Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.
See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)
50. Shredded Sun – Wilding
Release date: September 6th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Digital
In 2023, Chicago power trio Shredded Sun dropped a pair of releases depicting a group of underground rock and roll veterans (who’ve been playing together since the mid-2000s) honing in on a winning combination of fuzz rock, garage-punk, psych pop, and power pop and hitting a creative stride. Even so, I wasn’t expecting another Shredded Sun album in 2024, but Wilding blessed this year with thirteen more songs and nearly fifty minutes of brand new Shredded Sun material. If you enjoyed Each Dot and Each Line and Translucent Eyes, the trio pick up right where they left off, but (perhaps ironically given the quick turnaround) some of the tossed-off psych-garage energy of their last two records gives way to something just a little more deliberate and measured. (Read more)
49. Daniel Romano’s Outfit – Too Hot to Sleep
Release date: March 1st
Record label: You’ve Changed
Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Although the proper records from Daniel Romano’s Outfit generally hew more towards “studio rats” than “garage punks”, those who’ve followed the prolific Canadian troubadour know about his band’s energy and ferocity in their live shows. I’ve been waiting for something like Too Hot to Sleep from The Outfit for a while now–a genuine live-in-studio sounding garage rock scorcher of a record. Romano and his crew really honed in on something potent with this ten-song, twenty-seven minute collection, which is looser-sounding than typical Outfit fare but still led by a smooth operator of a pop songwriter. Even if you think you know Daniel Romano’s deal by now, I’d recommend Too Hot to Sleep to any power pop and/or garage rock fan–it’s one of his strongest albums yet. (Read more)
48. Quivers – Oyster Cuts
Release date: August 9th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
On their third album of original material and first for Merge Records, Melbourne quartet Quivers are dogged pursuers of perfect guitar pop–their mix of college rock, C86, power pop, and new wave is as shined up and sparkly in its presentation as Sam Nicholson and Bella Quinlan’s vocals are intimate and distinct. For all its ambition, Oyster Cuts stubbornly declines to embrace anonymity–it doesn’t hide the fact that it was made by Australian indie rock lifers who love The Chills and Pavement, nor does it stop at that surface-level descriptor. Oyster Cuts is something of a proof-of-concept for “indie pop” as something as potent as “real” pop–Quivers are just as precise and hard-hitting as the giants in these songs. (Read more)
47. Oceanator – Everything Is Love and Death
Release date: August 30th
Record label: Polyvinyl
Genre: Alt-rock, punk rock, fuzz rock, emo, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
In a move that makes too much sense, Oceanator’s Elise Okusami linked up with renowned Philadelphia producer Will Yip for her band’s third album, Everything Is Love and Death. Yip (who also plays drums and keys on the record) helps Okusami accentuate the anthemic, immediate aspects of Oceanator’s sound–hard to categorize, but containing a distinct mix of emo, power pop, and even grunge-y 90s alt-rock. Despite the apparently months-long gestation time, Everything Is Love and Death is very streamlined, paring down much of the moodiness of Oceanator’s last record and the lengthy rock journeys of their debut. It’s Oceanator at their most outwardly friendly (without losing Okusami’s distinct voice); there’s never been a better time to get on board. (Read more)
46. Dummy – Free Energy
Release date: September 6th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Psychedelic pop, art rock, noise pop, trip hop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Los Angeles noise pop group Dummy approached their sophomore album, Free Energy, with the clear intention of making something different than their 2021 sensory overload debut Mandatory Enjoyment, and the band indeed have grown into something new. The shift on Free Energy is palpable but subtle and harder to pin down to one distinct subgenre, as one would expect from an always-omnivorous band like Dummy. The resultant album is something that’s sleek, slick, and smooth–rather than come at you at full force, Dummy dart around us and leap over top of us, marrying fuzzy, distorted shoegaze-pop with alternative-dance elements in a way that’s frequently surprising but always coherent. (Read more)
45. Jim Nothing – Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn
Release date: October 18th
