Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (25-1)

Here we are! Rosy Overdrive’s 25 favorite albums of 2024, revealed today along with albums 50 through 26, and coming a day after albums 51 through 100. I believe I wrote about over four hundred albums on the blog this year, which means that whittling it down to these twenty-five was no easy task. This is the best of the best! Once again, thank you for reading, vote in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll, and stay tuned for upcoming EP and compilation lists as well as a few more Pressing Concerns.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

25. Perennial – Art History

Release date: June 7^thRecord label: Ernest Jenning Record Co./Safe Suburban Home/Totally Real
Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Over the past few years, New England trio Perennial have been honing a unique sound that mixes Dischord Records post-hardcore, turn-of-the-century dance punk, and retro garage rock together with just a hint of frayed experimentation around the edges. Their third album, Art History, finds Perennial doing exactly what they do best–making excellent rock music and pushing just a bit forward. This time around, the 60s pop rock influence feels less “implied” than ever and more and more central to their sound, and the experimentation continues to erode into the pop music. I was already fully on board the Perennial train before this album, and I’m just as excited as ever to witness the band continue to build in real-time something entirely distinct, huge, and befitting of the title Art History. (Read more)

24. Guidon Bear – Internal Systems

Release date: July 31^stRecord label: Antiquated Future/YoYo
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, folk
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

At the end of last decade, two indie rock veterans, Mary Water and Pat Maley, reunited as Guidon Bear, making guitar-based indie folk and guitar-based pop with increasingly prominent synth/electronic elements–which leads us to Internal Systems. The buzzing and chiming synths added by Maley to these songs fit perfectly alongside the duo’s guitar-based indie rock sound–it doesn’t reduce Guidon Bear’s “old” style so much as add to it, and it’s no less devoted to enhancing Water’s incredible songwriting. Internal Systems is a winding, rich listen–it’s a dozen tracks and nearly fifty minutes long, and Water’s lyrics are just as engrossing and vivid as the music they accompany, if not more so. (Read more)

23. Zero Point Energy – Tilted Planet

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Danger Collective
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Genesis Edenfield and Ben Jackson played together in mid-2010s Atlanta, Georgia art punk group Warehouse–now based in Brooklyn, the duo have reunited as Zero Point Energy. Their debut album, Tilted Planet, is a collaborative reintroduction to Edenfield and Jackson–both of them play guitar, both sing, and both wrote material for the twelve-song, forty-two minute record. Tilted Planet reinvents Edenfield and Jackson’s sound into something more polished and restrained, but still quite unique. American post-punk and garage rock still abound, but Zero Point Energy also adopt a mellow pop rock attitude that puts them towards the jammier end of classic college rock. Edenfield and Jackson meld together excellently here, creating a beautiful, obstinate, simple, complex melting pot of a debut album. (Read more)

22. Jr. Juggernaut – Another Big Explosion

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Mindpower/Nickel Eye
Genre: Alt-rock, power pop, grunge pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

On Another Big Explosion, their fourth LP and first in eight years, Los Angeles alt-rock/power-punk trio Jr. Juggernaut deliver an eighteen-wheeler of a love letter to Sugar’s Copper Blue. Jr. Juggernaut embrace a loud, dramatic sound pulled from the moment “underground rock” bubbled to the surface–there’s nothing on Another Big Explosion that could be described as “slacker” or halfhearted. There’s a Bob Mouldian “pop music as endurance test” element to Another Big Explosion–the ten songs are almost all in the four-to-five minute range, and they’re roaring at full blast pretty much the entire time. It’s a key ingredient in making the album feel like a towering mountain, but Jr. Juggernaut summit it nonetheless. (Read more)

