CTT - Best of 2024!

Consuming in 2024: My Favorite Music

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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2024 digital spins

Goodbye, 2024: Embracing the Digital

It’s been an interesting year, to say the least. And since this isn’t really a personal blog, I won’t get into all the details of my life: there were a lot of challenges, primarily with my health and with my family, but in all honesty if I step outside of myself and look, I can see the good: I was able to make some significant lifestyle changes, my son was accepted to his first-choice college (and killed me in his SATs), and my wife remains 33 years later my best friend, my biggest champion, and the love of my life. And since April of this year I’ve become surprisingly consistent writing about the music I love here, even going so far as to (briefly) get back to a post a day in December highlighting my favorite music of 2024. Since there’s one day left, we’re going to wrap up with another summary, a brief listing of those albums I love that – for one reason or another – I don’t have a physical copy of. I love consuming the tangible, but sometimes you just have to embrace the digital.

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jupiter fungus - garden electric album cover

Jupiter Fungus: Garden Electric (2024)

With two days left in the new year, I got a sudden case of option paralysis: what albums to cover? There’s still so many left, just another sign of how great 2024 was for music. After staying up way too late listening to different albums and not getting anywhere, I slept, got up, made some coffee and popped on Garden Electric, the debut from Greek progressive rock duo Jupiter Fungus. It was a late release, coming out in November, and I honestly haven’t given it as many listens as I wanted to before putting it on the list. But for some reason the music washed over me as I played with my coffee setup (got a Hario Switch for Christmas, and yeah – it’s changing my coffee game…again), and it was exactly what I needed to hear. That album cover too, huh?

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ritual - the story of mr. bodg

Ritual: The Story of Mr. Bodg, Pt. 1 (2024)

Hey, a progressive rock album that didn’t originate from Norway! But it seems I can’t escape the goodness coming out of Scandinavia because Ritual hail from Sweden, and The Story of Mr. Bodg, Pt.1 has been stewing and percolating for a while: it’s the band’s first album in 17 years, and the first half of an ambitious concept cycle. I came across the band due to the cross pollination of vocalist and guitarist Patrik Lundström sharing vocal duties for Kaipa, another Swedish prog juggernaut I got into this year. But Ritual has a very different, unique sound and style that’s not like any other band I’ve come across, and their knack for vocal melodies, folk arrangements, and lyrical fun made this a joyous blast from beginning to end.

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sykofant - sykofant

Sykofant: Sykofant (2024)

I hesitate to call it burgeoning (it’s been going on for well over 15 years) but the Norwegian explosion of incredible progressive rock feels like what the UK scene might have been like in the 70s. And despite all the praise I’ve already showered this year on bands like Tusmørke, Kosmodome, and others (my 9C stoner rock list is filled with Norwegian bands) Sykofant is be the best of the bunch. Their self-titled debut is a massive achievement, self-produced and embracing just about every prefix you can attach to the -rock tag: progressive, stoner, jazz, space, classic, psychedelic…it’s all there woven together in a rock solid tapestry of epic songs. If someone asked me to give them one album that captured everything I love about rock, Sykofant might just be the album I give them.

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tusmørke - dawn of oberon

Tusmørke: Dawn Of Oberon (2024)

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around Tusmørke, the Norwegian progressive rock combo that never seems content to stick to one thing. Albums in English, albums in Norwegian, children’s albums, albums for adults…are they even prog rock? You can argue it with all the pyschedelia that colors their music, especially Dawn Of Oberon, the band’s (I think) 11th album of weird and wonderfully retro rock. It’s extremely chill, with hints of jazz and some of Zappa’s early hippy-drippy melodies and arrangements, and kind of the perfect thing when you want to ease off the “rock” side of progressive rock and let your, like, drift man…you know?

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