2024: The Worst
A year of good, bad and ill, a year of plenitude and famine, a year of desperately scrolling through bandcamp looking for the next THING, a year of gems and coprolites, a year of entirely missing the staff year-end lists because who knew that the end of the year gets THAT crazy. Let's start off our end-of-year summarizing with the absolute bottom of the barrel, lets revel in the viscosity of the gunk scraped up, let's take a look at the biggest, most absolutely wet, sodden misfires of the past 365 days. |
| 20 |  | Falling in Reverse
Popular Monster
RATING: 0.5
Scraped from the bottom of a shoe at Warped Tour circa 2009 and spackled into your ear canal. |
| 19 |  | Jeremy Renner
Love and Titanium
RATING: 1
I wish I had money so I could embark on an endeavor this unfortunate and not have it ruin my life and career. |
| 18 |  | Disney
A Whole New Sound
RATING: 1
Coldest take of the year, a fruit hanging so low it's subterranean, and sadly, I don’t have the patience for irony here. It's not funny. It's not cute. This is actually the face of evil and I’ll be happy to write a dissertation on it. |
| 17 |  | Bon Jovi
Forever
RATING: 1.5
Not evil, just really, really dumb and tragic. Paper-thin schmaltz as an aesthetic and all the appeal of a sneeze on plexiglass. |
| 16 |  | The Voidz
Like All Before You
RATING: 2
I overrated this album, and I'm definitely getting old and crotchety because I'm seriously considering making ontological evil a rating criterion. I let a friend borrow my copy of Simulacra and Simulation and never got it back but this thing just so succinctly encapsulates everything Baudrillard is diagnosing that it’s really not a problem anymore. |
| 15 |  | Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign
Vultures 1
RATING: 2
Engaging with this for any reason feels slimy, as though I'm helping to perpetuate something deeply wrong. It's not fun anymore, and it probably never should have been. Cool beats tho |
| 14 |  | Ben Frost
Scope Neglect
RATING: 2
This is an artist I have a lot of affection for, his razor blade machine approach to violent ambient is wonderfully harrowing at its best. In this, the disappointment of the year, Ben Frost deconstructs the RIFF and god is it dull. |
| 13 |  | JoJo Siwa
Guilty Pleasure
RATING: 2.3
All of the guilt, none of the pleasure indeed. Listened to this with the intent of reviewing, but I mostly just ended up feeling bad for the people responsible for this mess. A tragedy so minor, it fades from memory almost instantly. |
| 12 |  | Shabazz Palaces
Exotic Birds of Prey
RATING: 2.4
Now this is the kind of tragedy we can sink our teeth into. Artistry is perilous, legacy is tarnishable, collapse is imminent. Do we really need these reminders every few years? |
| 11 |  | Max Richter
In a Landscape
RATING: 2.5
The ur-hack of minimalism once again recomposes or reimagines one of his old ideas and I just can’t be bothered with this treacle-stained gas bag. Check Arvo Part. |
| 10 |  | Counterparts
Heaven Let Them Die
RATING: 2.5
This band is absolutely tedious and this is a tortured 17 minute confirmation that metalcore is doomed if this is the best it can come up with. If you aren’t an old (30) straight white male lucky enough to have been born in the west you probably have better taste than to listen to this. |
| 9 |  | Amaranthe
The Catalyst
RATING: 2.5
I might have overrated this because I like pizzamachine. Tepid faux-prog with a butt-rock glaze is the most that I can remember about this, and I will not be arsed to relisten to confirm or deny. |
| 8 |  | 21 Savage
american dream
RATING: 2.5
Recycle these beats recycle these lines, recycle 21 Savage and all the credibility he had lefyt. |
| 7 |  | Camila Cabello
C, XOXO
RATING: 2.7
Sowing was so close to successfully defending this. Maybe we're looking at a death-knell for hyperpop if its mainstream break looks like this and whatever dreck Katy Perry churned up this year. Close to being interesting, way less close to being good. |
| 6 |  | Kacey Musgraves
Deeper Well
RATING: 2.8
Kacey’s a more competent and likeable songwriter than most,but she hasn’t been able to recapture the spark of Golden Hour and this barebones piece of fluff doesn’t change that in any sense. Be insipid, wonderful, fine, don't call it a deeper well if all we're scraping up is silt. |
| 5 |  | The Avett Brothers
The Avett Brothers
RATING: 2.9
Wonderful case-in-point on the subject of whether "pap" is inherently derogatory. Schmaltz, sentimentality, insubstantiality, all yes. But for all the buckets of sap this thing is lugging, it’s nourishing enough that I can’t hate it. |
| 4 |  | Laura Jane Grace and The Mississippi Medicals
Give An Inch
RATING: 3
Eugh, remember your folk-punk phase? Laura Jane doesn’t offend, she doesn’t hit it out of the park, she is still occasionally funny and she does still occasionally rock. The Mississippi Medicals are a band, and that perhaps is the most that can be said about them. |
| 3 |  | Sleater-Kinney
Little Rope
RATING: 3
Was The Woods really almost 20 years ago? Have Sleater-Kinney once again circled the roundabout of blandness they’ve been trapped on for the past 5 years? Big oofs to a band that used to be a much heavier hitter. They still bring it. Here and there. |
| 2 |  | Filmmaker (COL)
Land of Hidden Variables
RATING: 3
Retro Post-Industrial Youtube algo project makes another album with very little to make it stand out from this fellow’s other fine projects. Enjoyable in its own right while you're scrolling schizophrenic Landian blog posts in the dead of night. |
| 1 |  | tripleS
ASSEMBLE24
RATING: 3
This is silly. Y'all are silly. |
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