1. Charli xcx - brat
Atlantic

It was the first Tuesday of February, 2024, another gray day in what was to be the second-wettest winter in Los Angeles history. Because I'm still, somehow, a playlist-maker for a streaming service, I'd been invited to a Charli xcx Album Listening Experience. I'm a fan and had enjoyed her pop-dance effort Crash back in 2022, and I maybe expected we'd be getting something similar.

One of the great contradictions of LA is how its friendly palm tree-lined car-centricity makes it feel like it should be totally open and accessible, but in reality, the place is kind of a freaky mystery: its streets are lined with mysterious blank facades, with no visible clue as to what's behind the featureless wall or everpresent ivy. It's even worse nowadays, post-pandem, with so many anonymous office buildings sitting empty. It was to one of those we had been directed, up on Beverly and whatever, Mid-City nowhere. We were led in through the awkward lobby, dirty windows fogging the outside view, then up a mirrored elevator, across abandoned gray-carpeted liminal spaces and finally into a small square room with 20 folding chairs in a circle, facing the walls. It occured to me that horror movies where everyone gets murdered have started less ominously. But soon enough, what sounded either like an AI imitation of Charli's voice, or Charli herself doing an incredible imitation of an AI imitation, came over the speakers, introducing a new album. And then, what would soon be known to the world as the era-defining intro tones of "360."

I'd been a superfan of PC Music and hyperpop since, you know, whenever, but like so many things I've championed over the years (The Swirlies! Democratic socialism!) it never really caught on here. Its most accomplished purveyor SOPHIE died in 2021, and since then it felt like any avant-garde sensibility in pop music was pushed to the background, as the culture retreated into familiarity and safety and straightforward autobiography. But here, suddenly, it seemed Charli had found the gumption to grasp the reins and reckon with the gauntlet PC artists had thrown down, musically and conceptually. As the playback continued, I beceame more and more excited, and thought, could this be sort of a tribute to SOPHIE? And then came track 9, what I later learned was called "So I," describing a complicated relationship with someone who was no longer around, and then quoting "It's Okay to Cry." It was clear who she was talking about, and I admit, I got a little choked up.

After the album finished, the AI-or-not-AI voice said "now I'll come say hi," and the door opened to a figure so brightly backlit it could have been anyone with big hair, who gave us a friendly wave and then ran off. We filed out of the building dumbfounded, but I admit, I still didn't foresee Brat Summer on that dreary day.

But what a summer it turned out to be. I like to consider impact/importance/Culture in these lists, and that makes this album an easy #1, but I also just really like it. A.G. Cook on production has never been bolder; for one example, "Club Classics" melds its B-more thud and alarm-like vocal sample with gorgeous emotional pads and then does a hundred other glitchy, weird things without losing any momentum. Every song feels somehow both improvised and deeply considered, both lyrically and musically, and while I fully admit to not knowing anything about today's It Girls or Lorde feuds, I know all about Weird Amorphous Regretful Adult Feelings. I'll leave it to paragraph four of the Pitchfork review to describe the kaleidoscope of electronic influences, and then of course eventually Brat became a kaleidoscope of itself, brilliantly remixed and reworked and rethought into a Brat Cinematic Universe, an approach I've loved since New Order's endless self-revisions. But ultimately, I think the greatest thrill of Brat is seeing an artist who over her career seemed to be aiming to invent something that didn't really exist, and to her great credit was generally landing in pretty good places maybe a bit to the left or right of that indefinable something, finally just connect and knock it out of the park and show us, "hey, so this, this is the thing I've been trying to do." It's kind of a miracle.

2. Justice - Hyperdrama
Because

While Brat was a critical smash this year, the latest from Justice sort of wasn't, which kind of surprises me. I know everybody was blown away by them back in the Oughts, but I especially was; I was hanging around France as a DJ myself when their brilliant Simian remix blasted into indie/mashuppy culture back in '03, and 2007's Cross revolutionized electronic music in ways I'd been sorta trying to experiment with myself. However, I'd kinda lost touch with them over the years. Before Hyperdrama, they took eight years off, so maybe they themselves were re-evaluating and evolving. Whatever they did worked: Hyperdrama feels both necessary and addictive, as if it was almost unearthed rather than created, the tracks fitting directly into genetic sense memories, exactly what we needed. Despite Brat's omnipresence, this is the album I listened to most this year.

