I don’t care what narrative, trope, throughline, or collective sentiment other year-end lists will serve you; it was a weird year that came in both obvious and subtle micro- and macro-aggressive waves.
A very active music monoculture wreaked havoc on the public. Large hip-hop kinds of beef involving big lawyers and giant multi-year and multi-billion dollar tours coming at last to a close—and people forgetting there was a rash of bigger and smaller ticket tours that kept on canceling.
In the middle of this summer, in between brat updates and establishing who exactly is “Not Like Us,” shows kept ghosting.
Which leads us to believe in and engage with the fringes’ outskirts. Places where a creative zest pushed the center; like 2024’s ambient and punky jazz, Bay-Area local bands flexing fire constructs, and electro-retro verve with sentiments that for sure will ring true in 2025 and onward.
As per usual here in our musical round-up, we are going to focus on those corners of great music, local and non-local, that didn’t require a bank loan to witness the live show. As we’ve stated in years past, if you’re tired of the same popular albums dominating the year-end lists, then this is the place for you.
SHEER MAG, PLAYING FAVORITES (THIRD MAN RECORDS)
Arriving from the files of “I had no idea this was happening or even a thing.”
Sheer Mag, the Philadelphia-based band, on their Third Man Records debut, executes that exquisite combo of WTF. Expert playing, sweetened-to-screeching lead vocals from the amazing Tina Halladay, and the smaahts to mix it all up. Coming up punk, attacking contemporary rock, finessing big booming hooks, and nailing the bazinga outta well-constructed power-pop bangers? Mang.
COMMON & PETE ROCK, THE AUDITORIUM VOL. 1 (LOMA VISTA)
So we found out collectively through the internet that Pete and CL may never do it again.
But The Auditorium Vol. 1 not only got Common to bring his Chi-town soul to the collab, but put Pete Rock so deep in the zone, with that warm horn sample symphony, that he had to get back behind the mic too. Call it OG, grown folk hip-hop if you will, but no lawyers were involved, and that’s the bandwidth I’ll take my boom-bap at.
FLOORPLAN, THE MASTERS PLAN (CLASSIC MUSIC COMPANY)
Robert Hood, one of the original members of the pioneering Detroit techno group Underground Resistance, was called on to bring church directly to the dance floor with his Floorplan alias and brought on his daughter, Lyric Hood, in 2016. In their fourth studio album, The Master’s Plan, the pair offers boundless and stirring momentum, uplifting hues, and plenty of healing sustenance through a house, techno, and polyrhythmic spectrum. Folks on the dance floor are gonna need The Word in abundance in the coming years. Even when the medicine may be a touch preachy, it’s what you need in times when other ‘spirits’ are trying to snatch your soul.
LA LUZ, NEWS OF THE UNIVERSE (SUB POP)
La Luz comes with a backstory: In 2013, the band was nearly killed in a harrowing traffic accident while on tour. A decade later, singer-guitarist Shana Cleveland became a mother not long before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. (She also struck out on her own, releasing one of 2023’s best singer-songwriter LPs, Manzanita.) On this year’s News of The Universe, the Seattle outfit expanded its sonic bandwidth; spectral elements of krautrock with proggy dimensions, boutique-retro ’80s synth-pop New Wave, and ’70s pop-rock adornments entered the chat with Bay-Area producer, artist, and local engineering wizard Maryam Qudus helming production duties.
THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS (IMPULSE! RECORDS)
Pay attention when a one-of-a-kind artist is in your midst. That would be tenor sax chameleon James Brandon Lewis, who has no problem switching up bands, genres, styles, and traditionalism for ferocity.
His goal? Always get at the truth. Sometimes that quest comes along with former members of Fugazi blowing more fire to the launch and shoot barrage happening on stage.
Their hybrid freakouts and searing jazz-rock arrangements only make you wonder how they tamed this beast of a distillation, just enough for fringe jazz heads and in-the-weeds metalcore duders to collectively want more. It was forged in the fire, babe.