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Jangle pop, Dunedin sound, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn continues to mine the rich veins of classic Flying Nun-inspired jangle pop, psychedelic pop, and noise pop that New Zealand’s Jim Nothing so effectively explored on 2022’s In the Marigolds, but this one feels like a more wide-ranging take on this kind of music. Christchurch-originating, Auckland-based James Sullivan recorded half of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn in a studio and the other half in a garage, which makes sense–sometimes, the Jim Nothing of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn feels like a sturdier, louder rock band than ever before, other times feeling like a home-recorded Sullivan solo project. Sullivan’s songwriting is still sublime, though, and more than capable of weathering a more involved journey. (Read more)
44. Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns – Duck Hollow
Release date: May 31st
Record label: Douglas Street
Genre: Power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Duck Hollow is the proper full length debut from Pittsburgh power poppers Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, and it pulls together giant hooks with electric alt-rock (at its most euphoric) and explores the terrain of delicate guitar pop music (at its most pensive). Duck Hollow is loosely a Pittsburgh-based concept album, with everything from the titular neighborhood to the one where Beck grew up (Squirrel Hill) to the Wabash Tunnel populating these songs. Recalling many great power pop records before it, Duck Hollow succeeds in placing us emotionally and geographically right next to its narrator as he traverses the Three Rivers. (Read more)
43. Mount Eerie – Night Palace
Release date: November 1st
Record label: P.W. Elverum & Sun
Genre: Folk, experimental folk, lo-fi indie rock, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
I’m not sure what there is to say about Night Palace, the latest triumph from Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie. Every music website that still exists has already extolled its virtues, and they’re right to do so; if you’re someone who appreciates Elverum’s canonical works like The Glow Pt. 2 but have fallen off in recent years, or if you can appreciate A Crow Looked at Me and Now Only but find those records difficult to listen to on a regular basis, Night Palace (in all its sprawling, eighty-minute glory) is something that can pull you right back into that world of fuzzed-out lo-fi rock, folk music as wide as the Pacific Ocean, and a songwriter who’s just as imposing at his best and (at the very least) unparalleled at all times.
42. SAVAK – Flavors of Paradise
Release date: March 1st
Record label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, college rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Coming a little under two years after their last record, Human Error / Human Delight, Flavors of Paradise adds to the language SAVAK have been developing since their debut in 2016, contracting it in some places and expanding it in others. The Brooklyn trio recorded the album at Electrical Audio last year, and while they’ve always been a “no nonsense” group, Flavors of Paradise finds the band plowing through twelve songs triangulating garage rock, post-punk, and college rock with a fresh, live sound. It’s easy to take for granted just how well SAVAK click together, but Flavors of Paradise is the work of several indie rock lifers determined to harness their experience into something accessible but still doing justice to the trailblazing nature of their influences. (Read more)
41. Greg Saunier – We Sang, Therefore We Were
Release date: April 26th
Record label: Joyful Noise
Genre: Art rock, noise pop, post-punk, math rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Considering just how much great music he’s been involved with over the past quarter-century, it’s perhaps not surprising that Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier can carry an album all on his own, but still, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed We Sang, Therefore We Were, somehow his first-ever solo record. As it turns out, he’s a killer, unique pop songwriter when left to his own devices; the album’s dozen tracks certainly are recognizably “Deerhoof-esque”, but the one-man Saunier band (he wrote, played, recorded, mixed, and mastered everything here) is truncated and streamlined, throwing jagged, catchy guitar riffs and shapeshifting, form-fitting vocals over top of everything in a keen manner. (Read more)
40. Adeem the Artist – Anniversary
Release date: March 29th
Record label: Four Quarters
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Adeem the Artist put out an album called White Trash Revelry in 2022 that I really enjoyed–I wasn’t necessary expecting the Knoxville-based alt-country singer-songwriter to match it with their follow-up record, but I’m pleased to note that their latest full-length, Anniversary, is even better than the one that preceded it. For those of us already on board, Adeem takes several steps forward and outward in their writing, shooting for the stars by embracing polished, confident country rock and continuing to tackle the impossible task of writing about queer Southern experience in a powerful yet personable way (and if it were possible, it’d certainly sound pretty damn close to Anniversary).
