1. Pink Balloons by Ekko Astral. It seems somehow appropriate in a year in which transphobia became a dark and ugly force in a presidential election that a trans-fronted band would release a rocking, riveting record that’s fun, sometimes frightening, and full of surprises. But that’s just what Ekko Astral did.
But don’t think for a second that politics or sexuality had anything to do with my selection of Pink Balloons as my album of the year. I don’t care if singer Jael Holzman is a woman, a man or a kangaroo. I knew from the first time I heard the album that it would be among my favorites of 2024. This is rock ‘n’ roll like I love it: loud, sometimes discordant, sometimes funny, and poignant without being preachy.
As Holzman told The Washington Post earlier this year, “… I want some kid in Oklahoma who’s in college and just likes loud rock music to suddenly find that his favorite band in the world is fronted by a trans woman, and he didn’t even know it.”
I’m no kid, but I’m from Oklahoma and I love Ekko Astral. They quickly joined my favorite new bands I've been turned onto in recent years.
I might be a little biased here because Holzman is a journalist -- an investigative climate and energy reporter. And in fact, she's a former colleague of a former colleague of mine. But it's the music and only the music that matters here. So Pink Balloons is number one this year.
The opening song "Head Empty Blues starts out with ooky spooky spoken word set on repeat ("I can see you shifting in your seat...") backed by gong-like cymbals and a slow rising feedback crescendo. Then a bass-led riff with Jael coming in like an avenging banshee. She sing -- or recites in a sing-song manner:
Bubblegum vodka / I will carry a knife, it’s my right, won’t cost ya /LOL Kafka / I will bury my life in a Lite-Brite charter ...
Then the crazed guitars move in.
But by the end of the tune the lyrics shift from urgent confidence to gnawing terror:
I’ve got stalkers outside, not going out tonight / Gonna sit and take pics in my underwear / My brain’s bust like Molly Shannon / Just shoot me out a cannon / And as I hit open my head / Can you see it? nothing’s there!
And yet, she's retained a good measure of humor. Not only the Molly Shannon reference but the sassy wink in her voice in the line about taking pictures in her underwear.
And mind you this is only the first song on the album.
By the way, the above-quoted Washington Post is Ekko Astral’s hometown paper. Yes, they’re from D.C., home of The Bad Brains, Fugazi and Henry Rollins. If Holzman and crew keep making music like this, they’ll deserve to be in the same splendid pantheon.
Here’s one of my favorites from Pink Balloons, “On Brand” :
2. Cartoon Darkness by Amyl & The Sniffers. Coming in at a very close second place in my top is this album by perhaps the most exciting, the most dangerous sounding band to come out of Australia since Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
But before I actually get into this record, allow me to digress
Back in 1994 when The Pretenders released their album Last of the Independents, their record company’s promo material for the work included a sheet of advice from Chrissie Hynde to female rockers.
The most memorable line was “Don’t think that sticking your boobs out and trying to look fuckable will help. Remember you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not `fuck me,’ it’s `fuck you’!”
Amy Taylor, singer of Amyl & The Sniffers, ain’t exactly shy about sticking her boobs out. In fact on the cover of Cartoon Darkness she’s actually lifting her shirt and flashing them (though someone, maybe her record company – digitally censored her mammary glands). And one of the songs here has Amy declaring her love for "Tiny Bikinis."
But in her music, Amy’s crazy energy sounds more like a rabid wildcat than a purring sex kitten.
And she has the “fuck you” part of Hynde’s equation completely nailed. The very first words you hear on the album (in the song “Jerkin’,”) are:
You're a dumb cunt/ You're an asshole / Every time you talk you mumble, grumble / Need to wipe your mouth after you speak 'cause it's an asshole …
Oh, Amy. I bet you say that to all the boys!
Most the songs here are rock-'em, sock-'em stompers -- or POUNDERS!, as my podcasting hero Michael Kaiser of Radioblivion would say -- with Amy's voice out front. But there also are some slower-paced numbers on which Amyl sings, the best one being "Big Dreams," which concerns the need to get out of the house, get out of your doubt-filled head and do something, even if you're broke.:
You got them big dreams, you wanna get out of here / You're sick of being stuck in the apartment /Ya strapped for cash and well, you don’t know where to start / It isn't easy with the price of living ... Just take a breath and get out of this place / I know you can just get yourself together
Back to Chrissie Hynde's advice to girl rockers, her last – and less-quoted -- piece of wisdom was “Don’t take advice from people like me. Do your own thing always.”
Amy Taylor has nailed that one too.
