Finally. As of this morning you can listen to my buddy Dan and I wax rhapsodic about our favorite non-metal albums of 2024 wherever you get your podcasts, which means it’s time to finally get down to bees-niss and sum up the year in new music. I already recapped most of the metal selections in my various (Un)Focused Definition playlists, and of course you can hit the “best of 2024” tag to read the reviews for many of them regardless of genre. We’ll use a lot of same categories I used back in 2021, and add a few more to talk about the stuff that wasn’t completely reviewed here on the site. Let’s get to it below the jump.

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The “Official” Non-Metal List, Whatever That Means…

Like I said, a lot of my metal stuff is already posted at Nine Circles, so here’s a quick list of the albums I talked to Dan about that fell outside of that site’s “extreme” parameters:

• Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks – True
• Beyoncé – Cowboy Carter
• Nolan Potter – The Perils of Being Trapped Inside A Head
• Ty Segall – Three Bells
• Gary Clark, jr. – JPEG RAW
• American Aquarium – The Fear of Standing Still
• Johnny Blue Skies – Passage Du Desir
• Wand – Vertigo
• Deep Purple – = 1
• Smashing Pumpkins – Aghori Mhori Mei
• Abdallah Oumbadougou – AMGHAR The Godfather of Tuareg Music Vol. 1
• Mdou Moctar – Funeral For Justice
• toe – Now I See The Light
• Geordie Greep – The New Sound
• Willow – Empathogen
• Brittany Howard – What Now
• Letting Up Despite Great Faults – Reveries

With the exception of the Johnny Blue Skies, I think everything was reviewed here, and I’ll eventually get to Sturgill Simpson’s new incarnation as well. The TL;DR version? It’s a sumptuous return to form after what was for me too many bluegrass albums. I wish there was a little more rock to it, but I’ll take what I can get, especially when Simpson sounds as engaged as he does here. It’s an album of comfort, of slow, smooth hypnotic lines that sooth and call to a warmth that gets me with each listen.

On the other side of the coin, there were a few albums we needed to cut in order to ensure the episode didn’t stretch on forever (even edited it went over two hours), so let’s talk about the lovely rhythms of L’Bnat, the sophomore album from Asmaa Hamzaoui and her group Bnat Timbouktou, aka “The Daughters of Timbuktu”. Upholding the musical traditions of Gnawa, an ethnic culture of Morocco, it’s a powerful statement both in upholding those musical traditions but also in stripping away the perception that it’s a male-dominated community. Just great, addictive music that my entire family have taken to.

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Live and Archived

Just like every year, some of the best music released isn’t actually from that year, but from years past, or celebrating music from said past. So let’s jump into a bunch of releases live or otherwise that gave me no end of joy in 2024.

Jimi Hendrix was one of the first artists I started collecting archival releases from, starting way back with The Jimi Hendrix Experience 4-CD box set in 2000. It’s been a long, wonderful journey into Hendrix’s archives, and l’m happy that Electric Lady Studios continues to show there’s no end in sight of incredible Hendrix music recorded to tape. Three CDs worth of demos, outtakes, and alternate/early versions of the music recorded at the famed studio that would have served as a follow-up to Electric Ladyland, tracks like the superb six and half minute workout of “Straight Ahead” or take 8 of “Tune X/Just Came In” which is basically an early draft of “In From The Storm” are magnificent. Bonus: you also get the full-length documentary on Blu Ray. Just a great all around package, essential for Hendrix fanatics like myself.

It was also a very good year for Miles Davis fans, as Columbia’s ongoing Bootleg series continues with Vol. 8, Miles in France 1963 & 1964. I make sure to grab every single one of these sets when they come out, and this is a terrific one, fives discs of live festival performances in France from two different incarnations of Davis’s Quintet. I think (don’t quote me here) this marks the first time we get live performances from the ’63 band, featuring George Coleman on tenor sax. The recording is lively and vibrant, and the music is fantastic, including an amped up 10-minute run of “So What” that is phenomenal. Hearing live renditions of tracks from lesser known albums like Seven Steps to Heaven is a joy, and I’m particularly taken with their extended rendition of “My Funny Valentine”, one of my favorite standards in both jazz and pop.