39. ADD/C – Ordinary Souls
Release date: March 29th
Record label: Let’s Pretend
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Ordinary Souls is ADD/C’s first new music in over a decade, and it’s a sweeping, wide-ranging punk rock record (seventeen songs in under forty minutes!) from a band with nothing to lose and no reason to keep “doing this”–other than the music itself, which is more than enough on its own. “Heartland rock” has come to mean something fairly polished and critic-friendly, but Ordinary Souls is perhaps a truer version of the term: catchy and decidedly rough-around-the-edges pop punk made by two-decade-plus rock and roll veterans strewn across tertiary-market cities in the South and Midwest with several lifetimes’ worth of fucked up shit to write about. (Read more)
38. Mope Grooves – Box of Dark Roses
Release date: October 25th
Record label: 12XU/Night School
Genre: Lo-fi pop, art pop, post-punk, experimental punk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Box of Dark Roses is Mope Grooves’ posthumously-released final album, and it’s a double LP full of ramshackle pop music drawn from clanging keyboards and buzzing beats and vocals that regularly surprise. Box of Dark Roses is so easy to follow despite everything about it because its leader, the late Stevie Pohlman (stylized simply as “stevie”), is unfailingly consistent in her worldview as a writer and doesn’t shy away from following these core tenets to wherever they take her. I hear, in stevie’s art, a real fury and fervor with regards to the unjust precariousness of the people around her–collaborators, friends, and comrades. Box of Dark Roses stares down the cognitive dissonance and open contradictions one is required to accept in order to be a “respectable” member of society, and rejects them. (Read more)
37. Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger
Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, progressive rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The amount of definitive rock music that Mary Timony has made in several different bands over the years is staggering–and it’s continued in recent years to the degree that I can’t be the only one to not realize it’s been fifteen years since a proper Timony solo album. Any indie rock musician who’s taken influence from Autoclave, Helium, or Ex Hex should get out their pen and paper for Untame the Tiger, a record that shows that Timony is still better than most at creating something intricate, immediate, and shockingly deep. Untame the Tiger is a surprising album, basking in the sun in plain sight but sneaking up on you at the same time–its leader sounds free, untamed, and absolutely thrilled to be still pressing ahead in the form of inventive, unique rock music. (Read more)
36. St. Lenox – Ten Modern American Work Songs
Release date: October 25th
Record label: Anyway/Don Giovanni
Genre: Indie pop, singer-songwriter, synthpop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
The fifth St. Lenox album, Ten Modern American Work Songs, traces Andrew Choi’s journey from a graduate student and aspiring philosophy professor at Ohio State University to a JD program in Manhattan to his current status as a lawyer. Musically, Choi’s distinct style of indie pop is as bright as ever, corralling piano pop, synthpop, and occasional folk and violin touches into something that never threatens to distract from the lyrics but sharp enough to compliment them. Choi’s huge voice is just as incredible, and his pointed ramblings remain pointed and rambling as he tackles a subject that has shaped (and continues to shape) his life and music head-on. (Read more)
35. J. Robbins – Basilisk
Release date: February 2nd
Record label: Dischord
Genre: Post-punk, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
We’re probably lucky that we got a sophomore J. Robbins album at all–the D.C.-based musician is a prolific and in-demand engineer these days, and his influential 90s Dischord group Jawbox have reunited and even released new material in recent years. Basilisk sounds familiar in a most welcome way, with Robbins evoking his golden era in a way few 90s indie rockers are still doing today. That being said, Basilisk doesn’t exactly sound ripped from the world of Jawbox circa 1993–it picks up about where 2019’s Un-Becoming left off, with Robbins writing art-punk anthems with both “maturity” and “edge” and a fearless awareness of the present. (Read more)
34. Norm Archer – Verb
Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Panda Koala
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, prog-punk, college rock
Formats: Digital
Will Pearce started up Norm Archer a mere two years ago, wanting to explore home-recorded power pop–and Pearce has proven quite adept at college rock/guitar pop hook-spinning. Verb, the project’s third long-player since 2022, features everything great about Norm Archer thus far: huge, arena-ready power pop anthems, relaxed, 60s-esque jangly guitar pop, and multi-part prog-pop workouts all abound. Pearce takes Verb to some new and wild places, too, particularly in the twin epics that close out the hourlong record. Whether you wanted Norm Archer to stay the course, flex their rock opera muscles, or lapse into smoky basement explorations on their third album, Verb decides to just do it all. (Read more)
33. Dancer – 10 Songs I Hate About You
Release date: March 15th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
After two stellar EPs introduced the Glasgow band last year, 10 Songs I Hate About You is Dancer’s first full-length. It’s remarkably comforting just how stubbornly the quartet show up in the same clothes with the LP–the album was recorded live to tape at Green Door studio with Ronan Fay just like their EPs were, Gemma Fleet is still announcing every song’s title before it begins, Andrew Doig’s bass is all over the place and a treat to observe, and so on. Dancer had already covered quite a bit of ground on their first two EPs–all the ingredients for an excellent first album were lined up, and 10 Songs I Hate About You knocks it out of the park. (Read more)
32. Humdrum – Every Heaven
Release date: October 18th
