2024 Top 20

Back in 2011, the new-to-me rap trio Das Racist swooped in late in the year and put their stamp on eighth place on my list with the laid-back flows and smart/dumb lyricism of their first major label release: Relax. As it turned out, that also proved to be the group’s swan song, with a break-up following the next year.

But, everything old is new again: thirteen short years later, here’s (one third of Das Racist) MC Heems, laying down another river of charming rhymes over the top of some really fine beats. The latter—courtesy of producer Lapgan—often pull on Heems’s Punjabi heritage, but also run a gamut of inspirations, always keeping things fresh.

As with a lot of my favourite hip-hop in recent years (and certainly as was the case with Relax), each listen to LAFANDAR heralds a new choice line or couplet. At the time of writing I’d probably pick the passage in which Heems laces together a lot of long vowel sounds on ‘Sri Lanka’, but the showpiece is probably on ‘Kala Tika’ when he pokes fun at the stereotype of east Asians’ English pronunciation, by intentionally switching V and W sounds. Add in some solid features from established favourites (Saul Williams; Open Mike Eagle) and some new names to me (Your Old Droog a particularly great addition), and you’ve got the most entertaining hip-hop LP I encountered in 2024.

Bad Nerves’ sophomore LP—the follow-up to a 2020 self-titled debut which I’ve still not taken the time to listen to—has proven to be one of the year’s nicest surprises. When I first tuned into this record, I half-dismissed it as a good enough gimmick that would be fun for a couple of listens before wearing out its welcome. Somehow though, its playfully sneering, brash demeanour got its claws into me enough that I would find myself wandering around for days singing the hook to ‘Antidote’, before I had to cave and just re-listen to the album.

There’s something of the early 2000s garage rock revival here, both the production and the overall sensibility recalling the early days of acts like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Hives (who also had a track titled ‘Antidote’ on their second LP). Perhaps the key is that it’s all a bit of a dizzying, joyous whirlwind. Before you know it, the final chord of ‘The Kids Will Never Have Their Say’ is ringing out, and the album has grabbed its studded leather jacket and seen itself out. Chances are, however, that you’re left with one of its several propulsive, sticky melodies clinging to your frontal lobe, and you’ll be inviting Bad Nerves back for another 30 minute party soon.

It took me a minute to dial into this record, the second full-length release from Croydon singer/songwriter Lola Young (not to be confused with the incumbent Baroness of Hornsey). Across ten (and a half) tracks, she chronicles both relationship drama and inter-personal power struggles, and also negotiates her own internal landscape. Part of that is an effort to explain (perhaps to herself, and to the world) a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.

Both musically and lyrically, there’s a captivating balance between smooth surfaces erupting into jagged edges. Prominent single ‘Messy’ catalogues some of these dichotomies explicitly, but they’re present—in one respect or another—across the whole record. The sharp elements (be it a lyrical vulgarity or musical swerve) hit harder because they come surrounded by—for the most part—some very pleasant R&B-inflected pop. Included in there are some superb melodies, such that even when things get dark, it’s hard not to have a good time.

‘Conceited’ in particular wormed deep into my brain, to the point that I would get a shiver at the sound of its opening bass line coming on shuffle. That track is an excellent microcosm for the album as a whole: assured, rich vocal performance; direct, occasionally confrontational lyrics; an all-timer of a beat that I expect to hear sampled on hip-hop records in years to come. Oh, and a super-cathartic, grungy explosion of a guitar interlude to boot. This one will stick with me for a while.

This is a difficult one to explain. On the surface, there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t already be a fan of Nada Surf. The band have been putting out records since the mid 90s, and operating firmly within sub-genre circles of which I am fond (and could formerly have been considered a devotee). My best guess is that Nada Surf’s longevity actually worked against my getting to know them. Back in the days when one’s exposure to new music depended primarily on the contents of friends’ CD collection, I don’t think I knew anyone who owned either of the band’s first two LPs. Album number three (consensus career highlight Let Go) broke through a bit in 2002, to the extent that I recall a friend of a friend owning it. And yet…

Consider some of what I was listening to around that time: Jimmy Eat World, The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie. All of these supplicants at the foot of REM’s throne belong more-or-less within the sound world of Nada Surf: mid-tempo alt/indie, clean guitar sounds, literate lyricism. Here on Moon Mirror we’re treated to a strong set of polished, emotionally-driven (admittedly MOR) rock. Nothing novel, but when it’s executed this well it’s a sound that still works its magic on me. As with Spoon in 2014, Low in 2018, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra last year, falling under the spell of Moon Mirror felt like discovering a little late a band that I probably should have been paying attention to for decades.

Annie Clark’s previous three LPs have taken 2nd, 6th and 9th on this list respectively. An achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact of each St Vincent record existing so distinctly in its own sonic and aesthetic world. Apple Music informs me that St Vincent is my third-most-played artist of 2024, and part of the appeal is undeniably the rich breadth available across the seven solo studio LPs to date.

