Even in a year that saw Spotify Wrapped muck up its one job and watched movie studios do their best to pretend that whole industry-wide strike never happened, we found a lot worth hearing and seeing. Here’s a sampling of the cinema, sounds, and Substances that made our year bearable.
Music We Liked in 2024
Tony’s Picks
“Toilet Rats IV (Deluxe Edition)” by Toilet Rats
I found my Band of the Year on New Year’s Eve 2023. I loved watching Motion City Soundtrack and Gully Boys that night, but opening act Toilet Rats stole my heart. “Toilet Rats IV” hits all my pleasure centers. It’s punk music peppered with ’80s-style synth and lyrics about cryptids, horror movies, and hanging out at the Maplewood Mall in a bygone era. The world needs more Toilet Rats.
If you’re looking for more music recommendations in 2024, I had a great time crowd-sourcing and listening to the top songs from the Spotify/Apple Music end-of-year lists from my players at Falling Knife Brewing Company and The Nook, and not just because there was a lot of Chappell Roan.
– Content Creator Tony
Andrea’s Picks
“Cool World,” the new album from Oklahoma City rock band Chat Pile is one of my favorites leaving 2024. This one feels unrelenting right away. I’m not very good at describing subgenres of rock, admittedly. The Jesus Lizard meets Korn? Static-X for the Criterion Collection crowd? Lead singer Raygun Busch is a great account to follow on Letterboxd. Favorite track: “Masc.”
My unapologetic No. 1 on Spotify Wrapped 2024 was Charli XCX and I would wager that many of these plays came from “brat and it’s completely different but also still brat,” or simply the “brat” remix album. So many of the guest artists on these tracks like bladee, Tinashe, Caroline Polachek, and of course, Billie Eilish, bring new life to what is already one of the best albums of the decade. Favorite track: “Von Dutch A.G. Cook remix feat. Addison Rae.”
I also really loved “Disaster Trick,” the new album from Boston slowcore band Horse Jumper of Love. They’re a band that I’ve known about for years now and I think this is the record of theirs that most successfully blends folk, shoegaze, and slowcore. Definitely for fans of MJ Lenderman. Favorite track: “Wait By the Stairs.”
– Editor Andrea
Ira’s Picks
It was inevitable that I’d one day become the guy whose favorite album of the year was a 38-year-old archival release of a niche jazz album. Looks like this is the year, as I haven’t heard anything in 2024 more mesmerizing than “Inside the Light World: Sun Ra Meets the OVC,” an amazing 1986 set that was released as an album for the first time this May. The titular OVC is an “Outer Space Visual Communicator,” a keyboard accessory that creates fractal light patterns triggered by music. This session, featuring Sun Ra and his Arkestra experimenting with the OVC, was pulled from a VHS recording that had languished in the inventor’s archives for decades. It’s an astonishing piece of work, capturing Sun Ra at his most playful, energetic, and just plain fun. “Sunset On the Nile” is a particular highlight, but there’s not a low point on the album. This immediately grabs a place among my favorites in the hundreds-deep catalog of Sun Ra albums.
On the 2024 tip, “Night Reign” by Arooj Aftab is a smoky, spooky, soft-spoken masterpiece of multi-layered Pakistani American dream-jazz. If you’re not immediately turned off by the pretentiousness dripping from the sentence I just wrote about it, you’ll probably dig it as much as I do.
“Verbathim” by Nemahsis is a colossal indie-pop debut album brimming with wit and wisdom, made all the more impressive when you learn about the hurdles she had to clear just to get it to the public.
– Editor Ira Brooker
Chuck’s Picks
“Caroline” by Laura Marling
Music history is full of songs about picking up a phone and calling your lost love: Adele's "Hello"; "Martha" by Tom Waits; "Hotline Bling." Here Marling answers, and gives us a stunning and devastating little tune from the other end of the line. "I'd like you not to call again," she sings, and then half-remembers the song-within-the-song that was once theirs: "It went la-da-da-da-da, something-something, Caroline."
“I Am Continuing to Do My Thing” by Cheekface
Geek rock is alive and well thanks to Cheekface. They're like Cake if Cake were less cool, even if you don't think Cake is very cool. Fans of They Might Be Giants should be listening to this band, which may be the highest praise I can heap on them.
“POP POP POP” by IDLES
"Freudenfreude" means “joy resulting from joy in others.” And while it isn't an actual German word (unlike its opposite, schadenfreude), nor is it a concept that most Germans would recognize, methinks, it sure sounds great when rendered in the Welsh growl of IDLES singer Joe Talbot, whose raucous and radical positivity gives me chills every time.
