Burn Your Hits: Carl Anderson

I have a memory, maybe it’s too old to be a memory, possibly my sister told it to me. But I have a clear image of the scene in my mind. I’m nine years old or ten maybe. We are visiting my aunt and uncle outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Late one afternoon they are sitting in their matching chairs in the den. Aunt Kay is crocheting. They (and we) are listening to a weekly bluegrass program on the radio. No one talks. Not a word. We listen. When the program ends, Uncle Dale turns off the radio and everyone leaves the room.

That was, as far as I’ve ever known, the sum total of their consumption of popular music. No listening to the radio in their car, if the car even had one. Maybe they had a record player, but I don’t remember ever seeing evidence of it. They knew a vast library of church hymns, of course. Aunt Kay enjoyed Christmas carols (not the cool ones).

Younger me was outraged by the thought of having to live like this. Imagine being into bluegrass and having your entire supply be an hour a week of a radio program into which you had no input, and whose content was controlled by, well you don't even want to think about that. An inmate probably has it better today. Older me appreciates the ritual more. Bluegrass was music from their place, for their place, about their place. Finding themselves elderly and rural, this was an hour they could share music together. But mostly, I admire the deliberateness of setting aside time to sit and listen. I envy it.

2025 IN MUSIC

For me, of course, it’s rootless cosmopolitanism roiled by technological disruption forever, baby. Be grateful for what we have, my friends, be grateful.

My 2025 was shaped by the arrival of Snocaps’ album. There were faint signs, but no hints. Allison was spending time on tour with Katie. Katie’s blog was noticeably silent about writing, even though Tiger’s Blood had been out for like 18 months. Then on Halloween she wrote that “my new band Snocaps” was releasing an album: her, Allison, Brad Cook, and MJ Lenderman. This is the stuff of vision boards, not a thing that actually happens. How to explain? Imagine you are an Oasis fan, and Noel and Liam surprise announce the band got back together and finished an album—but also that Noel and Liam had never done a single thing that sucked, ever. And you were absolutely certain the new album could not possibly suck, either. And you were right about all of it.

The Snocaps album is not the best thing Katie or Allison has ever done, but I ask you, in 2025, what is better?

Well, there’s Geese. No point in me trying to explain why Geese have the album of the year (non-Crutchfield-sisters division); nobody else has been able to. Yes it is literate and interesting and you can draw lines back to Television or Velvet Underground if you wish. As for any broader social or cultural impact of this fact, it's really nothing.

Consider: in 2025, the Oklahoma City Thunder is the best team in basketball. They’re young and talented, they’ve been together for a few years, and now it's all coming together and working. You watch them and you think: Well, yeah, if you can do *that* every night you're going to win all the time. It’s not some deep or revolutionary insight. And it certainly does not mean that Oklahoma City is the center of the basketball world.

That's something like what I think about Geese. In my 20s, I thought that NYC was the center of the music world. A parochial opinion, but often reinforced by the fact that if you are hot in NYC, there are a thousand smart and literate folks who will echo it. But not true then, not true now. If by some chance Getting Killed didn’t make it out this year, or if the engineer made a few bad choices, whatever, then something else would be the consensus album of the year. Maybe Wet Leg. Then we’d all get pushed dozens of AI-generated slop posts about how Isle of Wight is the center of the “contemporary rock revival.” Ugh.

I know my takes on new music in 2025 don't amount to much. Mostly my fault. But also 2025's fault. So many bands can make good records (and good-sounding records) that all the individual webs criss-cross and overlap and start to look like a boundless sheet. Rootless cosmopolitanism, on a global scale, for the win.

CODA

This year I spent time working on a very different kind of list. Because, I got a convertible. It’s 10 years old and its once-fancy audio system has a hard drive for storing MP3s. So of course I need a driving playlist. The car is loud, so strictly rock please, stuff that sounds good even when you are also listening to what sounds like two vacuums running over the sound effects from Days of Thunder. The car speakers are what you get. And my MP3 collection is (by no coincidence) over 10 years old. I do love making a constrained list.