21. Aluminum – Fully Beat

Release date: May 24^thRecord label: Felte
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, Madchester, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Fully Beat is a huge leap forward for San Francisco shoegaze-pop group Aluminum, both sharpening and expanding their sound to create some of the most exciting, spirited, and downright fun rock music I’ve heard this year. The studied, carefully-constructed band on their debut EP, Windowpane, has been replaced with true believers in loud, bursting-at-the-seams indie rock throughout their debut LP. Fully Beat is the result of a band taking a big swing on their first full statement–it comes at you like a stampede in its loudest, most chaotic moments, but devotes plenty of time to filling in the gaps that they blast into their foundation, as well. (Read more)

20. Teenage Tom Petties – Teenage Tom Petties

Release date: August 2^ndRecord label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Three years, three Teenage Tom Petties albums–and oddly enough, two self-titled ones. The lo-fi power pop group ballooned to a three-guitar, five-piece rock and roll band for last year’s Hotbox Daydreams, but the latest record under the name finds Bath, England’s Tom Brown back in his bedroom, recording (mostly) alone yet again, just like the 2022 Teenage Tom Petties album. Hotbox Daydreams was a real leveling-up moment for Brown–maybe the band brought it out of him at first, but Teenage Tom Petties II is a worthy sequel not just to its homonymous predecessor but to the group’s sophomore record too, bedroom or no. (Read more)

19. Best Bets – The Hollow Husk of Feeling

Release date: September 27^thRecord label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

On the New Zealand band’s sophomore album, Best Bets put together a grounded, unsubtle collection of power pop, garage rock, and even glam rock that eschews the hazier and subtler sides of their home country’s guitar pop scene. The Hollow Husk of Feeling is the first Best Bets album where bassist Joe Sampson steps up for songwriting duty alongside Olly Crawford Ellis and James Harding, and this record feels full to the brim of smart pop craft and energy. The album as a whole is a cathartic listen–there’s an edge to Best Bets’ jangly, fuzzed-out tunes, and its vocalists are more likely to sound pensive or even aggravated than clearly blissful. The “feeling” may be a hollowed-out husk at this point, but Best Bets are going to squeeze every last spark out of it before their latest album is all said and done. (Read more)

18. American Motors – Content

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

American Motors are based out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and have roots in West Virginia, but they could be from anywhere in the United States that’s far away enough from bustling urban centers but close enough that the ruins of something once more lively hover around unavoidably. The trio recorded their debut album, Content, with J. Robbins, who helped them zero in on a Rust Belt-inspired post-punk/noise rock/post-rock sound, keenly sharpened and honed much more finely than a lot of bands in their shoes would dare to even attempt. American Motors understand that the monster you can’t see is even scarier, and Content utilizes a huge amount of empty space to hover around the edges of these songs, while glimpses of something we probably shouldn’t see drift in and out of focus. (Read more)

17. Late Bloomer – Another One Again

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self Aware/Dead Broke/Tor Johnson
Genre: Punk rock, 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

As far back as 2013, Charlotte’s Late Bloomer were melding 90s indie rock, punk, and pop hooks together in a way that’s only gained popularity in the years since. Not only were the trio trailblazers in this specific revival, they’ve also been one of the best to do it–so it’s quite pleasing to hear Late Bloomer plug in their electric guitars and continue to tap into the sort of ragged-but-catchy Dinosaur Jr.-indebted indie rock they’ve done so well in the past on Another One Again, their first album in six years. At the same time, though, Another One Again thematically and thoughtfully reflects the passing of time in a way that makes it distinct from the rest of the band’s discography, entering their second decade as a band with a clear path forward. (Read more)

16. Upstairs – Be Seeing You

Release date: September 27^thRecord label: Obscure Pharaoh
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, experimental rock, indie pop
Formats: Digital

Upstairs features Rosy Overdrive regular Jon Massey, and their second album, Be Seeing You, does indeed contain shades of his projects Coventry and Silo’s Choice. The Cincinnati/Chicago quintet are a bit more varied, though–Be Seeing You alternatively embraces electronics, strings, and “rock” instrumentation across its dozen tracks, veering into several ditches but also using “pop music” as a jumpscare tactic (in the form of swooning, swelling indie folk rock or relatively humble piano-pop). Be Seeing You sounds like a mess sometimes, but its most beautiful moments are far from mutually exclusive with this side of Upstairs. Like most incredible art rock LPs, calling it an “incredible art rock LP” hardly does it justice. (Read more)