Mute Records has been doing the Lord’s work releasing their series of archival Can performances at a steady clip, but since the first one fans have been clamoring for something – anything – featuring the classic lineup with Damo Suzuki fronting the band. It was a veritable treasure this year with three releases, but the capper was the answer to everyone’s prayers with Live in Paris 1973. Fans got their wish with a killer set, featuring massive improvisations around tracks from their essential classic Ege Bamyasi which had come out three months prior. More reflective though to my ears just as satisfying is the Live in Ashton 1977 set, which sees the band in terrific, albeit more meditative form as they worked through the poor reception of Saw Delight.

I’m not sure what it was, but something in 2024 brought me back to The Doors. I was working through their working their live stuff, including Absolutely Live which I had on vinyl and their Live in New York archive set from 2009. I haven’t been too engaged with Record Store Day lately, but I saw a video where someone was singing the praises of Live in Detroit, which was seeing its first vinyl release after a Rhino Records CD release in 2000. One of their longest ever sets, it’s a mammoth show, taking place at Detroit’s Cobo Arena in May 1970. Over two hours long and getting the group banned in the process, it sounds amazing, with gargantuan workouts of “When The Music’s Over” and “Light My Fire”. If there’s a highlight, it’s Morrison going wild throughout the near 18 minutes of “The End” – one of the few times the song was captured in its entirety live. Listening to this has completely re-ignited my love for The Doors, and I can’t wait to dig into it again.

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Rock You Like a (Prog Rock) Hurricane

If there was any uniting theme to my listening habits in 2024, it was progressive rock in its many forms. I covered a lot of my favorites on the site this year, including Sykofant, Ellesmere, Jupiter Fungus, Ritual, and The Tangent. There were of course a lot, LOT more, but I’ll touch on a few here.

Oddleaf was truly the band that came out of nowhere, the French outfit’s debut Where Ideal and Denial Collide putting mellotron and copious quantities of keyboards front and center along with the mesmerizing vocals of Adeline Gurtner. It hit the prog world by storm, with many of my go-to commentators singing its praises. Musically the songwriting has whispers of Opeth, although it’s very much neo-prog and not “metal” in any sense – there are hardly any guitars, certainly not in any lead capacity. The emphasis is very much on the keys, and primary songwriter Carina Taurer really shines as the group’s leader. After being out of stock forever I was finally able to grab a copy of the CD courtesy of LaserCD so expect a full review of this pretty soon…

I think the only reason I didn’t write about Life in the Wires, the latest (possibly final?) album by the UK’s Frost*is that with over an hour and a half of music I still think I haven’t digested it all. But what I have soaked in is simply glorious: fantastic guitars and keyboards crafting incredible riffs and musical ideas that spark and crackle with life. Beautiful, anthemic vocals and oodles and oodles of sublime solos make this spiritual successor to the band’s 2006 masterpiece Milliontown and conceptual sequel to 2021’s Day and Age the best thing the band have released. If it’s truly the end, it’s on the highest possible note.

It wouldn’t be an end of year list without more progressive rock from Norway, so why not spend a minute or two singing the praises of The Windmill, a new-to-me band whose fourth album Mindscapes may be very heavily indebted to the 70s, particularly Genesis and Camel, but you’re never going to hear me complain about that. Kicking off with the 22-minute epic “Fear” there’s a certain amount of glammed up drama in the way the vocal melodies and keyboards work together, but the grit to the guitars make it go down very nice, and when they do some of the breakdowns with electric guitar and flute you’d swear you could hear Ian Anderson calling his lawyers in the background. I haven’t yet dug into the band’s previous output but that’s sure to change.

There’s something about the way Neal Morse writes prog that just works for me. He knows when to rock out hard, and when to lay on the drama and symphony and lift you up. No Hill For A Climber is his debut as Neal Morse & The Resonance, a group of younger musicians from the Nashville area who collaborated on a super engaging record that does pretty much everything you want from a Neal Morse album to do. Bookended by two 20+minute epics and relatively light on the overt Christian themes, it’s a lot to take in but worth the time and attention…

Switzerland’s Monkey3 straddle a lot of lines – something that’s easier to do when you’re an instrumental band. But Welcome to the Machine not only namecheck one of the biggest, best bands of all time to do the prog thing, but the final track “Collapse” has so much David Gilour in its DNA there’s really no other place to put this album. Super heavy progressive rock that really emphasizes the “rock” aspect of the genre…

The NY-based IZZ first came to my attention with 2020’s Don’t Panic and the very Douglas Adams-inspired 18-minute epic “42”. You have my attention, ladies and gentlemen. Collapse The Wave mixes in complex rhythms and intricate arrangements that speak just as much to pop as it does to progressive rock, but not like any pop you’ll likely come across on the radio. The whole album is a joy from beginning to end, something that delights me every time I listen to it.