The first five tracks are: Ozzy Osbourne - “Crazy Train” [RIP Ozzy], AC/DC - “Highway To Hell,” The White Stripes - “Seven Nation Army,” Rage Against The Machine - “Killing In The Name,” and Green Day - “St. Jimmy.” Then more that follow in kind.

What I learned from this project has little to do with the content of the list. It's the constraint on where and how I can listen to it. That list does not exist on Spotify. It’s not in the cloud. It’s not on my phone and cannot be accessed by my phone. It's a folder of files on an SD card, now copied to the car's hard drive. It's only a list because the file names start with sequential numbers. Remember that? To listen to that list, you have to get in this specific car. This list isn’t good for anything but listening to in a loud convertible. But the deliberateness of taking time to listen to it? I dig it.

01. Snocaps - “Heathcliff”

When I mustered the nerve to listen to this album—it took a few days—I was especially nervous about track two. This is where Katie usually reveals what she's up to. By God, this chorus is so exactly what I wanted. Once I saw Allison sing a few songs with Katie on stage, and my blissed-out mind had the thought that every singer who has ever double-tracked their vocals, ever, was trying to sound like Allison and Katie singing together. In the cold light of the day that’s plainly an over-take. But you know, it isn’t altogether wrong either. This piece of music made me happier than any other this year.

02. Geese - “Au Pays Du Cocaine”

Cameron Winter is 23 and trying so very hard to be the sexiest 23 year-old on earth. Not that I would know, but he can have my vote. There’s a video of him singing Nick Drake’s “Place To Be” when he was even younger, in case you had any doubt he is genuine.

03. Dustbunny - “Jane Is Sideways”

Through years of being slandered by right-wing media whenever they seek a distraction from how much Americans hate right-wing policies, Portland carries on being Portland. A place where you can ride your bike to a venue, mingle with a few dozen people, and tonight’s local band is this good. As a former resident who fled back to San Francisco, I don’t miss Portland much. But a while back a friend bragged “all the people you wanted to leave have left” and I tried to imagine what SF would be like if that happened here. I can’t even.

04. The Beths - “Straight Line Was A Lie”

Someone who knows a lot more about these things than me said this album might be their weakest yet. And that might be true, but it shows what a standard they have set. Yes it can sound like they are mostly just looking for new songs to play live, but at the same time, yes you would like to hear them play these songs live.

05. Snocaps - “Over Our Heads”

I don't know who said, “It's a sketchbook, not a painting,” but thank you to whoever you are. They toss this shit out as if it is normal to write lines like this:

2-3-4 leave through the alley

I'll get the truck and you get the baby.

The emptiness that we both know

Descends on us like we got no place to go.

Leave it all behind, make do without,

Don't bother chasing us, boys,

We'll see ourselves out.

You could get high, listen to this album and ponder, These two women used to be one egg, I wonder what that has to do with it. I'm not saying you would gain any deep insight, I'm just saying it could happen.

06. Wet Leg - “Mangetout”

Rhian Teasdale is a wolf to Olivia Rodrigo’s corgi. Other than that, they may have created their own genre. This is definitely the album of the year in whatever that is. I’m not confident this is the best track on the album but it is the one I listen to most.

07. Audrey Hobert - “Sue Me”

I don’t know anything about Audrey Hobert but Katie Crutchfield and Yasi Salek both gushed about her debut album and that alone is worth like five listens, at least.

08. Geese - “Cobra”

Loops, spirals, and waves, the rhythms on Getting Killed control the show. Every Cameron Winter vocal highlight seems to start in one song and finish in another. And if there was any doubt, the maxim that better music is made by bands is again proved by how much better this works than his other recordings. Winter is stunting all over this track, but the band is keeping up with him, maybe even driving him. Amanda Petrusich called this band “a dramatic outfit, prone to bursts of noise, meandering digressions, and feral bleating.” Yep. And better together.