15. Downhaul – How to Begin

Release date: September 20^thRecord label: Self Aware/Landland Colportage
Genre: Alt-country, emo-indie rock, power pop, roots rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

On How to Begin, Richmond quartet Downhaul ditch the massive-sounding, post-rock-indebted emo-alt-rock of their last album (2021’s PROOF) for something laconic, polished-up, and alt-country/power pop-infused. How to Begin is an album made by a band who consciously decided to go into the studio with the attitude of honing songs into sharp points rather than “adding onto” them–it’s a pop album, even if it’s not a “traditional” one. Songs end almost at the exact moment when they feel they’ve made their point, Gordon Phillips’ lyrics are just as thorny and gripping as ever, and Downhaul as a whole still feel like a band that exists in their own little world. That is to say, it’s still a Downhaul album, even as the band have shifted around their angles of attack in executing it. (Read more)

14. True Green – My Lost Decade

Release date: February 1^stRecord label: Spacecase
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, psych pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital

Minneapolis’ Dan Hornsby is a novelist–perhaps unsurprisingly, his knack for storytelling and flawed, deeply-felt character studies is pervasive in My Lost Decade, the debut from his project True Green. What does surprise me is that the singer-songwriter chooses lo-fi, reverb-y psychedelic guitar pop to deliver it all. There are acoustic guitars, but Hornsby isn’t a folk troubadour, rather making music that’s generally thought of as the domain of Beatlesesque bashers like The Cleaners from Venus. My Lost Decade is a pleasingly varied-sounding record, but Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom develop a distinct musical style, a busy, kitchen-sink pop attitude that reflects True Green’s confidence that Hornsby’s striking songwriting will shine even if they whip up an instrumental storm around it. And it does. (Read more)

13. 2nd Grade – Scheduled Explosions

Release date: October 25^thRecord label: Double Double Whammy
Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Like any power pop band with a penchant for shorter songs, 2nd Grade have been blessed or cursed with Guided by Voices comparisons pretty much since their inception as a Peter Gill solo project–even if Gill’s early writing is fairly distinct from the balance between wonderment and darkness, between lo-fi bashfulness and rock and roll might marking Robert Pollard’s writing. On Scheduled Explosions, the fourth and best album from the Philadelphia power pop group, Gill and company unambiguously shoot for and subsequently nail this aforementioned balance for the first time in 2nd Grade’s brief but fruitful career. A patchwork record, Scheduled Explosions doesn’t abandon the “power” side of power pop even as it’s rarely the sound of five musicians playing together in a room. (Read more)

12. Sun Kin – Sunset World

Release date: April 19^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, synthpop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Sun Kin is the project of Bombay-originating, Los Angeles-based Kabir Kumar, who’s been making music under the name for a dozen years in addition to playing in the band GUPPY and collaborating with Rosy Overdrive favorite Pacing. Sunset World, Sun Kin’s latest, is an ambitious pop album in which Kumar corrals a ton of their musical collaborators and acquaintances in service of an eleven-song, thirty-minute record with boundless energy. Sunset World is a record about destruction (“apocalyptic LA pop”, they call it), but it’s bright and sunny and never loses sight of the positives involved in ruins and decay–it’s just clearing more space for what really matters. (Read more)

11. Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot

Release date: February 2^ndRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The breakout act of 2023 was a punk band from the upper peninsula of Michigan called Liquid Mike, whose eleven-song, 18-minute self-titled record got them a fair amount of buzz. Liquid Mike took eleven months to follow up S/T with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, and the group’s pop punk energy, power pop hooks, and 90s indie rock sense of driven listlessness are not only intact, but expanded here. Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot is the sound of a band completely rising to the occasion–they’ve turned around and made a record that feels like a huge step forward from the (quite good, mind you) music that got them the modicum of attention in the first place. (Read more)

