The year draws to a close. The usual signifiers of the season put in their scheduled appearances: the sidewalks and rooftops lined with snow, trees and eavestroughs strung with lights, doors bedecked with wreaths. There is a palpable cheer in the air. All of this can only mean one thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s time for some half-baked listicle slop, baby! Seemingly every media outlet spends their December churning out their curated selections of the year\u2019s best songs, albums, movies, books, games, etc. \u2014 so why shouldn\u2019t I compel Stylus<\/em> to get in on the fun? Who am I to resist the omnipresent allure of list-making?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n But first, some parameters: the standard approach of assigning each entry a ranked number \u2014 as if experience is so easily separable from context, as if art can be reduced to a math problem \u2014 feels vulgar and pedantic. Unfortunately, this is more or less what the activity requires. So, as a compromise, I wrote down ten of my favourite musical releases from 2024 and arranged them in an (obfuscatory) alphabetical order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of these albums are pretty darn neat, so don\u2019t bother asking me which is #1. That\u2019s not for me to say. I will simply be taking my secrets to the cold, hard grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hysteresis State<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 Kelsey Braun<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Winnipeg-based label Makade Star has been issuing some truly remarkable field recordings lately. I reviewed Hazel Fog\u2019s self-titled for Stylus<\/em> in the June\/July issue and Braun\u2019s album is likewise worth highlighting. \u201cAbandoned Observatory\u201d evokes what it says on the tin. Picture a more hypnotic and stirring version of the spooky sound effect compilations they pipe in to haunted houses, replete with warbling electronic sirens, flowing water, gusts of wind, the creaking of floorboards and machinery, birds chirping, wolves howling, and (perhaps best of all) geese honking. Honestly, that\u2019s one of the more reliable ways to get me on board with a sound collage: just put some goose honks in there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeper of the Shepherd<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Hannah Frances<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Captivating (in a wistful sort of way) from the opening couplet: \u201cThe brilliance of the day waits for you to wake again \/ Patient in the way I waited for you to love me again.\u201d Being that my default countenance is that of a person who just went through a tough breakup but is putting on a brave face about it, Keeper of the Shepherd <\/em>\u2014 a set of lilting mid-tempo meditations on the inevitability of loss \u2014 really hits the spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD\u201d<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 Godspeed You! Black Emperor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n GY!BE is a near-automatic inclusion in my yearly top 10 whenever they have a new album out and their latest is no exception. I never seem to tire of their apocalyptic guitar drones, swelling strings, and \u2014 who could forget? \u2014 undercurrent of implied anarcho-communist agitprop. Blasting this album while walking home from a friend\u2019s bonfire imbued my late-night stroll with a foreboding grandiosity; it was perhaps the single most powerful album-listening experience I had all year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bless Me<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Grocer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I know I never completely outgrew my saccharine teenage emo phase because pop-punk songs about being a lonely, confused dirtbag just trying their best to navigate the world and make their life count for something still resonate with me. Go figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How Much Can We Understand<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 Fero Kir\u00e1ly<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A series of computer-generated chimes. This is music for falling asleep to or for staring blankly out a bus window on a rainy day. Very soothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blue Raspberry<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Katy Kirby<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hey, you all remember what I said about the Hannah Frances album a few paragraphs ago. Now imagine this: an album that\u2019s thematically similar but with more piano and homosexuality. Does that do anything for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Diamond Jubilee<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Cindy Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As a habitual crossdresser myself, it does the heart good to see fellow traveler Cindy Lee rise to new levels of popular and critical acclaim with the Polaris-shortlisted Diamond Jubilee<\/em>. Clocking in at a little over two hours, I will grant that it can feel like a test of endurance at times, but there\u2019s a lot to like here. Considering how many of its songs are these deliberately schmaltzy riffs on the doo-wop love ballads of the 1950s and \u201960s, it\u2019s a testament to Lee\u2019s performative prowess that I can adopt a simultaneously ironic and sincere posture in my admiration of it. The album\u2019s production is a marvel as well: I love how it distorts the instruments to sound crunchy and ever-so-slightly pitched-up, as if blaring from a defective stereo. Noise pop at its finest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n VICTOR<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 lll\u4eba<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the most unhinged free jazz I\u2019ve heard in ages; I mean this as a high compliment, naturally. When your band has a guy whose main role is to fuck around with the microphone feedback, that\u2019s when you know you\u2019re onto something. The interplay of Daichi Yoshikawa\u2019s electro-cacophony and Seymour Wright\u2019s saxophone shrieking \u2014 while Paul Abbott crashes away at full-tilt on the drums \u2014 is simply exhilarating. Listening to this album makes me giddy in a way that little else does. I feel like I could run straight through a brick wall. (And if any British jazz enthusiasts out there would like to tell me how to pronounce this trio\u2019s name, I\u2019m all ears.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3+5<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Melt-Banana<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Come to think of it, this album also makes me feel like I could run through a brick wall. Rock \u2019n\u2019 roll never died, folks: it just got faster and more angular. How nice of these two to emerge from an 11-year recording hiatus approximately five seconds after I was first made aware of them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spectral Evolution<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>\u2014 Rafael Toral<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I briefly touched on this in my send+receive piece elsewhere in this edition, but it\u2019s worth putting a finer point on it. This is a phenomenal record. I understand that \u201csprawling, album-length instrumentals for theremin and electric guitar\u201d might not be everyone\u2019s cup of tea, but this is beautiful stuff. I\u2019m a bit melancholic that I\u2019ll likely never again hear the quadraphonic live version he played at s+r in October, but that\u2019s just life \u2014 an onslaught of strange and wondrous moments slipping all-too-soon from one\u2019s grasp, never to be recovered. What else is new?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There you have it. That\u2019s the list. As always \u2014 if you disagreed with any of my selections or think that I snubbed your favourite artist, feel free to write me an angry email about it or yell at me in the street!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year draws to a close. The usual signifiers of the season put in their scheduled appearances: the sidewalks and rooftops lined with snow, trees and eavestroughs strung with lights, doors bedecked with wreaths. There is a palpable cheer in the air. All of this can only mean one thing. It\u2019s time for some half-baked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[1695,1697,1694,393,1693,1692,1696,1691,1698,1699,1700,1690],"class_list":["post-12850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-features","tag-best-of-2024","tag-cindy-lee","tag-fero-kiraly","tag-godspeed-you-black-emperor","tag-grocer","tag-hannah-frances","tag-katy-kirby","tag-kelsey-braun","tag-lll","tag-melt-banana","tag-rafael-toral","tag-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12851,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850\/revisions\/12851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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