It looks like we’ve found ourselves in December, which means that I find myself putting the finishing touches on Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Today, albums 51 through 100 are being posted, and tomorrow (Tuesday, December 9th), the top 50 will be revealed.
As always, thank you to anyone who reads this blog, anyone who’s shared Rosy Overdrive with others, and anyone who’s made it part of their lives or uses it in any way. I’m grateful I can share the music I’ve liked with other people and I don’t take it for granted that a small but real amount of people care about that.
Here is a playlist featuring all of the records from this list that are available on streaming services: on Spotify, on Tidal. Separate lists for EPs and compilations/reissues will go up over the next couple of weeks, along with a few more Pressing Concerns. To read about more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And you can also be part of the blog’s year-end rundown by voting in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll! Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to the list.
See also:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)
100. Modern Nature – The Heat Warps
Release date: August 29th
Record label: Bella Union
Genre: Chamber pop, folk rock, post-rock, sophisti-pop, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After getting more abstract and post-rock/chamber music-influenced over the course of four records, British art rock group Modern Nature decided it was time to start from scratch with The Heat Warps. The vast blank space of previous Modern Nature LPs hasn’t completely dissipated, but the quartet have allowed more of it than ever to fill with Jeff Tobias and Jim Wallis’ steady rhythms and Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper’s snaking guitars. Even the album’s cover art–a warm yellow, depicting the four players–indicates a change to something more approachable and evenly-split. (Read more)
99. Lone Striker – Lone Striker
Release date: March 14th
Record label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud/Hidden Bay
Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, power pop, folk pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
As the bandleader of Teenage Tom Petties, Tom Brown worships at the altars of lo-fi power pop, college rock, and jangly indie pop. Lone Striker is an attempt by the Bath, England musician to do something markedly different: the project’s self-titled debut album was recorded almost entirely by Brown at home utilizing “wobbly doo-wop samples, off-kilter soul drum loops and found sounds” as well as his typical indie rock instrumentation. Drawing from psychedelic and atmospheric-pop 90s indie groups like Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev, Lone Striker works because Brown is able to speak the same fuzzy, half-remembered, mid-century Americana language that those bands also spoke (somehow, despite being British). (Read more)
98. Jordan Krimston – Count It All Joy
Release date: January 31st
Record label: DHCR
Genre: Emo-pop, pop punk, indie pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
San Diego musician Jordan Krimston has popped up here and there on material from Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon and Oso Oso (for whom he’s currently the touring drummer), among others. The prolific musician has kept up a steady solo career in addition to instrumental and recording work, and his most recent album, Count It All Joy, is a blast. As one might expect from an Oso Osociate, it’s roughly in the realm of “emo/pop punk/power pop”, although that doesn’t quite capture the adventurous, ambitious pop music contained herein. Chirping synths, math rock-y drums, bright emo-pop, electronic undercurrents–Count It All Joy is an inspired combination.
97. Jobber – Jobber to the Stars
Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Fuzz rock, alternative rock, grunge-pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Brooklyn’s Jobber burst onto the scene in 2022 with an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing in their debut EP, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first album, Jobber to the Stars. After three years, the band’s first record as a full quartet pulls off the challenge of expanding their sound admirably. They put their bigger stage to use throughout Jobber to the Stars, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound. (Read more)
96. Open Head – What Is Success
Release date: January 24th
Record label: Wharf Cat
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, art punk, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Kingston art punk group Open Head had grand ambitions for their second LP, naming hip hop and electronic music as equally influential on it as punk and art rock. Of course, any adventurous and forward-thinking band ought to be looking outside their own genre for ideas, and just because the resultant What Is Success is “merely” a rock album doesn’t mean that Open Head weren’t successful in making something that genuinely feels informed by things other than “merely” post-punk and noise rock. Although, to be clear, I do hear a lot of good noise rock and post-punk bands in What Is Success’ sound, too–New York no wave, Exploding in Sound-associated post-hardcore, and Rust Belt noise rock all likely had a hand in where Open Head end up here. (Read more)
95. Allo Darlin’ – Bright Nights
Release date: July 11th
Record label: Slumberland/Fika Recordings
Genre: Folk-pop, indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After releasing three records that received just about as much attention and adoration that vintage-style indie pop music was capable of receiving in the early 2010s, London quartet Allo Darlin’ decided to hang it up, a decision that thankfully only lasted a few years. On their first album in more than a decade, Allo Darlin’ do indeed sound like an indie pop band who’ve allowed themselves to age–somewhere between the stalwart folk rock of The Innocence Mission and the elder-statespeople twee pop of The Catenary Wires, Bright Nights is the record that the four of them needed to take some time off to make. (Read more)