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Heavy Or Otherwise

I covered so much of the heavier music over at Nine Circles this year there’s isn’t a lot left over that I didn’t write about in some form or another. And since we’re already closing in on 2,000 words here I’m going to go through and briefly hit on some of the other records, heavy or otherwise, that brought me joy in 2024.

A lot of people try to cover Nine Inch Nails. Few can do it justice. Almost no one can bring something new to it. Allie Goertz can. All the big hits are here on Peeled Back, but when she reaches further and deeper into Reznor’s catalog it works wonders. Come for “Closer” and “Hurt”; stay for “Ruiner” and “The Becoming”.

I didn’t know until >>>>, the fourth release from the UK’s Beak> that Geoff Barrow of Portishead was behind it. No wonder I liked it so much. Largely ambient and electronic, the album was recorded live in a room with no overdubs – just editing. The Eno-esque restrictions are interesting, but it’s the music that matters, pulsing and throbbing with a dark, nighttime intensity both hypnotic and frightening like a dangerous lover.

Sometimes grabbing a promo at random pays off. I never heard of Cold In Berlin before grabbing their EP The Body Is The Wound to cover for Nine Circles, and its icy cold industrial gothic pain is gripping and addictive. Maya’s vocals are fractured dreams and shattered glass reflecting the trauma of the world.

I didn’t know who Fidelity Jones were back in the day when they released an EP and single on Dischord before calling it quits in 1990. But I saw this new Magdeburg Lad EP on the label’s Bandcamp site and, well…it’s Dischord, you can’t go wrong, you know? I didn’t: this is creepy and beautiful and not what I was expecting from the label. I should know by now…

Uh, Nolan Potter producing a 9-piece funk/space rock/psych band? That’s all you really need to tell me about Grandmaster the band and Grandmaster the eponymously titled debut album. The vinyl is on its way and I’ll be reviewing it soon. In the meantime how about one more digital spin of the Zappa meets Steely Dan of “Castle Door” huh?

Do I want J Mascis releasing more acoustic heavy tunes that basically mirror his Dinosaur jr. output? Yes. Does What Do We Do Now have enough great Mascis solos to keep me in fuzz heaven until another Dinosaur jr. album comes out? Yes. Does my wife still confuse J Mascis with Eddie Vedder? So help me, yes…

Ngélar is the sophomore record from the Indonesian blues rock sextet Lair that revels in their country’s musical traditions while never failing to rock out. The groups gets a big sonic assist from Go Kurosawa of the fabulous Kikagaku Moyo, and there are layers upon layers of nuance and melodic nuggets to get lost in.

52 years after their classic RPI debut Dedicato A Frazz (reviewed here), Semiramis return with their sophomore album La Fine Non Esiste. With only drummer Paolo Faenza remaining from the original lineup, it’s a different beast but the tunes are no less engaging, and tracks like opener “In quel secondo regno” have the fire of the band’s debut. Super fun stuff.

Having already put out one of my favorite albums of the year, I would have been content if Ty Segall did nothing else. But nope: dude had to go and put out an album of just drums and percussion. Love Rudiments is a reminder that Segall is a drummer first, and the album is a percussive symphony charting the rise and fall of a love affair. Not for all tastes, but definitely for mine.

For a band so drenched in psychedelia and the acid of the late 60s/early 70s, it feels natural for Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats to burrow further into their fascinations and construct a full soundtrack to a giallo that never existed. Nell’ ora blu is more an experience than an album, but it’s one I keep coming back to, being a fan of both the genre and the band itself. Be patient, hang with it, and there are treasures to be found.

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Okay. 2024 is now firmly in the rearview mirror (except for all the albums I still want to dig further into and review). Thanks for bearing with me – I’m excited that I’ve been able to maintain a level of consistency writing here, and I can’t wait to explore more music and what it means to me in 2025.