Here’s another great one from Cartoon Darkness, “U Should Not Be Doing That”:
3. Trail of Flowers by Sierra Ferrell. Sierra Ferrell -- the West Virginia former busker whose music is even more enchanting than her unabashedly weird sense of fashion, released the best country album last year, the bet by a country mile.
I knew that I’d love Trail of Flowers after hearing "Fox Hunt," which was released as a single a few months.It's a rompin' Cajun-style fiddle tune with thunderous drums that suggests a fox-hunting army coming over the hill. As Sierra wails, it grabs you by the throat and shakes you into submission like a captured fox. This song was one of the major highlights of her excellent show at Santa Fe Brewing Company last summer.
But I think I love another track, "Dollar Bill Bar" -- even more.
It's a strange tune that starts off as a tale of a woman seeming to mock all her would-be paramours down at her favorite drinking establishment, one of those joints with a tradition of pinning signed dollar bills to the walls. (Here's a real Dollar Bill Bar. in Oatman, Arizona.)
"Guys like you are a dozen, you should count your lucky stars," she sings at the start of each refrain. But then she scoffs at "every single cowboy's heart" she's broken adding if she had a buck for each one, "Well, honey, I could break a hundred down at the Dollar Bill Bar."
But before you start thinking she's just bragging about all the horny cowboys she's thwarted, we learn that the cowboys aren't the only ones with broken hearts. The last verse turns sad, bordering non self-loathing:
So if I ask you for a dollar bill down at the Dollar Bill Bar / Just think twice before you pony up / Take me for a twirl on that floor / And if I tell you that I love you / And I tell you that I wanna take you home / Just turn around here and leave here / 'Cause I'm telling you you're better off alone
Sierra explores similar territory in the more light-hearted fiddle tune "I Could Drive You Crazy," which is another outstanding track on Trail of Flowers.
I found that the more I listen to the album, the more all the songs start to shine.
There's the Caribbean-influenced "Why Haven't You Loved Me Yet"; there's "Chitlin' Cookin' Time in Cheatum Country," whose melody sounds hauntingly familiar to "St. James Infirmary"; and the sweet affirmation "Lighthouse," which at first I considered lightweight, until the pure happy spirit opened my eyes and lit my soul. (Weird distraction: For a completely different song called "Lighthouse" released this year, check out the dark and startlingly powerful Stevie Nicks tune, which I believe is her best effort since "Edge of 17.")
Trail of Flowers is bursting with musical gems, virtually every song full of secret treasures. Take it for a twirl on that floor.
The video for "Foxhunt" probably should win video of the year. Dig below:
4. The Collective by Kim Gordon. And now for the easy listening portion of our program ...
My major take on this record -- a solo album from Sonic Youth co-founder Gordon -- is that No-Wave lives.
With producer Justin Raisen providing crazy, explosive electro beats and noisy, sometimes grating background sludge, Gordon's punk-girl spoken- word sounds like a logical progression for the No-Wave music and art scene in late 70s-early 80s New York. Out of that world came the likes of Suicide, James Chance, Lydia Lunch ... and Sonic Youth
On Bandcamp she explained what prompted her latest record:
“On this record, I wanted to express the absolute craziness I feel around me right now,” says Gordon. “This is a moment when nobody really knows what truth is, when facts don’t necessarily sway people, when everyone has their own side, creating a general sense of paranoia. To soothe, to dream, escape with drugs, TV shows, shopping, the internet, everything is easy, smooth, convenient, branded. It made me want to disrupt, to follow something unknown, maybe even to fail.”
Kim has said The Collective was inspired, at least in part, by Jennifer Egan's novel The Candy House, which features a social-media tycoon who invents a device called "Own Your Unconscious," which lets people upload their memories to a "cloud" called "the Collective" in order visit their past memories -- as well as the memories of others.
"I won't join the collective," Kim sings -- yes, actually sings. It's a plain-stated rejection of giving up her soul to become part of a dystopian nightmare techno world. But that line is followed by "but I want to see you," showing the narrator's longing for human connection, perhaps mourning someone who she lost to that world.
One of the most ear-catching tracks on The Collective is "I'm a Man," which concerns what I referred to earlier as "The He-Man Woman-Haters Club," that seems to be growing uglier all the time. Some of them might recognize themselves in the lyrics:
Dropped out of college, don't have a degree / And I can't get a date / It's not my fault I'm not bringing home the juice / I'm not bringing home the bacon / It's good enough for Nancy ... / So what if I like the big truck? /Giddy up, giddy up / Don't call me toxic / Just 'cause I like your butt.