94. Kilynn Lunsford – Promiscuous Genes
Release date: May 16th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital
New Jersey’s Kilynn Lunsford has been playing in bands in and around Philadelphia for two decades now, most notably the wild art punk group Taiwan Housing Project. Lunsford’s latest solo album, Promiscuous Genes, is on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. It’s hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. (Read more)
93. Exploding Flowers – Watermelon/Peacock
Release date: March 21st
Record label: Meritorio/Leather Jacket
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psychedelic pop, Paisley Underground
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Hailing from ground zero of the 1980s “Paisley Underground” movement, Los Angeles’ Exploding Flowers do indeed evoke the loose, psychedelic side of this strain of American jangly college rock. Watermelon/Peacock offers up everything from hook-fest power pop to pure psychedelia to throwback San Francisco garage rock to 60s-style keys and organs throughout its fourteen tracks and forty-odd minutes. Sometimes hazy, sometimes bright and vibrant, Watermelon/Peacock is a compelling and generous Americana record arising from one of the country’s largest population centers. (Read more)
92. Bones Shredder – Morbid Little Thing
Release date: September 19th
Record label: Sunken Teeth
Genre: Pop punk, power pop
Formats: Digital
Randy Moore is Mr. Bones Shredder: a pop punk artist with a dark cabaret aesthetic, a horror-themed musical vampire-mad-scientist whose Frankenstein’s monster is a Morrissey that only knows how to write Ramones/Misfits songs, an Alkaline Trio associate, and more. The San Jose musician’s new album, Morbid Little Thing, takes these ingredients and makes one of the best power pop albums of the year with them. You’ll hear a bit of that darker Chicago pop punk sound–Smoking Popes and, yes, Alkaline Trio–in Morbid Little Thing’s ten songs, but it’s equally suburban Fountains of Wayne-esque power pop and big old Blue Album power chords. (Read more)
91. The Laughing Chimes – Whispers in the Speech Machine
Release date: January 31st
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, college rock, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Athens, Ohio-based jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes have doubled in size since their 2022 Zoo Avenue EP, and their sophomore album Whispers in the Speech Machine reflects a more expansive sound. Whispers in the Speech Machine adds moodier, more post-punk and even goth-pop-indebted elements to The Laughing Chimes–new member Ella Franks’ synth contributions are given a prominent place on these eight songs, and they’re key to elevating the quartet to this next chapter. Even though Whispers in the Speech Machine is a short album (under thirty minutes), it radiates ideas and layers as many of them on top of each other as it can. (Read more)
90. Good Luck – Big Dreams, Mister
Release date: October 17th
Record label: Lauren/Specialist Subject
Genre: Indie pop, pop punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
The Bloomington, Indiana trio Good Luck released two albums before breaking up in 2012, quietly bowing out of the indie rock/punk underground right before the “scene” began to be dotted with bands making some similar combination of earnest Midwestern indie rock, pop punk, and power pop. Good Luck has only grown in stature in their absence, but their first album in fourteen years doesn’t really feel burdened with any weight: the communal flair, nonstop pop hooks, and sneakily impressive guitars from Big Dreams, Mister‘s opening track “Into the Void” on down lets it feel like no time at all has passed. (Read more)
89. Shaki Tavi – Minor Slip
Release date: August 15th
Record label: Felte
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Shaki Tavi bandleader Leon Mosburg describes dealing with “burnout and disillusionment” in the three-year gap between his group’s self-titled debut album and Minor Slip, and a desire to do something “fun” with his music brought him back from the brink. Minor Slip doesn’t abandon the hard-hitting wall-of-sound shoegaze of Shaki Tavi, but the melodic and pop undercurrents of that first LP are closer than ever to the surface now. With dream pop, psychedelia, and electronica all sitting next to the blasts of guitars, Mosburg and company are now ready to explore an exciting style of “pop music”. (Read more)
88. The High Water Marks – Consult the Oracle
Release date: May 16th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
The High Water Marks began in the mid-2000s as a trans-Atlantic partnership between founding Elephant 6 member and longtime Apples in Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney in Kentucky and Per Ole Bratset in Oslo–and some twenty years later, the psychedelic power pop band is as active as it’s ever been. Consult the Oracle is The High Water Marks’ fourth album since 2020; perhaps it’s a tinge more laid-back than 2023’s Your Next Wolf was, a chance for The High Water Marks to let their slightly jangly, slightly psychedelic pop music marinate a little more than usual. It’s a subtle distinction, though: The High Water Marks aren’t a chamber pop group all of a sudden, and their 60s garage rock influences are still felt throughout Consult the Oracle. (Read more)
87. Dropkick – Primary Colours
Release date: February 7th
Record label: Bobo Integral/Sound Asleep
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Whether it’s with The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, his Andrew Taylor & The Harmonizers project, or his oldest band, Dropkick, nobody does jangly, Teenage Fanclub-evoking wistful guitar pop like Scotland’s Andrew Taylor does. If you liked his previous records in this vein (2021’s twin LPs Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers and TBWTPN’s Songs from Another Life are highlights for those unfamiliar), you’re going to enjoy Dropkick’s latest album, Primary Colours, too. And if you’re new to Taylor, Primary Colours is a great place to start–there’s just a little bit of ragged power pop shot through this otherwise incredibly-refined jangle pop album.
