This is awfully late to publish a year-end list of any kind, and while I don’t have excuses, there are explanations.
First, “overlooked” is a far more objective criteria than “best” or “favorite,” determined only in relation to what has been appropriately celebrated thus far. Second, while it wasn’t difficult to come up with at least ten great albums that qualify as “under the radar,” the majority of my deliberation came at the front end, determining what exactly “overlooked” means in 2024. Year-end lists tend to coalesce around 20 or so albums every year, and is something overlooked when it falls outside of that group? Given how many quality albums are grasping for any sort of airtime, is something disqualified if it got reviewed at Pitchfork or resulted in a couple of interviews during its initial rollout? Are we thinking about the reader who is anxiously awaiting Rob Mitchum’s yearly year-end aggregate tally? Or the guy I recently talked to at work who asked about my personal top ten — someone who went completely all-in on Brat Summer and recognizes my American Football tattoo, but somehow still has never heard of MJ Lenderman?
As with all of these lists, ultimately, it comes down to vibes. A lot of the albums featured below work in a tempered, singer-songwriter style that tends to be overlooked anyways, unless it comes from an established name. Or, they’re veteran artists who made yet another excellent record that doesn’t constitute a “leap” or “breakthrough.” Or, if they’re younger, they were overshadowed by more hyped or popular artists working in a similar vein in 2024. I’m not arguing that these albums should’ve been across-the-board top-ten picks, or even necessarily that they were in my top ten. But when I think “overlooked,” and more important, “criminally overlooked,” these are the first that come to mind.
Ben Seretan — Allora
RIYL: Exvaneglical rock
From his 24-hour ambient odysseys to his more streamlined indie rock albums, Ben Seretan’s work teems with life — specifically, the desires of a man once repressed by religion, relationships, and shame to experience every earthly pleasure his remaining days have to offer, preferably as quickly as possible. This was the case before Allora, so Seretan’s “insane Italy album” was sure to be his most vital yet. Yet, “insane Italy album” isn’t exactly truth in advertising — the album was recorded in Italy, but stocked with far more relatable images of cross-country road trips, naked slip-n-slide parties, pyramids of empty Miller High Lifes, impromptu spiritual singalongs, and that copy of Funeral you haven’t listened to in years. Released in February 2020, Seretan’s previous album Youth Pastoral became a heartbreaking reminder of what we’d soon lose, and four years later, Allora arrives at the long tail of COVID as a plea to embrace the beauty of life that’s right in front of you before it disappears again.
Cold Gawd — I’ll Drown On This Earth
RIYL: Loving shoegaze, mocking shoegaze fans
At the end of 2024, shoegaze is in a state of paradox: While the genre hasn’t felt as central to the greater rock discussion since its early-’90s peak, you wouldn’t know it looking at year-end lists. Truth be told, a final review of albums I’d enjoyed and bookmarked throughout the year felt like rifling through the racks at Uniqlo, most of it achieving a fast-fashion level of baseline competence: plenty of good basics, but no real statement piece. But after years of being as celebrated for their merch as their music, Cold Gawd came pretty damn close with em>I’ll Drown On This Earth, and I’ll give them extra credit for doing so in “heavy shoegaze,” the most oversaturated subcategory of all. Not since Nothing’s Tired Of Tomorrow have we seen such an unrepentantly pretty hate machine from this scene, an album that drums up anthemic uplift and heavenly beauty even at its most depressive.
Growing Stone — Death Of A Momma’s Boy
RIYL: A Sun Kil Moon album you don’t have to listen to in a private session
There are plenty of albums about hitting rock bottom, slightly fewer about long-term recovery, and almost none that focus on the earliest part of sobriety, where people have to reckon with all of their resentments, regrets, and amends without the anesthetic. Growing Stone’s previous album, I Had Everybody Snowed, qualifies as the former, where Skylar Sarkis showed up wasted to family functions, searched for the “cocaine guy” in tourist towns, and dreamed about joining the mob over sampledelic indie-pop, like a dirtbag Night Falls Over Kortedala. Four years later, Death Of A Momma’s Boy peaks with “The Gym,” the most harrowing song ever made about confronting one’s demons on a treadmill. Or, you could argue that it peaks with “Spring In New York,” where Sarkis puts a megaphone to his airing of grievances and hopes for his asshole friends to show up in Supreme to his funeral. Or, a killer cover of “Play It All Night Long,” written by a guy who’s both a patron saint and cautionary tale of anyone who worked out their addiction on wax in real time.
Little Kid — A Million Easy Payments
RIYL: Sufjan Stevens leading a DSA meeting
How’s this for an introduction: “in occupied Palestine/near the birthsite of Christ/caught some footage that you wouldn’t believe.” And yet, Kenny Boothby’s voice barely rises above a whisper for the remaining seven-plus shellshocked minutes of “Bad Energy,” as the Little Kid frontman explores the ways people isolate or insulate from a negativity that feels as omnipresent in our atmosphere as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Maybe the quiet resignation of A Million Easy Payments resonates more now than it did in February, but it’s not on this list simply because it was prescient. Regardless of who’s in the White House or what nations are at war, Little Kid’s lush, writerly indie-folk meditations on god, death, friendship, and art sound like they were written to hit just as hard in 1924 or 2004 or 2034 as it does right this second.