I don't think Muddy Waters done it that a way!
I read somewhere that "Nancy" is a reference to Nancy Reagan. But I think Nancy Mace works just as well.
Here's the video of that song:
5. Kinnery of Lupercalia: Buell Legion by Slim Cessna's Auto Club. Not only did the Auto Club make one of the very best albums of the year, they, along with headliners Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds (more on them later in this post) this Colorado group also performed the best live show I saw in Santa Fe all year.
This is the Auto Club's first release in eight years. It's part 2 of a trilogy of "Kinnery of Lupercalia" albums, which began with Undelivered Legion by Munly & The Lupercalians, a "spin-off" band that includes many of the same members of the Auto Club, including Slim Cessa. The final album in the trilogy will be done by another Cessna spin-off, Denver Broncos UK (DBUK), which also includes basically members of the Auto Club, including frontmen Cessna and Jay Munly.
Please don't ask me to explain that band name. And please don't ask me to explain the whole Lupercalia mythos. I was relieved when I read this quote from Munly in an interview with Supercorrupter last May While saying it's cool if people want to connect all the themes and characters in the trilogy (and plugs his lyrics book, Chants, Calls and Hollers from Lupercalia, which he says will help with that), he adds:
Conversely, if a person wants to simply go to a show and have a nice time and not have to ‘study’ beforehand to enjoy themselves then hopefully the music and melodies and the band’s delivery can stand on their own.
That's about where I am. For me, all Cessna and Cessna-associated albums, as well as well as the live show reminds me of a crazed backwoods revival, full of religious imagery, songs of salvation, shame and an underbelly of sin and violence, twanging banjos, sweet and sour steel guitar, chants, calls, hollers.
It's a heady mix that defies categorization. And there's also a bitchen song about rabbits:
6. Little Rope by Sleater-Kinney. I was so disappointed with Sleater-Kinney a few years ago when they effectively forced out drummer Janet Weiss right after they released their St. Vincent-produced album The Center Won't Hold.
So Little Rope, to my ears, represents a redemption. And their performance in Albuquerque last March sealed that deal. Despite that bump in the road, Sleater-Kinney still is a major band in my ears. (And listening to Center all these years later, it's not as wretched as I remember, but it still sounds watered-down to me.)
The origins of Little Rope began when singer Corin Tucker received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Italy. (Years before, bandmate Carrie Brownstein had listed Corin as her emergency contact on a passport form, but Brownstein had changed her number.)
The embassy was trying to contact Carrie to inform her that her mom and stepfather had been killed in a car wreck. According to the promo for the album on Bandcamp:
"In the months that followed, Brownstein took solace in an act that felt deeply familiar – playing guitar. “I don’t think I’ve played guitar that much since my teens or early twenties,” she says. “Literally moving my fingers across the fretboard for hours on end to remind myself I was still capable of basic motor skills, of movement, of existing.”
So it seems appropriate that the albums opener, titled "Hell," deals with the emotional anguish of the sudden loss of loved one, though in the case of the song is about losing loved ones to gun violence. Here Corin sings:
Hell needs no invitation / Hell don't make no fuss / Hell is desperation / And a young man with a gun.
After which Corin lets loose with her trademark wail, which perhaps is the greatest among living rockers. And, as usual, that wail is soul-cleansing, even though a little frightening.
Later in tbe album, Carrie seems to directly address her loss in the rocking "Hunt You Down" singing
... I've been down so long, I pay rent to the floor / I'm reelin', out of sorts, I'm unsteady / Been crawlin' 'round here for days in hopes the walls open up And give way, call me home
Then, in what I'm assuming to be a message to her late parents, she adds probably the most heartbreaking lines of Little Rope:
I forgive you, I wish I'd told you so / Nowhere for the words to go, with what's left of me / I'll send your ashes my love
The themes of loss, grief and anger stay with Little Rope all the way to the end. Posting on Instagram in January, Sleater-Kinney said that album's closer, "Untidy Creature" was written before they even knew they were working on a new album and they were suspicious about it because it came too easy. However,
... as the year wore on, and our choices and bodily autonomy shrank, our feeling about the song changed. It became a gift, somewhere to put our darkest fears, and our deepest hopes. We sometimes feel trapped or angry, and yet still we breathe.
Keep breathing, lCarrie and Corin. You're still making some world-class rock 'n' roll.
Here's the video for "Hell":
7. That Delicious Vice by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds. As I previously mentioned, I got to see Kid Congo Powers and his pals in October with Slim Cessna's Auto Club, in what was the best concert I saw all year. I'd seen Kid Congo and those Monkeybirds a couple of times before in New York and Austin. But it felt good to see him here in Santa Fe.