86. Dave Scanlon – Greenland Shark
Release date: February 25th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Experimental folk, post-rock, ambient
Formats: Digital (streaming)
Indie folk artist Dave Scanlon’s latest album is intriguing both in its subject matter and its release format–for the former, Greenland Shark is about the titular North Atlantic/Arctic animal “and [his] obsession with it”, and for the latter, the album was, for much of this year, only available to listen to via greenlandshark.tv, a website designed specifically for it. Greenland Shark is perhaps a bit more “experimental” than Scanlon’s previous solo albums, but the hallmarks of the singer-songwriter–pensive, Phil Elverum-esque talk-singing over subtle but often unpredictable music–remain intact in this journey to a thousand meters below the Arctic surface. (Read more)
85. Tony Molina – On This Day
Release date: November 14th
Record label: Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade
Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
If you know anything about Tony Molina’s music, it’s probably that strong guitar pop music is his specialty, typically delivered in sub-ninety-second nuggets–and that’s precisely what we get when we join the San Francisco singer-songwriter on On This Day, Molina’s first solo album in three years. On This Day, twenty-one songs in twenty-three minutes, was recorded by Molina and collaborators at home in an “unhurried” manner, and is subsequently on the “acoustic” and “laid-back” ends of the Tony Molina spectrum. On This Day leans into Molina’s 60s folk-pop influences, and ends up in the realm of the more languid side of Elephant 6, too. (Read more)
84. The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie
Release date: August 29th
Record label: Anti-
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, The Beths
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Everybody loves The Beths, the scrappy yet polished indie pop quartet from Auckland, New Zealand led by Elizabeth Stokes. Health-based writer’s block suffered by Stokes since 2022’s Expert in a Dying Field makes it sound like Straight Line Was a Lie was their most difficult record to make, and I can believe it based on how it sounds. The melancholy that’s always been at the periphery of their sound is explored more thoroughly here than ever before, and it’s easy to imagine a band as tight and well-sculpted as The Beths struggling to let some of these songs sit as unadorned as they ended up sounding on-record. The Beths have always been a band that seems to take seriously the placement and inclusion of every track on their records, and Straight Line Was a Lie is (in what’s becoming a more and more understandable compliment) a Beths album through and through. (Read more)
83. (T-T)b – Beautiful Extension Cord
Release date: April 4th
Record label: Disposable America
Genre: Fuzz rock, synthpop, power pop, chiptune, slacker rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Boston’s (T-T)b incorporate chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentation into their music as an accent, the way one might use synths or horns. Beautiful Extension Cord is the band’s second album and first new music of any kind in four years, and (T-T)b have evolved in the meantime, I’d say. It seems impossible for chiptune to ever be “subtly” baked into one’s music, but if it is, it probably sounds like this album–still quite visible, but integrated more seamlessly than ever into the group’s slacker rock, 90s alt-rock, and bedroom indie rock-evoking sound. Between the big old guitars, the chirping 8-bit sounds, and JM Dussault’s plain but capable vocals, there’s somehow a cosmic element to (T-T)b’s indie rock. (Read more)
82. Alan Sparhawk & Trampled by Turtles – Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles
Release date: May 30th
Record label: Sub Pop
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles is as tough of a listen as anyone familiar with the tragedy experienced by the former of the two artists would expect, although it’s “tough” in an entirely different way than last year’s confrontational electronic Sparhawk solo album White Roses, My God. An unlikely but ultimately very fitting team-up between two of Duluth, Minnesota’s most prominent acts, this album ends up synthesizing the glacial-paced, beautiful slowcore of the early work of Sparhawk’s Low and the more traditional folk music of Trampled by Turtles. The latter band’s bluegrass-trained sound is well-equipped to take these songs to the brink of the abyss, but Sparhawk steadies the ship with (one imagines) everything he’s got in him.