Sinai Vessel — I Sing
RIYL: Spending a decade moving on from your emo phase
It’s a bummer that I Sing turned out to be the final Sinai Vessel album, but hardly a surprise. Caleb Cordes announced the project’s retirement in a statement that reiterated the small gratitudes and crippling self-doubt that went into deciding whether or not his artistic path was sustainable in an increasingly hostile economy — the same subjects about which he sung so eloquently on “Best Witness” and “Laughing,” spare and soulful heartland rockers that create a remarkable distance from the turbulent emo of Sinai Vessel’s earliest work, while maintaining the same introspective skepticism that once posited Cordes as an heir to David Bazan. Though Sinai Vessel has come to an end, hopefully it’s not the last we hear from Cordes — not when he’s finally starting to find his voice after 15 years.
Storefront Church — Ink & Oil
RIYL: Father John Misty showing up to your Magic: The Gathering game
If you hear Rufus Wainwright, Beck ca. Sea Change, Father John Misty, and Scott Walker throughout Ink & Oil, Lukas Frank won’t challenge that. The Storefront Church mastermind has been upfront about his primary influences, but the most fitting comparison for Storefront Church’s truly epic second LP is right there in its eighth song: “The Manhattan Project.” Working with a full orchestra and a headful of ghosts, I feel certain that Frank wasn’t trying to draft off residual Oppenheimer hype so much as find a proper comparative point for his own all-consuming, all-American symphony of destruction.
Tapir! — The Pilgrim, Their God And The King Of My Decrepit Mountain
RIYL: Policing the spelling of “Danielson Famile”
Though “The Greatest Blog Rock Albums Of All Time” was probably the most celebrated piece I’ve ever written for this publication, I still came out of the experience fully convinced that this style of music would never come back for even a moment, let alone a movement. You know the blog rock I’m talking about — the type that’s both twee and overwhelming, with eight-person lineups and color-coded outfits, glockenspiels, and superfluous punctuation in both the band names and song titles.
Tapir! emerged out of London’s bustling post-punk scene wearing papier-mache headpieces, quoting Walt Whitman, and titling their excellent debut The Pilgrim, Their God And The King Of My Decrepit Mountain. For good measure, it’s actually sequenced as a three-part suite. For all of its charming arrangements and winsome melodies, Tapir! didn’t exactly prove my initial assessment wrong — this is a “Most Overlooked List,” after all. But if they aren’t at the forefront of a broader revival just yet, it’s all the better to appreciate one of the most uniquely endearing albums of 2024.
The Hellp — LL
RIYL: Hate-reading every Indie Sleaze trendpiece and sorta wishing you liked it instead
They’re on Atlantic Records, and some back-of-the-napkin math suggests they might have more monthly Spotify listeners than every other act on this list combined. They’re from Los Angeles and are at the forefront of a trend almost entirely fabricated by NYC scenesters. Some of the songs on their debut album are six years old and apparently part of the mood board for both Frank Ocean when he was an active recording artist and Kanye West when he was a relevant recording artist. And I’ll argue that these are all reasons for LL to be on an overlooked albums list — at least anecdotally speaking, the same people who turned out to love this record are the ones who just assumed this was some industry plant, post-The Dare cash-in bullsh*t. To be clear, a lot of LL‘s inspiration does come from late-aughts staples that both deserve to be on Indie Sleaze playlists (Crystal Castles, Justice) and ones that absolutely do not (Passion Pit, MGMT, plus there’s one song here that brazenly rips off Phoenix’s “1901”). And yes, the slick press photos and self-serving hype and especially the name actively contradict what The Hellp actually are, a couple of earnest studio rats trying to create their own Since I Left You or Entroducing… rather than a Night Ripper, bypassing easy and impotent nostalgia to create a monument out of iPod Minis.
Tony Vaz — Pretty Side Of The Ugly Life
RIYL: Remembering Altered Zones
Tony Vaz is King Krule, 24-hour party person. He’s Alex G playing the outlaw in “County” rather than someone telling their story second-hand. He’s Dean Blunt fronting a Midwest emo band, or a chopped and screwed version of Pinegrove’s Cardinal. This is just a sample of Vaz’s cast of characters on his fascinating debut, Pretty Side Of The Ugly Life, which feels like less a curated mixtape than a short story collection held together by its author’s singular voice — a dusky mutter that imbues everything with the uneasy ambience of a sleepless summer night in New York City, full of bad ideas that turn into great stories.
22° Halo — Lily Of The Valley
RIYL: Wife guys (complementary)
“Albums about cancer” are an inherently heavy affair and are thus expected to acknowledge that fact up front. For example, Electro-Shock Blues, Stage Four, Hospice, and Warren Zevon’s The Wind have nothing in common aside from their intensity and gravity, where each second is handled like a literal matter of life or death. Lily Of The Valley is explicitly about Will Kennedy grieving over a diagnosis of brain cancer given to his wife and collaborator Kate Schneider.
And yet, it’s all the more affecting for the way Kennedy refuses to overplay his hand, working within the same chiming, mid-fi indie rock of 22° Halo’s previous albums to deal with the crushing mundanities that confirm the reality of the situation — awaiting test results, helping Schneider use toothpaste and eat a protein bar, drinking a Diet Coke in the waiting room. On the most lively song, he sits in traffic. In Delaware. “You can make it the year, you can make it decades,” Kennedy sings, and from all accounts, Schneider has made a full recovery, which only underscores Lily Of The Valley as a soundtrack to both heartbreak and recovery, a testament to holding out hope.