09. Momma - "Rodeo"

Momma moved from LA to NYC and in some ways their sound has not changed, but in some ways it sounds EXACTLY like if you took an earlier album and imagined they lived in NYC instead. I'm glad.

10. Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory - “Idiot Box”

This band made a good album and it seemed to get little love, which I find puzzling because, well, the frontwoman is Sharon van Etten. I am grateful she chose to join a band rather than put out another solo album. At least, everyone who can sing like Sharon should do it. Wait, that’s only like five people. Well, it should happen more, that’s what I’m saying. JOIN BANDS!

11. Liquid Mike - "Lit From The Wrong End"

Do you like Liquid Mike?

YES I LIKE LIQUID MIKE

How do they put out so many songs?

EVERY SONG IS UNDER 2 MINUTES

Why so short?

THEY PLAY REALLY FAST

What if I like something longer?

LISTEN TO THE ALBUM

12. illuminati hotties - “Skateboard Tattoo”

Sarah Tudzin demonstrates that musical growth is sometimes an overrated virtue.

13. Wet Leg - “davina mccall”

Here’s the thing about Wet Leg. They are writing really good songs. Like, good songs to listen to. Have you heard of this thing, Album-Oriented Rock, sometimes "AOR" for short? This is it. BTW, the kids are listening to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, which is pure AOR. I feel that album could do numbers.

14. The Pill - "POSH"

Tell me your intuition on this: What does Olivia Rodrigo secretly listen to when she knows no one will ever know? It's The Pill, isn't it? Yes, it is. It definitely is.

15. Sports Team - “Condensation”

It’s the third album from these aggressively conventional rockers, and in perfectly conventional form it is much more fulsome and better than the sophomore effort.

16. Fust - “Spangled”

I became a fan of Fust when I saw them play four or five songs opening for someone else I can no longer remember. Hear them play and you know immediately these guys are honest and earnest, big time. This first verse is au courant and devastating.

They tore down the hospital, out on route 11.

I'm not sure what happened, seems like repossession.

And I'm not one to try to get all the way to heaven,

But I can't even visit the last place it was relevant.

Oof. Welcome to America in 2025. [Note to non-Americans: yes, sometimes hospitals here get repossessed. It’s hard to take us seriously, I know.]

17. Lucy Dacus - “Ankles”

There is no bigger Lucy Dacus fan than me. I could comfort myself by saying this is one of the best-written songs of the year. Which happens to be true. But look, I’m not a big fan of the sound she’s developed on this new album. And so I won’t pretend. But I note her writing has moved past merely brave and on to fucking fearless.

18. Jobi Riccio - “Wildfire Season”

In my continuing quest to puzzle out why the kids in this country aren't a lot angrier, here's a nice angry one.

19. Wednesday - “Townies”

This album marks for me one of those moments when a band trends toward easier to respect than enjoy. You’ve got to wish them well in what will probably be their post-MJ Lenderman period. But it’s hard for me to listen to this now without feeling like something is ending.

20. Blondshell - "T&A"

In a time when all the big narratives are so depressing—declining birth rates, declining life expectancy, etc.—there is something jarring about Sabrina Teitelbaum's songs about very intimate and personal bad choices.

21. Alien Boy - “Pictures of You”

More proof that it’d be fun to be young and living in Portland. I’m just a little too old to have been crazy over the 90s music that these folks Definitely Maybe Bleed American. In other words, I’m the age to have been crazy over The Cure’s “Pictures of You,” a forever classic that demands the level of respect where you just cannot re-use the name. Don’t put out any tracks called “Debaser” either, OK?

22. Horsegirl - “Switch Over”

I agree with everything Tony Schoenberg wrote about this song. In other news for old dudes, did you know the best music video this year is "Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads.

23. Lifeguard - "It Will Get Worse"

Has Horsegirl SOLD OUT? Do you find them distastefully commercial now? Watch out, these scrappy new kids from Chicago are coming up fast! OK that's just a joke. Lifeguard is signed on Matador.