JEMS!, GEMS IN THE CORNERSTONE II
Oakland’s JEMS!—Elujay and Baltimore’s J.Robb—can make those smooth-styling summer jams that go down easy like golden hour. On Gems In The Cornerstone II, they’ve established an aesthetic that comes from a multitude of areas. Simplicity is never easy, although it would like to present itself as such. These musicians know the diaspora they pull from is vast: old-school R&B, hip-hop, Lovers Rock, and dancehall—sound system culture is a rich text—but the result, preferably a calmed and relaxed one, gives the best musical resolution.
KHRUANGBIN, A LA SALA (DEAD OCEANS)
Well, lookee here at who done got nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy this year—even though this indie-rock, hip-hop-adjacent, global music juggernaut has almost single-handedly brought a certain type of world music to the normcore since 2015. That band is Khruangbin. The Houston-based psychedelic jam trio consists of bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, Mark Speer on guitar, and master timekeeper on the drums, DJ Johnson. This well-respected indie favorite moved a bunch of stuffs around on the musical spectrum.
Listen, do I think A La Sala is their best effort? I don’t want to answer that and insult the newbies who have brought so much attention, eyes, and YouTube views to the party, so I’ll say yes.
But the proper answer is, this is the one that reflected how hard this band’s hybrid of soul, surf rock, psych rock, dub, funk, or whatever corner of the world’s culture they’re digging into this month has produced a certain economy of language, respect, and yes, dankness to the previously uninformed for about 10 years.
Hey Grammys? Welcome to the session. Take off your shoes before entering. Thank you.
SML, SMALL MEDIUM LARGE (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM)
Formed as an experiment from the Jeff Parker wing of alternative jazz that’s currently upending the genre (and launching another of its renaissances), SML—featuring bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Joshua Johnson (veterans of Parker’s petri dish), synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann—have constructed a gateway jazz record for heads and others with that ear for Afrobeats-meets-funk.
Recorded live in studio by Bryce Gonzales and then edited down and cut up, similar to Makaya McCraven’s or Parker’s own methods, the album serves up cracklins of bizarre charts that gather momentum through repetition, which eventually leaves listeners head-nodding and testifying to the Fela-esque arrangements.
“Three Over Steel,” an outro mega jam, is avant-garde and thumping, melding sax licks and Johnson’s sloping lines of scat, with Butterss laying on the slick, thick ooze of gravitational shit.
Two-thirds into the song Butteress goes rogue, switching up the bass pattern, and dialing this heavy mental thunker into 3 am Parliament Funkadelic session vibes.
This…. is my album of the year. Period.
If you are a fan of Can, or dig into hour five of an eight-hour Theo Parrish sesh when he’s out there, this record is for you.
NAKED ROOMMATE, PASS THE LOOFAH (TROUBLE IN MIND)
East Bay music collective Naked Roommate just wants to make jams that make you think and catch the bus all at once. Pass The Loofah, a dancey, lightly political release, dropped in late October and took us by surprise. But that’s the blessing of The Bay; everybody is talented and has a pertinent story and perspective to tell. Let me be a bit more specific: this record, one that reminds everyone in Cloud City how difficult it is to pay rent and be an artist in a metropolis filled to the brim with vacant buildings all over Fi-Di, dropped two weeks before the election.
Mmm Hmmm. Folks know what time it is.
Their music does reference Liquid Liquid, ESG, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, Lizzy Mercier Descloux—all the post-punk stuff from that storied period in music where punk learned from disco. It’s a lesson we’re about to revisit. Pass The Loofah, one of the best albums to come from The Bay this year contains all the elements for such a danceable syllabus.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Samara Joy, Portrait (Verve Records)
Chime School, The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel (Slumberland Records)
Osees, Sorcs 80 (Castle Face)
Helado Negro, Phasor (4Ad)
Fake Fruit, Mucho Mistrust (Carpark Records)
Jamie Xx, In Waves (Young)
Nubya Garcia, Odyssey (Concord Jazz)