10. Toby the Tiger – Demapper

Release date: October 10^thRecord label: Peligroso es Mi Nombre Medio
Genre: Emo-y indie rock, singer-songwriter, folk rock, bedroom pop
Formats: Digital

Demapper is the first album from Brock Ross and his Toby the Tiger project. Whatever led to this Boise father of two to arrive at recording and releasing original music out into the world, I’m grateful for it, as Demapper is a transcendent indie rock record that walks the line between emo and delicate indie pop recalling Pedro the Lion, Death Cab for Cutie, and Kevin Devine. Ross is adept at unearthing pop melodies, but there’s an electric side to Demapper, too, with Ross using as wide a spectrum as he can to capture what he’s composed for the record. Ross’ writing weaves tangled, religious-inspired webs across its nine songs–Toby the Tiger really do need to use everything from orchestral folk to post-hardcore-tinged emo to do it justice. (Read more)

9. Hell Beach – BEACHWORLD

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Uncle Style/Bad Time
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Hell Beach seem to be Manchester, New Hampshire’s premiere snotty, hooky, golden-age pop punk group with an odd “beach” titling motif between the band and album name. Well, whatever’s behind the magic of their debut record, BEACHWORLD, is fine by me, as this is some of the straight-up catchiest and most energetic power-pop-punk music I’ve heard in quite some time. I can’t listen to this without getting worked up in some way! BEACHWORLD is an album where I could throw a dart and hit a hook most bands won’t match in their entire career–even though Hell Beach keep things a lean twenty-nine minutes and eleven tracks long, it still feels positively greedy of them.

8. Sonny Falls – Sonny Falls

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Earth Libraries
Genre: Fuzz rock, garage rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Since 2018, Chicago’s Ryan Ensley aka Hoagie Wesley aka Sonny Falls has been putting out fiery, unique records that are loose-feeling but incredibly deep underneath their garage rock/fuzz-country exteriors. The fourth Sonny Falls album is a self-titled one that feels like an attempt to pack all the ambition strewn across the project in ten tracks and thirty-five minutes. The songs on Sonny Falls don’t sound like anything but Sonny Falls songs, but every track on the album feels stretched and teased out in a new way, Ensley spending a bit more time composing and arranging his sprawling writing instead of fully leaning into his street-raving side. At this point, Ensley has a very strong baseline as a songwriter, but it’s quite exciting to watch him figure out how to add to it. (Read more)

7. Ther – Godzilla

Release date: April 5^thRecord label: Julia’s War
Genre: Art rock, folk rock, post-post rock, alt-rock, slowcore
Formats: Cassette, digital

On every record thus far from Philadelphia’s Ther, the band (led by So Big Auditory’s Heather Jones) has reinvented their sound in some form, so it’s no surprise that Godzilla sounds like none of their previous records once again. Godzilla asserts itself in Ther’s discography by embracing electric guitars and loud, dramatic indie rock to a previously unseen degree. Jones has worked with experimental shoegazers They Are Gutting a Body of Water frequently, and while that doesn’t really describe what Godzilla sounds like, Jones has perhaps taken inspiration from that side of indie rock to create what can at times feel almost like a photo negative the skeletal folk of Ther’s last album, in which her vocals alternatingly fight against or become entirely swallowed up by swirling, all-encompassing rock instrumentals. (Read more)

6. Ahem – Avoider

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Forged Artifacts
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

You can call it power pop, pop punk, alt-rock, or college rock–whatever it is, the second album from Minneapolis power trio Ahem has more than enough in its ten songs to please fans of any of those genres. You’ll hear the band’s Twin Cities indie rock forbearers in Avoider, a massive collection of loud guitar-based pop music, and they expertly meld their Westerbergs, Harts, and Moulds with their off-the-cuff “indie punk” style and just a hint of high Midwestern folksiness/rootsiness, too. Whether it’s in service of roaring catharsis or lighter, breezier sunset-strummers, Ahem know what they’re doing and where they’re going–and it’s a treat to hear. (Read more)