Of course, as a Tame Impala superfan, the two lead singles were immediate thrills, but move along through the album's feature-free tracks for power jam after power jam: "Generator"'s hoover groove, "Dear Alan"'s hypnotic funk, and "Incognito"'s electro/prog Bizarre Inc style mashup. (Notably, the only samples recognized by WhoSampled are all early '90s rave.) Despite the mixed critical consensus, maybe it's telling that one "Best of the Year" nod came from my pals over at KCRW; maybe the album just found its perfect environment here in SoCal, as a soundtrack for driving across sunset-tinged freeways or blasting from the stage at the Bowl on a warm night.

If you'll forgive me, I'll describe another listening session. We're at Amsterdam Dance Event back in October of '23, and the label has invited us to come hear the first few tracks from the upcoming album. We spent way too long stumbling around trying to find the location, which turned out to be a vaulted top-floor room near Koningsplein overlooking a canal. About 30 music biz cognoscenti gave us raised eyebrows as we stumbled in late. I always seem to get sick traveling to Amsterdam (it's a long flight and I'm old) and this year was no exception; I had taken a couple full-strength Sudafed to counteract the cold, and my mood was, let's just say, "on meth." So when the label guys, before starting the playback, cheerfully offered a beer to whomever first guessed the featured vocal on each track, I took it very, very seriously. "Kevin Parker! Tame Impala!!" I yelled over the music. "Thundercaaaaat!!!!" My coworker John got Miguel too. To this day I'm not sure if we were the only ones to actually know the features, or if everyone else in the room was just too cool to embarrass themselves, but either way: we got those beers.

3. The Cure - Songs of a Lost World
Universal

My partner Eric and I have a pretty good musical overlap; he's perhaps not totally entranced by the more repetitive of my favorite repetitive beats, and I'm not exactly Rammstein's #1 fan, but we're both down with Sisters of Mercy and Megan Thee Stallion. Perhaps our biggest shared love if you're counting like, our whole lives, is The Cure, whose heyday coincided with both of our musical coming(s)-to-consciousness. In May of 2023 we got to experience one of their three now-pretty-legendary Hollywood Bowl concerts; the three-hour show was soaring and emotional, featuring the current iteration of the live band in ideal form. This epic, career-spanning tour seemed generally interpreted as a farewell, but the stratospheric level of their musicianship maybe should have made it less of surprise when a new album arrived this fall, their first in 16 years, and their first, er, good one in maybe 24 (sorry). I would call this near-miraculous, a band reviving so remarkably after such a long break, but we've seen it happen with My Bloody Valentine and Portishead, so, maybe this is a thing now. In the case of Lost World, the work itself seems to exist both as a response to Smith's devastating personal losses as well as a sort of tribute to the band's extraordinary 50-year career. They're our quintessential, definitive goth rockers, of course, but if you think about it, it was really their youthful, adventurous energy and romantic spirit that made them the most unlikely of pop superstars, back in the days of, er, "Inbetween Days." So, how incredible, and how fitting, if they turn out to be uniquely qualified to look into the abyss of mortality, right around the time it starts to loom inevitably ahead.

4. Kelly Lee Owens - Dreamstate
DH2

I dunno about you, but I only seem to have dreams where I'm late for a flight and all my clothes have fallen out of my suitcase all over the street and my phone won't work and the bus only takes slices of cheese as payment. Since her self-titled debut (my #4 of 2017) and the extraordinary Inner Song (my 2020 #1), the Welsh artist has seemingly been trying to give me better dreams, with mesmerizing, soaring sounds. Her latest ups the tempo and adds some doof, but retains the dreaminess; it's a real trick, melding glorious melodies with high tempos without becoming, you know, trance. Extra points for throwing the Chemical Brothers in the mix on "Ballad (In the End)."

5. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk
Mom+Pop

Webster's Dictionary, or, um, Wikipedia, defines an "imaginal disc" as the, uh, section of insect larva that becomes parts of the adult insect during pupal transformation. Ahem. It's a fun little leap then to imagine a compact disc, inserted against your will into your head by some demonic force, to create some ideal self which you then rebel against, which I guess is the vague concept behind this collection of maximalist neo-psychedelic electronic-y pop. Becoming yourself, or becoming Magdalena Bay, whatever the story of this album, it's wildly enjoyable and appealingly weird.

6. Caribou - Honey
Merge

Watching the Dan Snaith journey has been incredibly rewarding over the years, from neo-psychedelia to heartbroken house to Daphni's electro freakouts. On Honey, he aims for relatability, and wields his own voice (apparently manipulated by AI) into a broad array of tones. Are his musical multitudes converging here into some Ultimate Ideal Snaith, both propulsive and adventurous, heartfelt and accessible? I'm not sure, but Honey has been the most rewarding and, sure, sweet collection of dance music this year.

7. Kendrick Lamar - GNX
pgLang/Interscope

GNX sees the sometimes-operatic Lamar marrying lyrical profundity to more straightforward, crowd-pleasing hip hop styles while establishing a new generation of west coast dominance. It's already a cliche to shout "Mustaaard," but I'll do it here—I was a huge fan of hyphy, the Bay Area's snappy, brash contribution to hip hop back in the 2000s, and Mustard's minimalist, ratchet-y update of the style was the most fun to be had in the 2010s. On GNX, the guy should get a Peabody just for digging out Debbie Deb.

8. Vegyn - The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions
PLZ Make It Ruins

I kinda miss the trip-hop days, when it seemed like thrilling, adventurous work could exist below 120bpm. I sometimes wonder if the proliferation of chill playlists (sorry for contributing to that) and anonymous "lo-fi hip-hop" (whatever that means) have cast a stench of paint-by-numbers simplicity across slow-and-pretty music, or maybe the melodramatic overreach of certain contemporary producers has curdled emotional authenticity into cliche? Or maybe everybody just wanted to join the party. Either way, British producer Vegyn is finding a way forward: an agile omnivorousness that allows a gorgeous and yes, sometimes even calming palette to remain surprising and affecting.

9. Jlin - Akoma
Planet Mu

Gary, Indiana's finest takes another leap forward on her third album, carrying the footwork microgenre from its Black Chicago roots into its most adventurous, yet seemingly rightful place yet: Great Art, rubbing shoulders with Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet and Bjork. Despite the heady environment, Jlin is as focused as ever, pushing hyperspeed percussion to its most extreme, vivid heights.

10. Fontaines D.C. - Romance
XL

I'm not someone who can tell you exactly how Sonic Youth's obscure tunings work, but I was always overwhelmed by how they wielded them to portray the world's profound bleakness and joy with emotional clarity and wry humor. In a way, Der Yoof's album covers reflected their journey, veering from that goth-ish candle to pop art and washing machine t-shirts; Fontaines go multi-color here, visually and sonically, taking on an ambitious slate of styles from shoegaze to grunge to Radioheaddy end-of-the-world gloom.

1. Kendrick Lamar - "Not Like Us"
pgLang/Interscope

I admit that being in LA for this one made it seem like the most important thing in the world, but even at face value it's an astonishing, and honestly terrifying, four and a half minutes. I'd find it almost too disturbing if it wasn't so pointed and specific and, well, historically contextualized. Plus it happens to be layered over the most infectious beat from Mustard maybe ever. Honestly, though, I think it's the intermittent Monk Higgins sample that really makes "Us" so devastating: its wry, almost vaudevillian chords seem to reduce the song's target to a pathetic joke, like a cartoon duck being yanked off stage by an oversized shepherd's hook. That's all, folks.