24. Sharp Pins - “I Can’t Stop”

A smart person said that it’s pretty uncommon for an artist to aim at A Hard’s Day Night. I mean yeah. But that could be of interest, to be sure.

25. Chelsea Hodson - “Belong To Nobody”

The first minute of this might be the best thing written this year.

Love has one philosophy:

It belongs to nobody.

A prayer that goes nowhere

A feeling I can't quite hold.

Damn Chelsea, let the other girls have a chance!

26. Sex Week - “Coach”

It's 2012 and indie electropop changes your life. It's 2025 and you release "Coach" and everyone remembers. [H/T Aaron]

27. Momma - “I Want You (Fever)”

What do we want? Kids who worship the old gods. In this case, Veruca Salt.

28. Cardinals - “Masquerade”

This album won’t be out until next year, then we will know if Cardinals are Ireland’s Pavement, or not. It’s a long shot but boy I sure I hope I get to say I told you so.

29. VILLANELLE - “Hinge”

Liam Gallagher's son has a sort of Nirvana tribute group and they, VILLANELLE, released a single. Listen to this track and consider this: Did I put the previous sentence into GPT to generate this track?

Is this a hoax? I learnt the word "villanelle" because that's the name of the character in Killing Eve played by Jody Comer (God-tier performance). It's a good pun: "Because of their repetitive nature, villanelles are well-suited to themes such as obsession or the cyclical nature of things." Naming their band "VILLANELLE" is also a fine pun, but it is a verbatim copy of the same pun featured in a hit BBC show. This is the most Gallagher thing ever. First album will be titled On The Nose. Or maybe Jawbone In A Parka.

30. Snocaps - “Doom”

It’s not really fair to other bands when your album tracks are Waxahatchee songs that Katie just hasn’t released yet. Plus, Katie and Allison Crutchfield sing together. For me, this is like fries and ketchup. It's not that fries are only good with ketchup, it's not that ketchup exists only to complement fries. But fries and ketchup belong together as much as any two things in the universe can possibly belong together.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

GL.24.16: Carl Anderson

100 Songs: Aaron Bergstrom

GL.24.01: Ilana Bergstrom

GL.24.02: Isabel Vermaak

GL.24.03: Megan Swidler

GL.24.04: Curt Trnka

GL.24.05: Erik Kristjanson

GL.24.06: Caseysimone Ballestas

GL.24.07: Nora Tang

GL.24.08: Tony Schoenberg

GL.24.09: Ben Evangelista

GL.24.10: Kevin Wyckoff

GL.24.11: Jem Stirling

GL.24.12: Dillon North

GL.24.13: Marisa Plaice

GL.24.14: Desa Warner

GL.24.15: Mario Sanders

GL.24.16: CARL ANDERSON

GL.24.17: Jamie Pfeifer

GL.24.18: Lukas Brooks

GL.24.19: Shay Corbett

***

34 for 2024

If optimism was challenged in 2023, in 2024 it got completely fucked. Probably you noticed. Let’s indulge that just for a bit.

I have an allergic reaction to the AI bullshit we are all now drowning in. I earnestly wish I did not live in the era when every day I have to hear that some (shitty, failed, idiotic) algorithm running on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, and all the hellhole social media sites, is now “powered by AI.” When I see that, I think to myself, Oh yeah I definitely want to spend my time reviewing music recommendations that NO ONE ON EARTH COULD BE BOTHERED TO MAKE. If you called it pattern matching, which in almost every case is what it is, I would be less bothered.†

More broadly I have no enthusiasm for a future full of reviews that no one could be bothered to write, news stories that no one could be bothered to write. Nothing appeals to me about reading novels no one thought were worth the effort to write, listening to music that no one thought worthwhile to record, and on and on until every damn thing that humans make for each other is replaced by a shitty fake version churned out of a computer. OK, that’s enough.