5. The Triceratops – Charge!

Release date: November 1^stRecord label: Learning Curve
Genre: Punk rock, noise rock, power pop, alt-rock, fuzz rock, grunge
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The Triceratops are a new Brooklyn-based duo formed by two indie rockers who go way back together; their first record is called Charge!, and it feels like a special one to me. It’s an urgent-sounding album–it does feel like the work of a couple of people who haven’t gotten to make a full-length statement of an LP in a while and maybe don’t know when or if they’re going to get to again, so they’ve put as much as they can into it. The Triceratops deliberately and intentionally walk the line between “pop” and “heavy” rock music on Charge!’s fifteen songs. It reminds me of, more than any other band, the Archers of Loaf–huge and catchy without being dogmatically “punk” or “noise rock”. It’s just The Triceratops. (Read more)

4. Miscellaneous Owl – You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Huan-Hua Chye’s latest as Miscellaneous Owl is You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, a dozen-song record she wrote, recorded, and played entirely on her own over the course of February (which is, apparently, “Album Writing Month”). Given its method of incubation, it’s not surprising that You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow could loosely be described as a “bedroom pop/folk” record, although that doesn’t do justice to the music contained herein, which covers jangly, almost twee indie pop, offbeat guitar-pop singer-songwriters of decades past, and beautiful straight-up indie folk. Chye’s writing is clearly the work of a major talent, and just about everything on You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow merits much thought and engagement. (Read more)

3. Bad Moves – Wearing Out the Refrain

Release date: September 13^thRecord label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

At their best, D.C. power-pop-punk quartet Bad Moves are a walking, talking, harmonizing example of how pop music can be jam-packed with meaning and intent without losing any other part of itself in the process–and Wearing Out the Refrain is Bad Moves at their best. The band have always smashed heady, whip-smart political and cultural observations and firecracker, all-in, hook-laden power pop together like it’s no one’s business, but this one ups the ante even further. Wearing Out the Refrain lives up to its name; it’s the sound of some of the best hook merchants in broadly-speaking punk music leaning fully in and capturing the moment the rollercoaster starts gaining downhill momentum. (Read more)

2. Mister Goblin – Frog Poems

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Spartan
Genre: Singer-songwriter, alt-rock, folk rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Frog Poems is notable in that it’s the first time Sam Goblin has released new music on a label other than Exploding in Sound Records (dating back to the first single from his old band, Two Inch Astronaut, in 2012)–and it feels like a new era by collecting and expanding on everything Mister Goblin has done up until this point. Frog Poems is a statement of active intent, a declaration that regardless of who’s around Sam Goblin (who’s moved states multiple times in the past few years) and what label he’s on, Mister Goblin will find a way to exist, with the “post-hardcore power trio” and “introspective folk rock” versions of the project both showing up here. (Read more)

1. Rosie Tucker – UTOPIA NOW!

Release date: March 22^ndRecord label: Sentimental
Genre: Art rock, power pop, pop punk, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

The snippets of Rosie Tucker’s discography I’d heard before now definitely did not prepare me for the adventurous, overstuffed, and punchy rock record that is UTOPIA NOW!, an album seemingly engineered to appeal specifically to me. As a songwriter, Tucker is lethally sharp, pulling out massive power pop/pop punk hooks out of nowhere, oftentimes completely at odds with where the track had been leading up to beforehand, but never in a way that feels overly shoehorned. UTOPIA NOW!’s sound is just as commendable–like the majority of Tucker’s output, it was produced by themself and their longtime collaborator Wolfy, and they gleefully veer between chilly bedroom pop/folk/rock, slick alt-rock, and limber, jerky art rock/new wave across the record’s thirteen tracks. Nothing else makes me feel the way I do when listening to UTOPIA NOW!. I did my due diligence (not that Rosie Tucker is a household name, but they’re the most high-profile artist to nab the top slot so far, so I really thought about it), but in hindsight this was always going to be at the top of this list. (Read more)

Honorable mentions:

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (25-1)

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