Best Of 2024: Jon B’s Favorite Albums and Concerts
What a frickin’ year, right? Yikes. At least there was good music so let’s celebrate the albums, songs, and concerts we’ve loved most this year with our annual Reviler “Mid Year Best of” year end wrap up. Below you can see Jon’s favorite albums and concerts.
Local Albums
1. Pat Keen – I Saw a Bug
This one kind of came out of nowhere. Until Josh posted about Keen’s record earlier this year I had never heard of him And wow, what a stunner! I Saw A Bug is a very chill collection of rock and folk songs inflected with elements of jazz, country, and lounge, not to mention a spirit of eclectic experimentalism that is better heard than described. And Keen has apparently been making music for nearly the last decade so I don’t know what I have been doing.
2. Uranium Club – Infants Under The Bulb
Still the TC’s best kept secret (know more internationally than they are in their own backyard) uranium Club returns this year with another excellent slice of experimental angular guitar driven post punk/rock, this time loosely themed around the concept of global unsolved mysteries.
3. Verdin Brothers – Arcana
Like Pat Keen above, this band was another one to hit me out of nowhere this year. I still know next to nothing about them other than they are a literal trio of brothers with the surname Verdin, and they practice fingerpicked American Primitive style psychedelic folk music that is so mind blowingly good that to find out they have been under our noses for years was somewhat unsettling.
4. Bizhiki – Unbound
Hot on the heels of Joe Rainey and Andrew Broder’s excellent Niineta collab, Rainey has teamed up with a bunch of other musicians (including Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, S. Carey, and a bunch of other part time collaborators to form Bizhiki. Unbound is a marriage of indigenous powwow chants and indie rock and it keeps getting better every time I listen.
5. Rupert Angeleyes – Pillow Talk
It’s a crime that this record hasn’t gotten a lot of coverage locally – Angeleyes’ latest is a sleazy, sexy, odyssey of funhouse art pop and experimental funk.
6. BUIO OMEGA – Diva Moment
Yet another band new to me this year BUIO OMEGA are a very screamy, hardcore punk band with a kind of Giallo/horror motif. They initially wowed me with their 2023 album Take A Look and followed up early this year with the (equally short) Diva Moment. Would love to see/hear this ad live sometime
7. Molly Brandt – American Saga
Brandt’s opus this year was quite the accomplishment – the sheer number of guest collaborations, mixing engineers, and studios involved is dizzying. The result is a beautifully made collection of country songs that skews vintage country but also with elements of a more modern pop/americana sound.
8. Jacob Pavek – NINA
Jacob Pavek is a celebrated local ambient composer of sweetly sad and melancholy works. His NINA was his latest – a short but impactful collection of gorgeous tunes.
9. Comets Ov Cupid – Eros 433
Comets Ov Cupid are a group of spacemen, boldly exploring the furthest reaches of the sonic universe. Their latest record is an excellent collection of epic guitar-forward prog rock with eerie, unsettling undertones.
10. Larry Wish – The Mind is the Builder
Our local (and prolific) agent provocateur of warped pop released a landmark album in this year’s The Mind is the Builder, an album that finds a great balance between Wish’s merry prankster weirdness and some solid rock/pop bedrock foundation.
Runners up: Time Room – Like A Dream, Marsgarb – ST, Anthony Newes – Love Songs About Love EP
National Albums:
1. Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch
2. Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
3. Adrienne Lenker – Bright Future
4. Being Dead – EELS
5. Mach-Hommy – Pray for Haiti
6. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
7. Mdou Moctar – Funeral For Justice
8. Reyna Tropical – Malegría
9. Good Morning – The Accident
10. Fana Hues – Moth
Shows
- Jess Williamson at the Parkway
- La Femme & Sam Quealy at the Fine Line
- Julia Holter & Discovery Zone at the Fine Line
- Horse Lords & Ka Baird at Icehouse
- Crumb & Maxo at the Varsity