In good news, my Spotify most streamed this year was Liz Phair. That’s because this was the year I learned The Girly-Sound Tapes are on Spotify, and also that the “official” release of these as a three-disc set doesn’t match the two-tape set that I had a bootleg CD of many many years ago. Exile in Guyville made a big impression on me (understatement) when it came out, and learning about and listening to that bootleg of the tapes helped me understand how this impossible album came to be. It also encouraged me by confirming that yes, this is an incredibly important and all-time great album that speaks to me specifically about my early-twenties experience; I’m not just a crazy fan boy with a crush on Liz Phair (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

That was then. Now, the Spotify version is like a complete edition of a book you’ve only read in abridged form, and I dove into re-learning and revising my understanding of the history. The “official” release digitally removes a lot of the layers of tape hiss and compression from the bootlegs. The tracks sound almost eerily good now. This was a broke, depressed, 24-year-old singing into a 4-track cassette recorder while living in her bedroom at her parents' house. I always thought it sounded really good given that, and maybe the crappy quality reminded me that when Phair was making these tapes, I too was a broke depressed 24-year-old feeling all those same vibes. Fancy shit like good mics and reel-to-reel tape were not on the menu. Now it sounds like Phair got in a time machine or something, like this is an Avengers movie that is both a sequel and a prequel at the same time. Well that was all good fun, definitely the most fun I had this year music-wise. A reminder that if we could use it wisely, the internet would be the best thing ever to happen to recorded music.

But when I climbed out of that rabbit hole, what I wanted was new music. I guess that means I’m not dead yet.

“She tried to escape her present through the music of the past.” -- Suzy Exposito, on Hope Sandoval.

This line kept shoving its way back into my head all year. Not specifically as about Sandoval or Exposito, but more as a choice on offer for anyone. Like, you could choose to do this at any point. You could unsubscribe to the music of the present, and you wouldn’t hear about the future. Lots of people have done that, right? Maybe everybody’s going to do it eventually. You could try it for a while and see if it suits you.

Could you? I can’t. But the spectre kept raising questions this year. Like, what are you doing listening to Olivia Rodrigo, her songs have nothing to do with your life or experience, just go back to listening to the Pixies you creep! There’s something to that, and I wouldn’t judge anyone who just chose to listen to the Pixies until death (I know such folks). For my part, I’m telling myself that Rodrigo makes the Pixies a little more interesting and more relevant. Every track on this list steals heavily from the 80s and 90s; that’s as it should be, for as Elvis Costello put it, “that’s how rock and roll works.” Who you steal from and how you re-work it matters. It matters a lot to me.

† TIL the most frequent Spotify genre tag for the tracks on this year’s playlist is “bubblegrunge” which is definitely a genre that doesn’t exist but also is exactly what Spotify should be recommending to me, based on the high percentage of bangers among the 363 songs in its “The Sound of Bubblegrunge” playlist.

1. Waxahatchee - "Right Back To It" (Feat. MJ Lenderman)

This is the tenth year I’ve been publicly waving her banner. I know my objectivity is non-existent. But I can’t understand how this isn’t the best track of the year by far. This track is so good it could be on Saint Cloud, which is something I can’t say about any other track since.

2. Blondshell - “Docket” (feat. Bully)

One artist I don’t know much (Blondshell) invites one artist I know an embarrassing amount about (Bully) to sing a few lines in barely audible fashion, and somehow it comes out great. However this was put together, I can’t believe it is a coincidence that when guitar-pedal maestro Alicia Bognanno showed up in the studio to “sing,” someone just mentioned they had a pedal board that makes a guitar sound like 80s era Def Leppard. Let’s ROCK!

This is also example number 1,000,000 of how Folks Should Be In Bands, because not everybody fully thrives as a solo project. We’ve got two young women who can write, one of them can sing and one can scream. Form a band! Find another good guitar player and a great drummer, and basically anybody on bass, and the formula is complete. That’s how we got the Clash, and nearly how we got The Beatles! (Tho’ we know Topper Headons and Ringo Starrs don’t grow on trees, but come on give it a try.) Yeah, it won’t happen because the economics are all screwed up, and everything these days is “Bill, featuring Ted” because Bill needs to build the “Bill” brand and Ted wants a “Ted” brand. How are changes in the circumstances of production changing the content of what you get? Without album royalties, bands are for suckers.

