listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 5

We continue on...

Part one, part two, part three, part four.

“Bark At The Moon” - MJ Lenderman
from Benjamin Birdie (a writer, found here)
"Everyone (correctly) gives Lenderman props for his singular lyrical style, but this song has a riff for the…bridge? I have no idea how music is structured, but the guitar part that comes after the verses, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s such an incredibly gorgeous and perfect piece of music. I must have listened to the song a hundred times this year."

Last time I talked about how it was pleasing that cumgirl8 made a song called "Karma Police." MJ Lenderman, or as I can't help thinking of him, More Juice Blenderman, went a step further on "Bark at the Moon" and didn't just name it after the Ozzy Osbourne song—he has lyrics about the Ozzy Osbourne song, and specifically about playing the Guitar Hero version of the Ozzy Osbourne song.

This to me is as clear an explanation of the charm of Mark Jacob Lenderman as you can can ask for: he's got a great handle on music history and uses that stash of intel to please a wide range of demographics, but the influence of his elders often gets filtered through something contemporary and relatable for his own generation, like video games, or the movie Cars. He addresses his own cohort of 25-year-olds, who have to fight off digital native brainrot like it's the common cold, but he's also appealing to the folks who just wish I Love the '80s was required watching for every middle schooler in America.

I feel like Manning Fireworks didn't move me on a personal level the way it did others—if we're grading on this year's MJ-XCX scale, I found a little more common ground with Charli's stimulant-addled baby wanter than with Lenderman's houseboat himbo—but I had a pretty good time with the album all the same. And "Bark At The Moon" is one of the standouts, specifically the way it slow-burns its way over the ten minute line, guitars smoldering like a beach bonfire left to die in the wee hours of the morning, surrounded by cig butts and crushed cans.

"Opaline" - Heriot
from Internet User; James Blunt Force Trauma. The Chef de Party.
"2024 has, unfortunately for my brain, been one of the best years for music in recent memory. Every week a delicious platter of ground-breaking, innovative, genre bending e.t.c artistry has been served up and it's been *incredibly* difficult to pin point standouts.

Opaline however has got my vote purely because it made me like guitar solos again. It's a wild journey of mesmerising atmosphere, soaring tones and visceral breakdowns that feel like a building has been dropped on your head. Hardcore kids, death metal battle jackets, industrial goths and classic heads have everything here and it's presented beautifully."

Trust the Chef de Party to recommend me something kick-ass that I had never heard before. The interplay between the translucent vocals and the haze-shrouded guitars is amazing—somehow both are mixed for maximum impact. Specifically when Debbie Gough bends that last night of "liiiiiiiight" at 2:14 way up before the whole band crashes back in...that is some black magic right there. The darkness of song works especially well for this exact moment, aka when the sun sets at 4:30pm and brings forth a darkness so all-encompassing that it seems plausible we'll never get another sunrise again...mmm, just seasonal things.

"Purple Cotton Haze" - Whitworth. feat. Chloe Berry
from Dez Niboh (St. Louis music producer)
"This song is my favorite song of 2024 for a few reasons:

• I always love discovering new music, and the past few years I've been more intentional about specifically seeking St. Louis artists' music across genres. This is my favorite St. Louis band and this is my favorite song from their debut 2024 album, Earth to Dreamer.
• Nostalgia is one of my favorite emotions, and I'm a sucker for music that makes me feel that way. For some reason, this song made me nostalgic about the memories I made & shenanigans I got into with my childhood friends. It also made me envision the new experiences to be made with my current friends. Not sure why the music takes me there, but every time I play the song that's where I am. And I love it there."

After the previous song's darkness, it's time to let the light in. This is such a fun vibe, from the slightly wonky guitar tone to the extremely brisk pace (the quickest and surest way to my heart, song-wise, is to just be...uh...fast. hah.) Definitely picking up on the nostalgia factor—something about "Purple Cotton Haze" seems designed to soundtrack the part of a movie before the narrative arc bends toward the inevitable grand bummer, where there's a montage of people having fun and being goofy. It's not the song you play on the cross-country road trip, but it's the one you use to score your memories afterward. Light, dreamy, jaunty, summery, unquestionably pleasant.

"Red Stop" - Brian Kage
from Stevie Tee (of Detroit area techno band Doogatron)
"First saw Brian Kage playing a live hardware set with Luke Hess in their production duo Reference at Detroit's big electronic music festival Movement over 10 years ago which left a lasting impression. After many years of high quality singles & EPs, Brian's first full length solo album Timeless Times arrived this year in the form of an expansive 4xLP box set ranging every shade of deep house to harder techno variants, all immaculately mixed with sophisticated arrangements.

One particular standout for me is a relatively deep cut called 'Red Stop' which is a smooth acid house roller with vocals reminiscent of late 80's Cabaret Voltaire. Stephen Hawking-style mechanized vocal samples also recall electro classics like Kraftwerk's 'Numbers' or Dopplereffekt's 'Speak & Spell' threaded through an updated sound that slaps on any system. If I could send an audio postcard from my band Doogatron for 2024 that is specific to our regional experience & an organic influence on our idea of authenticity it would be 'Red Stop' & the whole Timeless Times set from Brian Kage."

One of my favorite books I read this year was Health And Safety: A Breakdown, a memoir by New Yorker staff writer Emily Witt about getting into the underground dance scene of NYC with a dual approach of hedonistic abandon and journalistic precision. I was struck by the way she described her burgeoning interest in techno and house music as a desire for music to offer the listener some space. Repetition and abstraction don't have to be boring or inscrutable—they can leave room for you to work out your own shit in the space they create. Now I'm constantly thinking about dance music as, like, polyhedrons. Rotating cubes in my mind, etc.

I listened to a lot of electronic music this year but nothing quite like "Red Stop," a perfect mix of brain-tickling embellishment and guileless rhythm. This song makes me realize I need to listen to more acid house...acid house is something that I keep forgetting about and then chiding myself for forgetting. Side note: Timeless Times is such a good title for an album that I almost can't stand it.

"We Make Hits" - Yard Act
from Chris Wade (producer)

I was talking excitedly about this upcoming "listening to your favorite songs of 2024" series in the car with my husband Chris (he is my podcast co-host, also, but firstly he is my husband) and he asked if he could recommend a song. And I said of course he could. And this is the song he recommended.

"We Make Hits" is actually a throughline to last year's end of year blog festivities, when I was recommended Yard Act's "The Trench Coat Museum" and fell in love with its LCD Soundsystem x Cake x The Rapture vibes. This year these loveable lads from Leeds released a great dance-y punk-y album called Where's My Utopia? and then toured the world. We saw them play the Regent Theater in L.A. and they were electric. Frontman James Smith is charismatic as hell, and they had something you don't see often in this tight musical economy...backup singers! Two of them! Shout out Lauren Fitzpatrick and Daisy Smith!

This song is so meta, it's like an evil social media company created by Mark Zuckerberg. In it, "two broke millennial men" decide to one-up "post-punk's latest poster boys" by doing something a little crazy: writing catchy songs that a lot of people might enjoy. They may not be Nile Rodgers, but they certainly aren't hook dodgers, and if you listen to this song, I think the cheeky lure of Yard Act just might lock u in. Hot tip, play this song back to back with "The Grim Reaper" by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and enjoy some choice white boy flows of the British Commonwealth.

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Thanks to all the song recommenders <3 See you...tomorrow...