovers.” Jade Thirlwall is a British singer who I don’t really know much about outside of the Wikipedia entry I read. Last month, they released a song called “Gossip” that’s fire. It’s very Basement Jaxx-meets-Princess Superstar. I finally got around to playing it last week at Underground and it did pretty well. This week, it did even better.
Most of the new tunes turned up early in the set: Alison Goldfrapp “Find Xanadu,” Pulp “Got to Have Love,” Ora the Molecule “Nobody Cares,” etc. I don’t even know what really constitutes “new” anymore, but we’ll save that rant for another day. Thanks to Larry G. for having me play Underground last night and thanks to everyone who hit the dance floor, especially those of you who stuck it out until the end of “My Girls.” Set list is below.
More. Pulp swag. And it’s a notebook and pen. Things I actually use a lot. (Pic: Liz O.)
Last night was Club Underground’s Pulp Party, but I played in the not-Pulp room, which is why you heard a mix of ‘80s, ‘00s and new indie, darkwave, etc. upstairs at the Grand Star all night. “Women Respond to Bass” by Sextile is this summer’s banger, but I wanted to get “Rearrange,” from the duo’s latest album, into the set as well because it has a very DFA thing going on it. Also, the lyrics are extremely right now. Teddybears (featuring Iggy Pop) made a comeback with “Punkrocker” thanks to the Superman movie that I haven’t seen. There was also new music from Ships in the Night and Mareux in the set. If you want to see what was played, keep scrolling. Oh, and shout out to the small group of Fontaines D.C. fans who happened to be upstairs for both “Here’s the Thing” and “Starburster.”
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.
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.