81. Gaytheist – The Mustache Stays
Release date: February 21st
Record label: Hex
Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, hardcore punk, metallic hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
A band squarely in the middle of the “noise rock” landscape with punk energy, metal chops, and a sense of humor, Portland, Oregon trio Gaytheist brought with them a breath of fresh air in 2020 with How Long Have I Been on Fire?, and they’ve been sorely missed in the five years since. The wait is over, however, as Gaytheist returned this year with The Mustache Stays, an album that reenters the fray with a pure cannonball-like energy. Gaytheist sequence the album in the most dangerous way possible, throwing a bunch of brief, explosive noise-punk blasts at us in a row before sneaking in a few surprises (like, for example, a surprisingly faithful eight-minute cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Silverfuck”) in the back half of the LP. (Read more)
80. Now – Now Does the Trick
Release date: May 16th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
The second album from the difficultly-named Bay Area trio Now (and their first for their new labels, K and Perennial) is called Now Does the Trick, and it’s a different beast than their debut (but no less strong of an LP). The psychedelic, kraut-y mud of 2023’s And Blue Space Is Burning Noon is turned down and the jangle pop guitars and hooks are turned up–Now sound like they’re aiming for the little big-time here. Now are still a bunch of weirdos, though–lo-fi, sparkling jangle can’t paper over all of that. Even though the dozen songs of Now Does the Trick total just a bit over a half-hour, it feels like they encompass so much more than that; Now eat their craft-sharpening cake and get to keep some skeletons in their collective closet, too. (Read more)
79. Beauty – I’d Do Almost Anything for You
Release date: August 1st
Record label: Strange View
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Red Bank, New Jersey quartet Beauty have been making music together since 2018, but I’d Do Almost Anything for You is only their first full-length album. Beauty’s debut LP is nothing less than some of the finest 90s power pop revivalism I’ve heard in recent memory, harkening back to a time where acts like Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, and Fountains of Wayne were able to smuggle Cheap Trick/Beatles-level hooks and huge guitars onto the periphery of the mainstream of so-called “alternative rock”. Beauty don’t overthink it, but they don’t miss anything either: where there should be harmonies, there are harmonies, and where there ought to be a nice big guitar riff, a sharp solo, or some well-placed handclaps, they’re all right on time. (Read more)
78. Supreme Joy – 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps
Release date: July 11th
Record label: VOD
Genre: Garage rock, noise rock, experimental rock, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Denver musician Ryan Wong made a lo-fi/basement record called Joy under the name Supreme Joy in 2021, but now Supreme Joy is a four-piece band, and they’ve taken the opportunity of a bigger and louder sophomore album (the incredibly-titled 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps) to become a straight-up wild, noisy, and experimental rock group. Somehow 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps is only twenty-six minutes long, but it feels like a lengthy, arduous, and exhilarating journey nonetheless. There’s plenty of Sonic Youth in Supreme Joy’s DNA, filtering New York art rock moves through the lens of Wong’s background in West Coast garage punk. (Read more)
77. Knowso – Hypnotic Smack
Release date: August 1st
Record label: Sorry State
Genre: Garage punk, post-punk, egg punk, noise rock, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital
In 2024, I called the Cleveland punk band Knowso’s third album, Pulsating Gore, “serious-feeling, blunt garage-post-punk”, and I did indeed get around to using the terms “egg punk” and “Devo-core” to describe the group. Much of this applies once again to the fourth Knowso album, Hypnotic Smack; they’re apparently down to a duo for this one, with longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings) being Nathan Ward’s only sidekick now. Maybe Knowso’s violent, dead-eyed version of egg punk is a little more stripped-down on Hypnotic Smack, but it’s not overly noticeable–Ward and Gerycz are, apparently, more than capable of whipping up something strikingly chaotic on their own. (Read more)
76. The Chop – It’s the Chop
Release date: August 1st
Record label: Wrong Speed
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art pop, no wave
Formats: Cassette, digital
Gemma Fleet and Andrew Doig (aka Robert Sotelo) are most well-known these days for making up one-half of the scrappy Scottish indie pop/post-punk quartet Dancer, which have been going strong ever since their early 2023 debut EP. Perhaps their new project, The Chop, is intended to be a more “low-stakes” output source; even compared to the more streamlined side of Dancer’s art pop, It’s the Chop is a minimal affair, with simple drum machines, bass riffs, and synth interjections all used fairly sparingly. Fleet’s vocals are much less inclined to go “off the rails”; she’s still doing that conversational thing she does in Dancer very well, but it’s less “mile a minute” and more “pensive”, befitting of this odd little album. (Read more)
Click here for:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Rosy Overdrive 