3. Liquid Mike - “K2”

Oh wait, a band! Wow, they sound like a band, and they fucking rock! Take that, economic determinism! And a song about how fun and cool it is to use drugs. A generation ago these kids could have had it all. They still deserve it even if they’ll never get it.

4. MJ Lenderman - “She’s Leaving You”

The origin story of this album is so good I hope it’s at least mostly true: the pandemic lockdown made Lenderman go on unemployment and stay at home, where there was nothing to do but jam with his roommates. It’s the American version of the 80s and 90s British bands who wrote great albums on the dole and then immediately flipped to cocaine and private jets.

5. Merce Lemon - “Backyard Lover”

You need to listen to this at high volume. You might not think it at first, but when you get to the line “You fuckin’ liar” you want it to be loud.

This made Katie Crutchfield’s list of 2024’s best. Imagine how great that must feel.

6. Girl Scout - “I Just Needed You To Know”

I don’t have an album of the year hot take, but I know my EP of the year and it's this. The band is so new and unknown that Spotify doesn’t even have genre labels for it yet, but I’ll bet that’s going to change.

They seem like a college band that decided they were good enough to start touring abroad. Maybe in Sweden social benefits are so good you can just spend your 20s in an indie rock band and everything will be fine. Or maybe they’re rich kids? Definitely on my watch list, the first album could be great if it gets made.

7. Maggie Rogers - “In The Living Room”

My best guess is this just didn’t fit the vibe on Don’t Forget Me, and certainly I respect that choice if it happened. Great album, different vibe. But my preference is for sad girl rock with a little touch of angry girl rock. LFG!

8. Charli xcx - “360”

OK we’ll pause ranting about how global economic arrangements are strangling new rock bands to recognize serious game here. I did not expect a Charli xcx solo project to rule the summer. Yet it seemed to be everywhere and all the time and no regrets for a second of it. One of my favorite memories is when I figured out that the bar down the street that seemed to be playing it all the time in fact had a playlist where the song repeated twice. That’s one solution if you can’t wait for the 7-minute remix. A good solution.

9. Chappell Roan - “Good Luck, Babe!”

The 2020s are a minor key bops party, so let’s put another one right here.

I’m fully confused about when Chappell Roan happened. I thought she had several breakout hits in 2023, and maybe some early singles in 2022, but it seems none of those hits “charted” until 2024, when they all did after “Good Luck, Babe!” It’s a bit of a tangle but it’s funny to see how the Grammys were like “we’re just going to nominate everything she’s ever done, time is a construct.”

It warms the heart to hear how much she was able to stick to her vision for these tracks and just wait for the audience to come to her. Her voice is intimidating, it's so good.

10. Girl Scout - “Honey”

Every once in a while you hear a track and you think, That is exactly what I want to hear. This year Girl Scout delivered. I read they did some shows with Alvvays, which made me think, was it awkward for Alvvays when the opening band came on and played the best Alvvays song ever? OK second best, shout out to "Archie, Marry Me."

NOTE TO AARON AND ILANA: Please take the train to Rotterdam and see this band. According to Rail Europe there are 116 trains per day, tickets are $21. I’ll buy you the tickets. I need to know what we can expect once the rest of the world hears them.

11. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - “Heartless”

Woo of the year (woo-hoo division). The first time I heard of Nate Rateliff, I think, was when he announced his support of Bernie Sanders in 2020. At that time I had the impression it was a big deal because he was a big deal. Turns out it wasn’t. But I somehow held on to the presumption he was a big blues rock superstar; maybe he is, it’s just that blues rock got real real small lately. At least numbers-wise.