Vice is a strong album full of great riffs and often funny lyrics. Kid Congo doesn't sing, he recites, as if he were a knowing, sometimes sarcastic narrator for his musical visions. In that regard, it's not hard imaging him doing a duet with Kim Gordon.
But speaking of duets, here Kid Congo performs with fellow L.A. Chicano rocker Alice Bag, formerly of The Bags, on "Wicked World," which deals with a streetwalker.
What do they think whеn they see a girl / Looking for saints looking for whores /This is a wicked, wicked world /And you shouldn't be here anymore ...
Kid Congo puts his Hispanic heritage on full display on the (sort-of) title song, "Esse Vicio Delicioso," where his blazing guitar is backed by a cool Latin beat. And with "Never Said," he waves at the "souldies" -- aka Chicano soul or lowrider music -- sound, exemplified by artists like Trish Toledo (who did a fantastic show in Albuquerque this year), Bobby Oroza and Joey Quinones.
Kid Congo (real name Brian Tristan) has a well-known history as a guitarist for three bands I love -- Gun Club, The Cramps and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. He's not above reminding people about that history. At his Santa Fe show he did some covers of Gun Club and The Cramps.
But it's high time he was known first and foremost as the leader of The Pink Monkeybirds. They're in a class of their own.
Here's "Wicked World":
8. Blackgrass by Swamp Dogg. When this record was first released last May, some critics and I'd bet many fans, suspected that this might be the crafty old Dogg trying to cash in on all the publicity of another Black singer "going country."
I'm talking of course about Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, which was heavily influenced by country and featured guest appearances by the likes of Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Rhiannon Giddens.
Black people doing country music? How bizarre! How quaint! Plus, I'm an idiot who's never heard of Al Green nor Joe Tex or Solomon Burke or RAY FUCKING CHARLES...
Back to reality, Swamp Dogg has had country connections at least since 1971, when Johnny Paycheck recorded his hit "She's All I Got," which was co-written by Swamp (under his real name, Jerry Williams, Jr.) and his then writing partner, 60s hitmaker Gary U.S. Bonds.
Swamp also had a longtime friendship with John Prine. In fact Prine's last recordings can be found on Swamp Dogg's 2020 album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It. Prine and Dogg performed sweet soulful duets on the songs "Memories" and "Please Let Me Go Round Again." Prine died about a month after that album was released.
This new one is on Prine's Oh Boy label. But Swamp's best Prine connection is his performance of Prine's "Sam Stone," recorded in 1972. Swamp Dogg turns this mournful tune about about a Vietnam vet who becomes a heroin addict into a concert showstopper. (And this year I got to see him sing it live again a few months ago at Americanafest in Nashville.
Blackgrass goes deeper into country and bluegrass than Swamp ever has before. His backup musicians include the likes of dobro man Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull on mandolin, Noam Pikelny on banjo, fiddler Billy Contreras and two of Marty Stuart's Fabulous Superlatives -- guitarist Kenny Vaughan and bassist Chris Scruggs. And guitarist Vernon Reid (of Living Colour) adds some crazed electric guitar to the stomping hoedown "Rise Up."
And there are impressive guest singers, Jenny Lewis on "Count the Days" and -- especially Margo Price, who sings the hell out of "To the Other Woman," a tune Swamp and Gary Bonds wrote for soul singer Doris Duke in the '70s.
There are so many great tunes here. There's "Mess Under That Dress," an upbeat bluegrass ode to a sweetheart's not-so-secret charms; "Ugly Man's Wife," which is a distant country cousin of calypso singer Roaring Lion's 1934 "Ugly Woman"; a sweet, slow, almost jazzy cover of Floyd Tillman's "Gotta Have My Baby Back"; and a few mellow but passionate tunes such as "Have a Good Time," "Songs to Sing," and "This is My Dream," which hit that magic sweet spot between soul and country.
The album ends and an insane, spoken-word "Murder Ballad," which includes lyrics like:
I choked that old heifer out in her room and she died smellin' of Bengay /See they used to make me wear mama's clothes / and all her cheap hair / so for my final trick / I'll go back downstairs and take care of my old man / dirty son of a bitch ...
So Blackgrass comes in like a horny Earl Scruggs and goes out like Norman Bates. What's not to love?
Here's "Mess Under That Dress":
9.Smoke & Fiction by X. On the second song on the latest album by this pivotal Los Angeles punk band issue what could be seen as a mission statement for this record:
Let's go round the bend / Get in trouble again / Make a commotion / Drink a love potion
However, this might be described as just a sweet invitation to a last hurrah, as X, which has been around nearly 50 years, has announced that this will be its final album.
