Here we go with the final 5, the greatest albums from an absolutely golden year of great albums.
Number 5: English Teacher – This Could Be Texas
Worthy winners of this year’s Mercury Music Prize. These guys are definitely my one that got away from last year’s Reading Festival. Being able to say you saw them bottom of the bill on The Festival Republic Stage will soon be a badge of honour. Numbers 5 through 3 on this list all share some similarities. Each is an incredibly high-quality debut album where the band have arrived rapidly at a fully formed identity. Each with a clear set of influences, yet each are already pushing beyond the potential traps and limitations of those and arriving at a cohesive, coherent sound. It can take many bands a decade and multiple albums to gather this level of understanding and purpose.
English Teacher are full of thoughtful, clever guitar music ploughing a slightly different furrow to the main tastes of the times we live in. This album is full of intriguing riffs and time signatures, tightly driven guitars and spoken vocal moments that suddenly open out into widescreen vistas. The lyrics are intriguing without being too pompous for their own good. The production is impressive, when a discordant horn section enters towards the end of ‘Broken Biscuits’ it is a perfectly earned crescendo. At times Lily Fontaine’s voice is front and centre, at other times it is merely a fragment of a full range of instrumentation and layered effects. ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ is a glorious statement of musical intent. ‘R & B’ is a bristling riposte to stereotyped expectations, Fontaine being a mixed-race woman in a predominantly white male indie scene. ‘Nearly Daffodils’ is thrilling in the way it swings from its verses to the chorus. They have set themselves a high bar for future work.
Number 4:The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy
With all the hype and the number of these tracks heard in 2023 it is funny to think of this as a 2024 album. Often with bands that become so hyped there is a high tendency to stumble or disappoint, but this group deserves all the accolades and attention they have already gathered. They arrived with a distinct identity, but I don’t think have quite reached their final form yet. There is potential here with a band that has some serious musical talent, an ability to find a big riff, and an innate theatricality to become the true heirs and successors to Queen – and it is telling that Brian May has already given them the musical equivalent of the Pope’s blessing.
Come for big singles ‘Sinner’ and ‘Nothing Matters’ but leave knowing that every track has the same stab of quality. ‘Burn’ starts the album proper (after the orchestrally baroque ‘Prelude to Ecstasy) with pounding drums and jangling guitar before quickly becoming an accomplished rock/pop hybrid with a captivating vocal performance. ‘Caeser on a TV Screen’ is one of many tracks considering traditional and modern battles over female/male power dynamics. ‘On Your Side’ is a pure slice of Kate Bush in all the best ways. ‘Gjuha’ is a thoughtful moment about identity before ‘Sinner’ breaks in with its powerhouse Britpop-esque guitar lines and amazing vocal harmonies. I could go on and on. Truly, this is a band with unlimited potential.
Number 3: Brigitte Calls Me Baby – The Future Is Our Way Out
What I love about music is that you never know what is going to scratch that itch you didn’t even know you had. Last year it turned out that was a mask wearing metal outfit proclaiming themselves to be vessels of the God of Sleep. This year it is a band taking most of their influences from the 50s, 60s and 80s.
The Morrisey like voice and craft of imperial phase Smiths is the first thing that strikes you on opening tracks, ‘The Future is Our Way Out,’ and ‘Pink Palace’ but even here you can feel the callbacks to much older influences. There is a capturing of classic Americana and early rock and roll and artists like Roy Orbison that is a band thrillingly out of time. Though just when you think you have a handle on it…it opens out further swinging between beautifully crafted classic rock and roll and 80s film soundtracks. ‘Eddie My Love’ is a long-lost number one from the time when guitar groups like ‘The Shadows’ walked the Earth. ‘We Were Never Alive’ is an absolute epic, an 80s missing link from the soundtrack of ‘The Breakfast Club’ or ‘Donnie Darko.’ The closest thing to a modern reference point is an occasional burst of Strokes influenced guitar. These guys have been absolutely overlooked by critics this year and I just don’t get why. The fact they have been picked up as a support act by Muse, The Strokes and The Last Dinner Party gives me hope they will eventually connect with the level of audience they deserve for this beautifully impressive craftmanship.
Number 2: Fontaines DC – Romance
Fontaines are a band full of swagger, safe in the knowledge that they are one of the most vital acts making music right now. If you don’t trust me on this then take it from Elton John who said they are, “the best band out there at the moment” in September. ‘Starburster’ set the tone as a beefed-up evolution of their previous sound, perhaps also the only track on the album that made sense of them discussing Korn as an influence, but it was the quieter melody driven tracks like ‘In the Modern World’ and ‘Horseness Is The Whatness’ that showed the growth in their songwriting craft. Grian Chatten has the soul of an Irish poet. There is a complexity and offbeatness in his lyrics that cuts against the dull repetition of relationship problems that haunts so much of modern music.
Whilst their Reading set underwhelmed me, lacking in energy and fairly aloof, Romance was masterful and has been on heavy rotation in my listening ever since.
Number 1: Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
What a year for albums, 2024 has been a classic. However, one album this year towers over every other release like a sonic monolith. Beth Gibbons occupies that rare territory of being able to walk unrecognised down any street in the UK yet being the kind of rare talent that is sought out as a collaborator by the likes of Kendrick Lamar. 22 years on from her last proper solo album and 16 years since Portishead’s ‘Third’, ‘Lives Outgrown’ is less an album and more like ethereal magic captured in a paganistic ritual. Somehow autumnal, somehow a profound meditation on ageing, on the fragility of life and the importance of living in the moment and grabbing hold of it before it is gone.
The production is masterful, often densely layered, yet every instrument, every sound is perfectly chosen, adding to the emotional intensity and depth of every track. ‘Floating on a Moment’ is THE track of the year, perhaps only challenged by Nick Cave’s ‘Wild God’ (that haunts a similar musical hinterland), yet the rest of Lives Outgrown has not a single stumble, false step or a note I would change. I can’t imagine ever getting bored of this. I can’t imagine ever not thinking it a work of sublime majesty. Album of the year and straight into my 10 greatest albums of all time.
Reading Indie Life 
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