Top Five Albums of 2024 To Speed Run the Stages of Grief
Music
2024 was a year that I mourned many losses, both personal and political. Spanning from ‘90s synth pop to retro psych-punk, each of these albums ushered in a new emotion — listed here in the sequence of the traditional therapeutic model, but experienced entirely out of order.
Various Artists
I Saw the TV Glow (Original Soundtrack)
A24 Music
Street: 05.24
I Saw the TV Glow (Original Soundtrack) = (Smashing Pumpkins + Cocteau Twins) / Twin Peaks playing on a broken VHS tape
Nostalgia is the ultimate form of denial. I Saw the TV Glow was one of my favorite movies of the year, one that left me with a bottomless pit in my stomach — in no small part because of its otherworldly soundtrack. Director Jane Schoenbrun successfully curated a mixtape that drop-kicks you back to a surreal vision of the ‘90s, just as Owen and Maddy blur past with present (and fiction with reality) as they get sucked into The Pink Opaque. Caroline Polachek’s “Starburned and Unkissed” is a shoegaze anthem oozing with desperate yearning, reaching through a screen that eventually cracks with “Psychic Wound” by King Woman, a suffocating, scream-filled track that unearths repressed memories and amplifies the anxiety of learning the truth. The entire soundtrack is a fragment of a forgotten dream, the perfect accompaniment for a psychological horror about scratching the surface of your true identity and quickly burying it six feet under.
Mannequin Pussy
I Got Heaven
Epitaph
Street: 03.10
Mannequin Pussy = Live Through This by Hole if it was produced by A.G. Cook
I Got Heaven is a rage-fueled album that bites you on the wrist and doesn’t let go. Lead singer Marisa Dabice is more rabid, messy and vengeful than ever before: “Not a single motherfucker who has tried to lock me up / Could get the collar round my neck or find one that’s big enough,” she spits on “Loud Bark.” Animalistic imagery seeps in from all sides and brutal hardcore riffs collide with dreamy pop refrains. Mannequin Pussy has always been profane, and the album is overwhelmingly angry, but it’s also ripe with desire and euphoria. “Split Me Open” alternates between worshiping someone and wanting to be worshiped, while “OK? OK! OK? OK!” desperately commands to “beg, and heel, and learn.” Beneath the primal screams, though, is a layer of vulnerability and a realization that revenge only leaves you with your tail between your legs and a sharp taste of blood in your mouth.
Amyl and the Sniffers
Cartoon Darkness
B2B, Virgin
Street: 10.25
Amyl and the Sniffers = Crass on Penis Envy + a little bit of Cardi B
Bargaining is a difficult emotion (if you can even call it that) to pin down, especially in music, but it’s a coping mechanism that I find myself returning to time and time again. Lead singer Amy Taylor described Cartoon Darkness as “driving headfirst into the unknown,” a dark future that’s “just a joke.” In other words, if I laugh at the world, replying to misogynistic assholes and the impending apocalypse with a huge “fuck you,” then perhaps I can avoid it forever. Trading in the more explicit social commentary of their 2021 release Comfort to Me for something unapologetically sillier was a bold choice, but one that I respect. Amyl and the Sniffers have never once taken themselves seriously, and choosing to adopt a philosophy of “life is short, life is fun, I am young and in love” is a whole lot more fun than the alternative. When packaged as a gleefully cocky tsunami of garage punk, I would happily take that deal.
Adrianne Lenker
Bright Future
4AD
Street: 03.22
Adrianne Lenker = Joni Mitchell’s lyrical prowess + Elliott Smith’s crushing melancholia
The first time I heard “Sadness as a Gift,” it hit me like a punch to the throat. It’s the same liminal feeling I get every year on my birthday, confronted by the passage of time and a particularly selfish strain of depression. But Adrianne Lenker treats everyday heartbreak with the care of nursing a wounded bird, forcing me to digest my emotions rather than poking them with a ten-foot pole. For someone who probably oozes cryptic imagery in her sleep, “Evol” and “Donut Seam” stand out with surprisingly overt themes and simple wordplay, but they’re just as moving as the devastatingly haunting “Real House.” Watching Lenker perform Bright Future live this spring was a tearful, tender experience that felt like a warm hug, though it still left me a mess on the balcony of The Depot. The wispy folk harmonies, mournful fiddle playing and dissection of fraught mother-daughter relationships are permanently embedded in my brain.
Shannon & The Clams
The Moon Is In The Wrong Place
Easy Eye Sound
Street: 05.10
Shannon & The Clams = The Wizard of Oz x IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
I would venture to say that Shannon Shaw knows grief more intimately than anyone else on this list. Birthed from a singular tragedy, the psychedelic album traces all five stages of grief, but it lands squarely on acceptance — through finding beauty in a world where the sky has shifted to reflect an entirely different reality. Shaw has said that losing her fiancé Joe Haener made her unafraid to bare her soul, and the resulting vulnerability in her voice glows with the memory of her love: “This was not too good to be true / It was all real and you were you / I will remain forever changed,” she croons on “So Lucky.” Tunneling straight through the hole in her heart and into the bean fields where she healed with Haener’s family, The Moon Is In The Wrong Place is an ode, a vow and an urgent proclamation of love.
Read more top five album roundups of 2024:
Top Five Albums of 2024 for Thought Daughters
Top Five Albums of 2024 to Kill Your Colonizer