12. Waxahatchee - "3 Sisters"

There’s an 11-way tie for second best track on Tigers Blood. You can really just pick what you want. This is arranged to be the opening track; if you like a closer, “Much Ado About Nothing” is for you. Crutchfield has reached this sort of Bob Dylan point in her songwriting where it sounds like she’s just singing whatever lines come to mind and it somehow fits. But then she closes the door with a line like “All my life I’ve been running from what you want.” Damn, girl!

When Crutchfield heard her album was nominated for a Grammy, she wrote “I never in one million years thought that it was a possibility, playing GBV covers in my parents basement.” As if I could like her more.

13. Hurray For The Riff Raff - “Hawkmoon”

I heard that Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra is my favorite songwriter’s favorite songwriter. Bonus points for that. Curiously Spotify classifies this as closer to “Heartless” because they are both in the genre “stomp and holler,” a name so silly it just cracks me up.

For the record, Aaron listed “Alibi” off this album, which is not wrong, and Katie had “Buffalo” which I’m still pondering.

14. illuminati hotties - “Can’t Be Still”

This one is labeled pure “bubblegrunge,” proving that Spotify is part of the global conspiracy to deny the historical significance of tenderpunk.

15. Charli xcx - “Spring breakers”

There’s a chance I could have missed this track but for the iconic line “Crazy girl shit, gonna go spring breakers!” ringing through my neighborhood. If you’ve never seen 2012’s Spring Breakers, starring James Franco and Selena Gomez, ask your friends whether you’ll love it or hate it first.

16. Dua Lipa - “Training Season”

It would be absurd to defend Dua Lipa and this song. No one getting 500 million streams needs defending. Yet somehow it seems to call for that. Perhaps you can name 10 earlier tracks better than this one. Yeah, I think I can. OK, so what? This is trying to be so little. A tiny confection. It’s not rich and it's not deep but it’s still good listening.

17. Soccer Mommy - “Driver”

And we’re back to “bubblegrunge” from indie sad girl volcano Sophie Allison. This album sounds intentionally unpolished, especially given Allison's awfully big bag of tricks. That’s pretty cool, actually.

18. MJ Lenderman - “On My Knees”

By the chorus this song sounds so much like “She’s Leaving You” that I can get them confused. I thought maybe this album answers the musical question, what would happen if James Taylor had been weaned on indie sleaze instead of American folk, but then I read up on Taylor’s early life and geez. Taylor had himself admitted to a psychiatric hospital in order to avoid the Vietnam draft after he dropped out of high school, and the medication he was given there may have led to his later struggles with heroin. I sure hope MJ isn’t in that kinda place!

This also reminds me that while we should all have sympathy for college-age kids who had important years crushed by lockdowns, this country has done much much worse. Recently. And the people in charge now are much much worse. Yeesh.

19. Liquid Mike - “Drinking and Driving”

Two minutes of antisocial lyrics and distorted guitars, what’s not to like.

20. High Vis - “Drop Me Out”

This is by far the hardest track on this list. Thanks to Sterogum for taking me into foreign spaces where I have the opportunity to cherish sounds I’d never otherwise listen to twice. They said it has “majestic edge-style guitars and sneaky melodies that push the track into anthem territory,” and really it's better than that. If you’ve heard how thick Graham Sayle’s scouse accent is, you’d appreciate that he shouts in what is basically a foreign language to him. Angry la’ dat scouser is, inn’t ‘e? Nowt wrong wi’ dat! But seriously, this bears repeated listening.

21. Bad Moves - “Outta My Head”

Am I a basic bitch for picking the single that was released months before the album, rather than some obscure album track? Yeah, sure, OK. For their last album in 2020 I picked an obscure album track, so you know I used to be cool. But I’m not going to lie, I’ve listened to this song a lot more than any other on the new album and doubt any of the others will ever catch up.

