The best distortions, the loudest skronks and the heaviest energies. Our favourite albums from 2024 that are just that little bit noisy.
Party Dozen
Crime In Australia
An absolute riot of an album from Sydney duo Party Dozen. Crime In Australia is so abrasive, it’s such a threatening set of no-wave bangers. Drums that stick in your throat, a warping and totally deranged saxophone that sounds like it’s being slowly melted, and a piano hit so hard someone should be serving time. Then it becomes shoegaze for a minute. Wild. It properly sounds like they did entirely what they wanted and it is such a baller as a result.
Shellac
To All Trains
We were as gutted as you all to learn of the tragic passing of Steve Albini this May, and this new heavy slab from his wonderful Shellac will be some of the last noises his name gets attached to. We can’t add anything more to the broad conversations about his life and work, but we’d just comment that it’s rare to see eulogies paid to a person where their work and their character are celebrated as widely and with such appreciation. A singular talent and a pretty damn good guy too.
Gustaf
Package Pt. 2
Sharp, wry and really pounding, Package Pt. 2 is the second studio set from Brooklyn no-wave / post- punks, Gustaf.
Commanded by frontperson Lydia Gammill, Gustaf trade in driving and angular songs, with pulsating basslines and clicking drums. The album was produced with Erin Tonkon (who worked on David Bowie's Blackstar) and although it fizzes with high fidelity sonic angst, there is plenty of rawness that keeps Package Pt. 2 sounding like it was just as much recorded right off the stage at some rock and roll dive. The NYC lineage and influences are relatively clear, with a wide-eyed snap that recalls early Parquet Courts and a nonchalance to the delivery that is somewhere between LCD Soundsystem and the iconic ESG. Although Gustaf are steeped in the city's vibrance, they never sail too close to emulation, instead creating a really evocative pull whether doing it fast or slow. Package Pt. 2 very much picks up where the band’s bristling 2021 debut LP - Drag for Ego Slobs - left off, but where that debut was swimming in neurosis, Package Pt. 2 is confident and full of forceful intensity. In these salad days for post-punk and Sprechgesang, it is exciting to find a young band who are harnessing the credulous optimism of guitar music and finding plenty of their own vivid space in what has become very well-trodden sounds. They pulsate, they rant and they thrill.
Dummy
Free Energy
A rousing return from the most excellent Los Angeles band, Dummy. Ever more synth heavy, the drum machines click against the mbv-esque layers and swirls. It is hugely impressive stuff, full of dynamic shifts; there are so many sonic references but the euphoric psych- pop on Free Energy is entirely their own. The shift onto Emma Maatman’s vocal is also hugely gratifying as they romp to exultation.
Earth Ball
It’s Yours
A real scorcher for the noisier listeners. Improvised jams and burnt-out apocalyptic cacophonies, with a Sonic Youth quality to the sparse and menacing sections. Far from easy going, but a hell of a listen for the more adventurous and for all its aggression, there is real affirmation too.
Fake Fruit
Mucho Mistrust
The second LP from the Oakland trio. Full of bratty, brittle and meaty riffs with yelps and the odd sax skronk, there is also plenty of surrealism and humour to keep it all bubbling. One of its hallmarks is a carefree attitude (frontperson Hannah D'Amato is a proper star) which gives the propulsive highs and lows an added edge.
Cola
The Gloss
The second LP from Montreal band Cola. The trio (Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy formerly of the amazing Ought and Evan Cartwright of U.S. Girls) have captured some proper dark magic on tape. They deliberately stripped it right back and it sounds very much like you’re in the room with them. Plenty of hooks and frenzy, but also just as engaging in its slow, stark melancholy.
Mdou Moctar
Funeral For Justice
A politically pertinent, socially frenzied and sonically wild return from Tuareg rock and roller Mdou Moctar.
The songs on Funeral For Justice speak unflinchingly of the plight of Niger and of the Tuareg people. The album is rooted in political turmoil and its vast human effects, and you can feel such palpable frustration as it lashes through every ferocious riff. And my word does it ever lash. Funeral for Justice is so vital. The title, the theme, the forceful delivery of the vocals, those scorching riffs – it’s all vital, personally and politically. It’s an important album, and one of its greatest payoffs is that it is so euphoric, one of the most urgent rock ‘n’ roll bands performing and recording right now, at the peak of their powers. It is so rare to experience an album of both great sadness and ferocious drive. This is one, and it is an absolute ripper.
On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System
Caldicot (South Wales) trio The Bug Club are a hoot. Muscular and gloriously throwaway pop songs, and a work ethic that veers towards the superhuman. Following on from their breakout Green Dream in F#, the 47-track Rare Birds album plus dozens of singles, a live album and some 200+ gigs a year, On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System is the trio’s debut for the iconic Sub Pop and it really is pure joy.
Although they joke wryly to the contrary, this is actually very smart music. The observations are pin sharp, both in the off-kilter and droll lyrics and in the alchemy they’ve created, binding Modern Lovers drive, B-52s call-and- response fun (and surrealism) and AC/DC-scale riffs. For all the cues and references, it’s all very much them and On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System is their finest moments in a short but ludicrously prolific career. Eleven songs in 26 minutes, all killer, no filler, zero fat; like watching a standup routine on a rollercoaster. You’ll laugh and you'll yelp, it’s all good. Songs about James Bond, The Cooler King and Lonsdale slip-on daps ...it might be too silly if it wasn’t such ludicrously good fun. A really great record from a really great band.