“Right Back to It” by Waxahatchee (feat. MJ Lenderman)
This song was in my head for about six weeks straight this year. Those were good weeks. I could listen to Katie Crutchfield sing the fine print of a Xeljanz commercial, but even better when it's a song as perfectly crafted as this one.
– Owner Chuck
Movies We Liked in 2024
Ruby’s Picks
The best movie I saw in 2024 was “I Saw the TV Glow.” I talk about it a lot in this newsletter, but I want to make sure everyone sees it. This movie is about transfemininity, and when you care too much about TV. I started watching “Twin Peaks” for the first time after I saw this and kept thinking “wow, this is just like ‘I Saw the TV Glow,’” which I think is a pretty high endorsement. Some people screamed when they recognized Fred Durst; some at Phoebe Bridgers. I screamed when I saw Amber Benson. Justice Smith is luminous in this. The point of movies!!!
Two movies that weren’t my absolute faves of the year, but I think aren’t getting enough attention, are “Problemista” and “A Thousand and One.” (Letterboxd is trying to tell me these movies came out in 2023, but this is my space, and I saw them in 2024.) “Problemista” is the directorial debut of Julio Torres from “Los Espookys,” and it very much follows in his voice. I don’t think it’s a perfect movie, but it’s whimsical and heartfelt without being fluffy. In a different vein but still in New York City, “A Thousand and One” is about a mother who kidnaps her son out of the foster care system. The premise sounds like a hard watch, but the central performance by Teyana Taylor lifts it into something genuine, beautiful, and challenging.
– Editor Ruby
Ira’s Picks
I’ll own up to being an Alex Garland fanboy. I very much like everything he’s done as a director to date. (Even “Men,” but I’m also a Jessie Buckley fanboy.) Take that into account when I say that my favorite movie of this year was Garland’s appropriately divisive “Civil War.” Debates about the film’s political allegiances and narrative logistics miss the point. That’s all secondary to its grim celebration of the kind of hardcore, old school, literal boots-on-the-ground journalism that’s currently being strangled out of existence by lazy algorithms. Kirsten Dunst has never been better, Jesse Plemons has never been scarier, and “Apocalypse Now” has seldom had its mantle so ably carried. I’ll concede that Garland gives us a far happier ending than we’re ever likely to get in the real world, but that’s why they call Hollywood the Dream Factory.
And speaking of Jessie Buckley, “Wicked Little Letters” also slayed.
– Editor Ira Brooker
Andrea’s Picks
I left the theater after seeing “The Substance,” determined to watch it again very soon, even if it made me physically sick and uncomfortable at times. (Thanks, Dennis Quaid. I will never eat head-on shrimp in public again.) Coralie Fargeat’s directing is masterful and inspired by some of the heavy hitters of horror. Demi Moore absolutely shines as aging fitness model Elisabeth Sparkle. Would make for a nice double feature with “Sunset Boulevard.”
– Editor Andrea
Megan’s Picks
I joined the AMC A-List membership last year, so I see a lot of movies in theaters now. Here’s my official no-context ranking of movies I saw in theaters in 2024, based on the Letterboxd stars I gave out (follow me on Letterboxd). Note: I don’t claim to have good taste in movies. If it’s bad but a heck of a romp, there’s a good chance I rate it high. Likewise, I have a great love for many two-star movies.
5 Stars
“Wicked”
“Alien: Romulus”
“Lisa Frankenstein”
“The Zone of Interest”
“American Fiction”
“I Saw the TV Glow”
“Thelma”
“Argylle” (see “heck of a romp” note)
4.5
“Twisters”
“My Old Ass”
“Perfect Days”
“The Color Purple”
4
“All of Us Strangers”
“The Iron Claw”
“Conclave”
“Heretic”
“The Wild Robot”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”
“Inside Out 2”
“Challengers”
“Civil War”
“The Boy and the Heron”
“Y2K”
3.5
“Gladiator II”
“Saturday Night”
“Deadpool & Wolverine”
“Longlegs”
“The Fall Guy”
“Monkey Man”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Drive-Away Dolls”
“Mean Girls” (the musical)
3
“Love Lies Bleeding”
“Anyone But You”
“Bob Marley: One Love”
2.5
“Red One”
“The Killer’s Game”
2
“Madame Web”
– Editor Megan Olson
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