2. Justice - "Neverender"
Because

In my various appraisals of Kevin Parker's work over the years, I marveled at his journey from traditional Dungen-esque rock psychedelia to a broader sonic palette incorporating the cutting edges of electronica, and he has since worked with myriad artists across the musical spectrum. But there's something just chef's-kiss-perfection about this collaboration; you're not sure where Justice begins and Tame Impala ends. Parker's trademark self-excavation and regret matches the wistful, up-and-down chords magically. OK, "Neverender" as a word may sound a bit like the title of a fantasy role-playing game, but the melancholy mood here is expansive and cinematic.

3. Joy Orbison - "flight fm"
XL

What's been so great about bass and bass-adjacent music in the last year or so has been the (re-?) discovery of the notion of tension as key rather than just brutal power. You've seen it in the more tempered dubstep flavors from Skrillex (still love the 16th-note wub) and the resurgence of garage, but nowhere in 2024 did restraint and discipline cause more club mayhem than this buzzy four minutes whose initial drop does so little but feels almost nuclear bomb-like in impact. I'm reminded of the story of Prince pulling instruments out of the final mix of "When Doves Cry." As Resident Advisor put it, Mr. Orbison has "the nous to clear everything else out of the way and let it roll."

4. Charli xcx - "Von Dutch"
Atlantic

Back when I was playing regularly at our good ole mashup club Bootie, Bodyrox's swervy "Yeah Yeah" popped up in a bunch of reworks (I myself made an ill-advised attempt, of course). It's a jam, for sure, but I never would have pegged it for "the sound that would launch a bratty revolution 18 (!) years later." (As always, the theme here is "I'm bad at predicting stuff.") But anyway, when it comes to club classics, I guess you can do worse. Charli smartly turns up the energy, and the track's insistent, wry synth manages to fit perfectly behind her boastful sass. Also: what a video.

5. "Booboo"
XL

On her great 2023 album With a Hammer, Yaeji channeled anger into quirky joy, but seemed to have left her beat-driven early days behind. However, now she's back in the clurb with a thrilling vengeance, with an insistent Jersey thud perfectly accompanying what seems to be an admonition to keep your hands to yourself when I'm high on life on the dance floor.

6. "Got to Change"
Merge

If "Von Dutch" above represents the pinnacle of high-budget, high-concept videos in 2024, here's maybe the most low-budget and high-ridiculousness, as this silly "visualizer" repeats about seven stock videos with Dan Snaith's goony, bespectacled bald head in place of a sunflower or an egg yolk. Honestly, "Change" is about as guileless and charming as that Snaith-faced sunflower, luring you in brightly until its fizzy climax.

7. Megan Thee Stallion - "Mamushi" (feat. Yuki Chiba)
Warner

Lots of great moments from Megan this year, but something about this menacing slice of multilingual minimalism is just wildly thrilling and hilarious, from Yuki Chiba's deadpan delivery to the way that Megan's repeated (looped?) "star" in the chorus starts to do that thing where you stop recognizing it as a word.

8. DJ Heartstring, Narciss - "Heartbreak Repair System"
Polydor

Our favorite hyper-speed German duo living up to their name here, with the kinda-similar track title making this sort of feel like a "Big Country/In a Big Country" theme song for their artistic agenda: making you dance with tears in your eyes. From LA to Belgium this year, I saw this "System" deliver on that promise again and again.

9. The Cure - "Alone"
Polydor

What an astounding opening sound, a blast of lushness to rival Cocteau Twins, then pulling back quickly to showcase what would be the more straightforward, guitar-driven sound that characterizes Lost World. Smith has said the track, inspired by Ernest Dowson's poem "Dregs," was the key to bringing the album into focus, but it seems to do even more, coalescing, and paying tribute to, the band's entire glorious history.

10. "Bye Bye"
Matador

You know, one trick I've learned is that if you travel a lot, just buy seconds of things like power cords and contact solution, and just keep them in your suitcase!