Best Music of 2024 Part 3

Talking about music from the summer in the middle of winter

Welcome back to the series where I try and figure out what my favorite albums of 2024 are! For our third installment, we’re gonna be looking at music that released between July and September. This time of year always feels like a particularly fun time for new music with a ton of artists, big and small, dropping new albums while they’re in the middle of their big summer tours, and this year was no exception!

The Home Team – The Crucible Of Life

Genre: Heavy pop

The Home Team are easily one of the most fun bands to listen to in rock right now. The band blends together elements of a variety of genres ranging from metal to R&B into a sound they describe as “heavy pop,” which I think is a perfect label for their music. There are a lot of bands trying to do the same thing that The Home Team is doing, making pop music that dips into heavier styles, but there are few that make it feel as natural as The Home Team do, with The Crucible Of Life only further cementing that as fact. This album has some of my favorite hooks I’ve heard all year, delivered by vocalist Brian Butcher over layers of downtuned guitars and driving grooves. Butcher is insanely fun to listen to and really sells the whole “heavy pop” label, sounding to me like what would happen if Bruno Mars and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump took turns coaching your average rock vocalist (I mean this in the best way possible). His performance is always so full of personality, and the dude just knows how to write a great hook. That’s not to downplay how great the rest of the band is though, everyone here is on their A game. The band does a great job at playing with heavier musical textures without ever making them feel overpowering or abrasive. A personal favorite track of mine is “Honest,” which features some guitar chugging that wouldn’t feel out of place coming from a more “traditional” heavy band. This album is a super fun time front to back and came out at the perfect time, I can already see myself going back to this album for many summers to come.

Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

Genre: Pop music for people in their 20s who grew up with unsupervised access to the internet

I don’t wanna talk about this one too much because I already made a whole post about it here when we first launched in the fall, but this is still a top tier album of 2024 for me so I had to include it. I think the best works of art in any medium are the ones that create a whole world that they invite you to get lost in, its why stories like The Lord of the Rings and games like Cyberpunk 2077 are so huge, they create these worlds that feel lived in and make you want to just exist in them, and that’s why I think Imaginal Disk works so well. The duo, consisting of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, made an album so immersive that I really can’t help but compare to a video game. The same way that I can play a huge RPG like Cyberpunk 2077 for hours on end and still want to explore the world that CD Projekt Red created, I can listen to Imaginal Disk all the way through and immediately want to start listening again from the top just to spend more time in that musical Magdalena Bay have created. If I could force everyone to listen to one album in this post, it would probably be this one, please listen to it if you haven’t already.

Boston Manor – Sundiver

Genre: Alt-rock, the pop-punk to post-hardcore pipeline

If The Home Team are a little too upbeat for you and you prefer your rock music to be a little moodier and a little less clean, then look no further. Like Magdalena Bay, Boston Manor are great at creating their own worlds with their music, and this album is a particularly strong example of that from them. The album has this dreamlike quality to it at times, but its specifically like one of those dreams where you’re vaguely aware that you’re dreaming, but not aware enough that you’re actually in control of anything, so you’re just along for the ride. I’m not sure if anyone’s actually gonna relate to that, but I hope at least one person knows what I’m talking about so I don’t seem completely insane. Regardless of any dream comparisons though, this album has some great songs. The song “HEAT ME UP” has one of the band’s strongest hooks, “Horses In A Dream” perfectly encapsulates that dreamlike feeling I was talking about, and “Sliding Doors” is the best Deftones song I’ve heard in a while. The album also has some of my favorite sounding guitars on a rock album all year, I think a perfect song to showcase this is “Dissolve.” The guitar tone in the chorus of that song in particular just sounds great to me, they’ve got some bite to them but they aren’t overly aggressive. The production on the album overall is top notch and really nails the cinematic vibe that Boston Manor have been going for on their last couple albums, making this a super fun listen that I keep going back to.

Cold Gawd – I’ll Drown On This Earth

Genre: Shoegaze, seasonal depression but the season is summer

Speaking of dreamlike albums with great guitars (I’m killing it with all the connections today, aren’t I?), we’ve got Cold Gawd’s new album. This is some really solid shoegaze that goes places I didn’t really expect, like the song “Nudism” dipping its toes into synthpop and closing with this grand piano outro. The album also has its more straightforward shoegaze songs, and as someone who likes their shoegaze on the heavier side, I think they nail those songs. A personal favorite of mine from the album is “Malibu Beach House,” which features one of my favorite riffs I’ve heard this year, as well as the best hook on the whole album. If you need a great album to listen to while you have an existential crisis and stare at your ceiling, this is the one.

Void Of Vision – What I’ll Leave Behind

Genre: Metalcore with beeps and boops

Void Of Vision have been one of my favorite bands to come out of Australia’s insanely vibrant metalcore scene and this year they came out with what I feel is their best work, which made it all the more disappointing when the band announced recently that they’ll be disbanding after one last tour around Australia in early 2025. Despite that, it is at least nice to know that the band is going out on a very, very high note with What I’ll Leave Behind. The band’s last few releases have seen them experiment with electronic elements and getting more melodic with their songwriting while staying super heavy, and on this album they finally found a way to bring all of that together in a way that sounds really fresh. One of my favorite songs on the album is “Midnight Sweat,” which makes perfect use of synths and glitchy samples to make the song feel layered, and offer some contrast from the song’s stupidly heavy riffs. I think I could go on a rant about any of the album’s 10 songs, but I’ll spare you guys for today. This album is great, and Void Of Vision get to join Arcane Roots in the “bands that dropped one of Anil’s favorite albums and broke up immediately after” club.

Aaaaand that’s all I’ve got for today! I’ll be back at some point with more music to yap about, have a great weekend!