The best 2024 albums to listen to over Christmas

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Brat by Charli XCX

The death of the water cooler moment has been exaggerated. Social media is actually causing the opposite, namely a relentless increase in events that everyone is supposedly talking about – the “discourse”, in the cod-academic parlance of cultural commentary. The risk is overexposure, like the carpet on Charli XCX’s Abrupt. But the album cuts through the ambient noise. It hones the singer’s avant-garde dance-pop to its sharpest point, while conveying a more rounded sense of personality than previous records. It will survive the discourse.

Still by Erika de Casier

Copenhagen singer Erika de Casier specializes in a delicately balanced form of R&B, knowing but not curvy, slinky without being too smooth. Still makes fine use of this carefully formulated approach. De Casier murmurs about romantic ups and downs, a quiet register of strong emotions. Beats is arranged with the style and spaciousness of a smart modern apartment. Old flames smolder (“Ex-Girlfriend”), capricious lovers are confronted (“Ice”), possessive partners are rejected (“My Day Off”). A seductive thread of humor runs through the storytelling.

This could be the Texas of English teachers

We shouldn’t have fun with rock bands: that’s not the rock and roll thing. But the desire to have a good time grows as life for bands gets tougher (high touring costs, closed venues, lack of income from recordings). The English teacher’s Mercury Prize win for their debut This could be Texas therefore deserves a cheer. But the album neither requires nor demands a charitable ear. The Leeds quartet make twisted but not over-developed songs with clever lyrics and a searching spirit. Musical quality carries its own reward—though it also deserves others.

The Collective by Kim Gordon

“Cement brand”, Kim Gordon adds The collective. Her album’s anti-consumerist, square-life-sugar messages are also on-brand, because it’s exactly what we’d expect from the American experimental rock grandee, formerly of Sonic Youth. But there is nothing routine about her second solo album. Gordon’s vocals are difficult to read tonally, mixing empty utterances with excited shouts. Industrial beats hammer away in a strangely catchy way, like hip-hop piledrivers. Distorted sounds assault our ears with bursts of white noise. The songs are meant to disorient, and they do it conspicuously.

The thief next to Jesus by Ka

Ka’s The thief next to Jesus is rap music like the deepest blues. The New Yorker, aka Kaseem Ryan, digs into a hypnotic, mostly drumless groove. Poverty and violence, tragic legacies of African-American slavery, haunt the songs. Ghostly voices from old gospel and soul records accompany the veteran rapper’s long but intense stream of words. A difficult confrontation is made between religious faith in the emergence of a better world and its stubborn error. A cruel coda: in October, Ka died aged 52. It’s no consolation, but he leaves behind one of the best albums of the year.

Fine Art of Kneecap

Belfast trio Kneecap’s breakout year began with the premiere of their self-titled feature film, a fictionalized band biography. It has ended in another triumph for the Irish nationalist rappers, a court victory over the British government to cancel an arts grant awarded to them. In between came the release of their album Beautiful art. Rapping takes place in Irish and English, a bilingual combination that carries a great weight of history, but is deployed with full throttle and sharp wit. The music is punkish noisy hip-hop. Politics has merged with hedonism. Go-big-or-go-home bravado rings louder than “Brits out” sloganeering.

Letter to Yu by Bolis Pupul

We last encountered Bolis Pupul in 2022 Current dancera playful excursion with Belgian colleague Charlotte Adigéry. Gent’s electronic musician’s first solo album is more serious. Letter to Yu is addressed to his Chinese mother, who lived in Hong Kong before moving to Belgium, where she died in 2008. The songs deal with Pupul’s feelings of familiarity and alienation when he visits Hong Kong after her death, a city he had not been in before . The result, co-produced with Soulwax’s Stephen and David Dewaele, is electropop made with rare intelligence and emotion, at once clever, catchy and meaningful.

Iechyd Da by Bill Ryder-Jones

The latest solo album from Bill Ryder-Jones sounds like a Merseyside version of fado. From his remote base in Wirral, the peninsula that juts out between Liverpool and Wales, the former member of The Coral sings sleepy songs full of longing and resignation. The style is sonorous, melodic, orchestral. The lyrics yearn for relief from mental and emotional strife (Iechyd Da is named after the Welsh drinking phrase for good health). Meanwhile, the music loses itself, and us, in the wide skies and uplifting melodies of Liverpool’s distinctive tradition of psychedelia.

Songs of a Lost World by The Cure

Celebrated fear award winners, The Cure, were the cause of nerve-wracking, nail-chewing preludes to their first album in 16 years. Would that be good? The potential for disappointment was high: Better no new album from such a great band than a mediocre one. But as soon as Robert Smith’s unchanged voice was heard lamenting that “hopes and dreams are gone” on lead single “Alone,” it was clear that hopes and dreams would not, in fact, be crushed. He and his band have duly returned with an album that broods over the passing of the years with majestic weight. Songs from a Lost World is a worthy addition to their impressive discography.

Wall of Eyes by The Smile

Wall of eyes was the first of two albums this year from Radiohead spin-off group The Smile. In one of his tracks, Thom Yorke sings about shrinking from “massive egos, so big they bend the light,” as if shooting back from a mirror image of rock stars and their quirky side projects. But this one, featuring Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, has proved a tour de force. Wall of eyes find them in top form. It is flexible and open, the result of ego-free music.