And the name of the song quoted above is "Sweet Til the Bitter End."
Who knows whether this declaration is actually true. In a YouTube interview with music journalist Lyndsey Parker, John Doe and Exene Cervenka say the band isn't exactly breaking up and that there might be some one-off gigs and maybe even some new songs recorded for "a benefit records or something-or-other," as Doe said.
But the group realized after starting work on Smoke & Fiction that this probably would be their last album. "It's just too hard," Exene said of the record-making process in the interview.
Smoke & Fiction is a strong follow to their previous album, the excellent Alphabetland, (released in 2020, helping many of us X fans to survive the damned pandemic). That album was their first studio effort in nearly three decades.
I suspect that most who are fans of 2020s X are those of us old enough to love and cherish X in its heyday. But it's possible that there's a new generation of baby X fans. (If that applies to you, you'll just have to go back, if you haven't already, and listen to Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under the Big Black Sun, etc. You'll be glad you did.)
On one song here, titled "Big Black X," the band reminisces about those golden days of the L.A. punk scene that spawned them:
Hollywood letters fallin' down / Errol Flynn's abandoned mansion / Scary Hillside guy / Angel dust low-ridin' by / We swam into the Pacific / and Windward intersection / Viet Nam vet I met and cannot forget / Bikers on the 101 and / 77 Sunset Strip / Old cars and new scars ... Stay awake and don't get taken / We knew the gutter / Also the future ...
As a proud retiree -- who loved his job but would rather walk barefoot a mile of broken glass than going back to work -- I sympathize. And X's members are about my age. So if they've got to have a "last album," at least this one shows the band going out at something fairly close to peak strength.
Here's the video for "Big Black X":
10. Back in Town by The Frontier Circus. Before Singer Rachel Nagy died in 2022, The Detroit Cobras probably were considered the coolest covers band in the known universe. But now there's another band that's a contender for that title: The Frontier Circus of Conway, Arkansas.
Just don't call them "The Conway Cobras."
The ringmaster of this crazy circus is one Frontier Dan aka Danny Grace, a professor emeritus in theater arts and dance at Hendrix College.
He also sometimes assumes the identity of Rockin' Dan, leader of The Frontier Circus' predecessor in crazy punked-up cover-band sounds, The Rockin' Guys. That group fronted the early '90s (or was it the late '80s?) that still occasionally convenes.
The Frontier Circus initially was touted as country version of The Rockin' Guys, although these days the Circus covers rock and pop classics along with the hillbilly tunes. On Back in Town, the band takes on old favorites you first heard by The Sonics, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, Donovan, George Jones and more.
Most these songs are at least fairly well-known -- I mean, if you're unfamiliar with "Wooly Bully" or "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" you should lose your American citizenship. But the Circus also included a couple of songs here that even forced a wizened old know-it-all like me to look up.
I'm talking about "Sylvia Plath," an ode to the dead poet which was written by the late Peter Laughner, a founding member of two massive Ohio bands, Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu -- though he left Ubu after their first two singles and died not long afterwards. (Grace also recorded "Sylvia Plath" with The Rockin' Guys).
Even better though -- and way more obscure -- is "Let's Go Running," which was written and performed by Jim Mize, a singer-songwriter also from Conway, Arkansas, who died in 2022. Though he recorded three albums for Fat Possum, I was totally unfamiliar.
The Frontier Circus do both these songs far more straightforward -- barely any traces of wackadoodle vocals, no crazy theremin -- and far more reverent than the other songs. And they sound real nice!
But the crazy ones are cool too. Frontier Dan is never L7 ...
Honorable Unmentionables
It's Getting Late (...and More Songs About Werewolves) by The Fleshtones
Sick of Being Sick by Jon Spencer
Consumer Waste by Ghost Wolves
Echo Dancing by Alejandro Escovedo
Purgatory by The Mystery Lights
XXXX
I was lucky enough to see six of the artists listed above in concert in 2024. Below is a collage of some of my snapshots of Kid Congo Powers, Sierra Ferrell, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Swamp Dogg, Sleater-Kinney and Alejandro Escovedo:
For all my annual "Top 10" album lists, goin back to early in this century, CLICK HERE
For a compilation of my annual Top 10 album lists from 1988 (!) through 2003 CLICK HERE
And below is a Spotify playlist of selected songs from all these albums, more than two hours of rocking glory. I suggest you listen to it on "shuffle" play:
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