22. Hinds - “Superstar”

I grokked their U.S. debut album, in part because Spanish teenagers yelling in a foreign language they don’t quite understand is a perfect manifestation of punk sensibility. Eight years later (yikes!) whatever is left of Hinds can’t pull that off, but their punk sensibility remains. I love that they called the album VIVA HINDS.

23. Ducks Ltd. - “Train Full of Gasoline”

Somehow two non-American guitar dudes living in Canada find a way to sound more American than almost anything on this list.

24. Sharp Pins - “Every Time I Hear”

Speaking of guitar dudes … Sharp Pins is the side project of a young’un guitarist in a noise band that has more press clippings than songs. So low expectations for sure. Hey, the album is a really interesting collection of experiments built around different pop rock guitar tones. It’s hard not to call it lo-fi jangle pop, and that makes it sound like Elliott Smith, which it is not, but Smith is among the guitarists being imitated. So is George Harrison. I hope Slater finds an indie band real soon that can build his mastery of tone into killer tracks.

25. Chime School - “Give Your Heart Away”

Imagine if there were some guys in your neighborhood who loved the Smiths and thought Felt was the second greatest band of the 80s. They formed a band, kind of, and played in bars. Would you give them a listen? ‘Cause they’re right here for you.

26. Dehd - “Light On”

Dehd have been around for a while and I’ve listened to their songs for years, though this one tickles me a little harder. I’ve heard they punch it live, and are definitely on my list.

27. Julien Baker, TORRES - “Sugar in the Tank”

Slipping in just under the wire for 2024! Videos of these two on stage together were promising; I’m really glad they put in the work to record this. Is Mackenzie Scott just role playing as a country guitarist, or does she have some history with this?

As bonus, produced by Sarah Tudzin who also worked with boygenius. If Phoebe is done with boygenius, as she claims, this is a pretty damn fine consolation.

28. Merce Lemon - “Will You Do Me A Kindness”

Not too long ago Merce Lemon was playing in her dad’s band, covering Bonnie Prince Billy. You can really hear that on this track.

29. Eliza McLamb - “Mythologize Me”

I’m putting this one here to make a point. Sarah Tudzin produces, and she’s just so good at this tenderpunk thing that she takes a song that is, frankly, pretty bad, and makes it nice to listen to.

30. Adrianne Lenker - “Sadness As A Gift”

Here we go into the no-apologies indie sad girl section of our program. And is anyone better at this than Adrianne Lenker? She writes songs that must make everyone in the studio cry. I mean how could you sit and listen to this being recorded and be like “Yes, yes!” Afterwards, sure. But hearing this is just hearing sadness.

31. Blunt Chunks - “High Hopes”

I don’t know anything about this artist. But this is a goddamn gorgeous beautiful song, babe. Simple as that.

32. Lizzy McAlpine - “Older”

McAlpine is another likely candidate for your favorite songwriter’s favorite songwriter. Also, if you can sing like this, you don’t need much else. Older is a somber album, and nothing wrong with that:

Thought it'd be over by now

Thought you would leave

Thought I would come to my senses

Wish I was stronger somehow

Wish it was easy

Somewhere I lost all my senses

I wish I knew what the end is

She did an interview with the New Yorker this year that was basically like, I hate the music business and it destroys all joy in my life. Ouch. So I guess she’s going to try musical theatre for a while. Godspeed Lizzy.

32. Cassandra Jenkins - “Clams Casino”

Cassandra Jenkins is a mystery to me. She’s plainly a musical explorer, and no two songs on this album can be said to sound the same. Her experiments are usually more atmospheric and electronic than this track, and that makes me think she’s kind of playing at this. But then, if Alynda Segarra wrote this song, I’d be like, See, she is a genius! This is a really good song to listen to, and that’s the point after all.

34. Maggie Rogers - “Don’t Forget Me”

This album closer kicks all kinds of ass. So it’s got to be the closer here, too. Boy, does Taylor Swift wish she wrote this. Or maybe I wish Taylor wishes she wrote this. Why not both. I think Taylor has some free time ahead of her in 2025. Here’s wishing for the best.