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, new wave, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Chicago guitar pop veteran Loren Vanderbilt has a keen grasp on a very specific time and place in the history of indie rock on the debut record from his new solo project, Humdrum–specifically, vintage jangle pop, new wave, college rock, and dream pop. Every Heaven is largely the work of a singular pop-minded visionary, with everything from its prominent, pounding mechanical drumbeats to its New Order-y synth washes to sprinkled guitar arpeggios all working in tandem to service the melodies and hooks. Unfailingly upbeat but also unafraid to incorporate the more wistful side of Vanderbilt’s influences, Every Heaven is crystalline, both in how it reflects a bygone era of “indie music” and how it freezes its leader in his own moment in time. (Read more)
31. Mint Mile – Roughrider
Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Alt-country, 90s indie rock, folk rock, Crazy Horse stuff
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Mint Mile’s Roughrider, their long-awaited second full-length, is their first to wrap its business up entirely on two sides of one vinyl record, finally adding the “tight”, forty-minute single long-player album to their resumé. Roughrider has a “snapshot” and “wide-ranging” feel that–while not absent from their sprawling debut, Ambertron–becomes more pronounced here due to the shorter timespan. After years of being the “new” band of Silkworm/Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett, Mint Mile has traversed a ton of ground in its first decade of existence, and the band pull from several aspects of it (meandering country-rock, sunny pop rock, moments of surprising bareness) throughout their latest triumph. (Read more)
30. Christina’s Trip – Forever After
Release date: July 5th
Record label: Cherub Dream
Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, noise pop, twee, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Despite the nods to noisemakers Sonic Youth and Eric’s Trip in the band and album names, Forever After by Christina’s Trip is the most pop-forward record I’ve heard from Bay Area shoegaze label Cherub Dream Records yet. Led by namesake Christina Busler’s clear vocals, the record’s eight songs float pop melodies towards the listener wistfully but confidently. The guitars are loud but not overly distorted or blanketing, recalling undersung 90s indie rock groups like The Spinanes and Velocity Girl and even early guitar-based dream pop, while the band’s lo-fi, off-the-cuff attitude evokes prime K Records. Consistency is key in just how strong a debut Forever After is, and I’m excited to hear more from Christina’s Trip. (Read more)
29. Adam Finchler – The Room
Release date: July 12th
Record label: Window Sill
Genre: Indie pop, soft rock, anti-anti-folk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Adam Finchler’s debut solo LP has been a long time in the making, and The Room is a world away from the sound of the former anti-folker’s previous music. These ten songs are given polished pop readings, clear but streamlined, placing Finchler’s songwriting front and center. As a writer, Finchler is vaguely in line with what one might expect from an anti-folker–irreverent, wide-ranging, and fairly unpredictable. The short stories, snapshots, and character sketches of The Room can be genuinely funny and just-as-strongly gripping–combined with the serious, straightforward guitar pop dressing that Finchler and co-producer Danji Buck-Moore pursue, it ends up being one of the most striking and unique-sounding albums I’ve heard this year. (Read more)
28. Shellac – To All Trains
Release date: May 17th
Record label: Touch & Go
Genre: Noise rock, math rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
It’s as good as I’d hoped it’d be. I can enjoy Big Black in a certain mood and obviously “appreciate” it, but Steve Albini’s work with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston has always been my favorite from him as a musician. To All Trains is ten more songs and twenty-eight more minutes of possibly the greatest-sounding rock and roll band of all-time doing their thing, re-announcing their dominance by honing their metallic, razorblade-sharp sound into levels of concision and prickliness previously thought impossible to reach by mankind. It fucking sucks that this is the last Shellac album. It fucking rules–this, the last Shellac album.
27. Stomatopod – DrizzleFizzle
Release date: October 4th
Record label: Pirate Alley
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: CD, digital
As one might guess of a Chicago-based, Electrical Audio-patronising power trio, Stomatopod could be reasonably described as “noise rock”, but it’s their own version of it–streamlined but expansive, unmistakably Midwestern, punk-y and garage-y, dark but “pop music”. DrizzleFizzle is their fourth album, and it’s a doozy, nearly twice as long as their last one and made up of ten enormous songs. The snapshot of brilliance that was 2022’s Competing with Hindsight is blown up onto the big screen here; it’s a dizzyingly complete, uncomfortably-up-close version of three rock and roll veterans hammering out songs because they must be hammered out. (Read more)
26. Ex Pilots – Motel Cable
Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Smoking Room
Genre: Noise pop, alt-rock, shoegaze, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
On what will likely be an introduction to Ex Pilots for a lot of people, the Pittsburgh sextet do what they do best–kick out fifteen songs and thirty-seven minutes of hook-laden, shoegaze-informed indie rock shot through with a sense of Robert Pollard-esque propulsive melancholy that’s equally present on the loud, punk-y rave-ups and Motel Cable’s more pensive moments. Similarities with their sibling band, Gaadge, abound, but Ethan Oliva (more or less Ex Pilots’ ringleader, while Ex Pilots bassist Mitch Delong largely helms Gaadge) seizes the opportunity to delve more full-heartedly into huge Guided by Voices-indebted rock anthems with distortion on tap. (Read more)
Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Rosy Overdrive 