All Born Screaming almost winks at its title by starting quiet, with the table-setting ‘Hell is Near’. It’s not until the pining vocal is overtaken by invasive synth stabs at 2:39 on second track ‘Reckless’, that things really take off. Then lead single ‘Broken Man’ arrives: all disjointed limbs and uncontainable bass eruptions, track and video alike bring to mind that near namesake of Clark’s pseudonym: St Vitus’ dance. ‘Flea’ is thick and rolling, before ‘Big Time Nothing’ takes things to the dancefloor, with a detectable tinge of the previous album’s 70s funk/disco influence.

In short, All Born Screaming sounds unlike anything else, and yet entirely like the latest series of explorations by a restlessly inventive artist. Clark’s daunting command of her craft (this record also marking her first solo outing on production duties) allows her to go where her heart takes her, and always yields fascinating results. By the time Cate Le Bon shows up for the title-track/album closer, any surprise that the song evolves half-way through into opera-meets-electropop, should itself have transfigured into awe.

A couple of years ago, in my write-up for Duval Timothy’s 2022 LP Meeting With a Judas Tree, I mentioned that I had made a cursory exploration of his wider oeuvre, including a dip into a collaborative album he’d put out the year before, with Rosie Lowe. That name was new to me, but her contribution to that record—Son (2021)—was intriguing: she complements Timothy’s stark arrangements with melodic, mostly sub-linguistic vocals to startling effect.

Here, on her first solo album since I’ve been paying attention, the vocals are also the most arresting element of a wonderful sound. True opener ‘Mood to Make Love’ (after the brief prelude ‘Sundown’) is a delicate, soulful piece that channels Beth Gibbons. ‘In My Head’ has more pep in its step, with the addition of busier percussion; ‘Bezerk’ further disrupts things with both a near-staccato vocal and choppy production; ‘There Goes the Light’ is a pristine soul cut. And that’s the opening 10 minutes. The record is 15 tracks, and yet just 37 minutes, which might reasonably lead you to suspect that it would feel sketched. Lowe certainly has a lot of ideas, and potential echoes (2am electronica on ‘Something’; Imogen Heap on ‘Don’t Go’…) but I found the whole package pieces together seamlessly into something alluringly mercurial.

I believe it’s illegal to write notes on a shoegaze(-adjacent) record without invoking genre godfathers my bloody valentine. So there, I’ve done it. Certainly their influence is all over opener ‘Realistic (I’m Still Waiting)’: multiple layers of fuzzed-out guitar crashing over the listener in waves. It’s also felt on album-highlight ‘Souvenir’: a wending melody pinned to rigid, minimal percussion. Elsewhere things look more towards various stops on the ambient spectrum: ’Crucial Years’ plays like a heightened field recording in the vein of William Basinski; ‘Bleach’ is happy to give itself increasingly over to static.

The album ends in a weird place, with penultimate track ‘Jealousy’ sounding more like an alternate take of ‘Souvenir’ than a distinct composition. And then album closer ‘AM / PM’ is the album’s most ambitious piece in scope if not in complexity: an experimentation with prolonging one melody’s rising and falling interplay with a consistent percussive loop.

Here’s a fun connection: a couple of years ago Mia Berrin (aka Pom Pom Squad) released a cover of Nada Surf’s 1996 post-grunge single ‘Popular’, supported by a near shot-for-shot remake of the original video. So, number 17, meet number 13. If you have any notes on how her gender-bent repurposing subverts one of your biggest songs… I suggest you phrase them nicely. Because one thing Berrin makes very clear on MSMWM is that she is not in the mood to take any $h!t.

Exhibit A is single ‘Street Fighter’, a jaunty electro-pop cut on which she issues an invitation to talk things through, before correcting herself: ‘I meant box with our gloves off’. A couple of tracks later, on ‘Villain’ she’s channelling Billie Eilish circa 2019, asking to be handed a hatchet, and contemplating digging another plot in her garden.

There’s a similar shadowy tone to rousing opener ‘Downhill’, on which a defiant Berrin casts a spell in layered vocals over a marching beat and crunchily-produced guitars. Then ‘Spinning’ mixes up something enchanting by stirring a dose of anger with a cup of sadness. The embrace of this vein of darkness set Pom Pom Squad’s record apart for me this year. As did, it has to be said, a knack for penning hooks which just never misses. In amongst a bounty to choose from, my pick is probably ‘Messages’, with its resigned but undefeated chorus that seems to invoke peak Cardigans.

GY!BE last made my list back in 2012: a seventh place inclusion for their fourth record, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! In my write-up for that album—a record I still return to with relative frequency—I praised the Montrealers for their considered approach to building truly epic pieces, such as the 20-minute masterpiece ‘Mladic’. There are equally ambitious and panoramic tracks here on album number eight, which arrived quite late in the year, and reserved itself a list spot on first listen alone.

The core of Godspeed’s sound is the dynamics by which they build from quieter moments into cataclysm. The tone of those passages can vary, but—despite the stark contextual reminder of a title—this record leans more often towards the hopeful (or possibly conciliatory) than it does towards darkness. Consider the wall-of-sound built across the second half of ‘RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD’, which slowly but surely overwhelms (and then incorporates) a mournful solo violin.

As with their earlier LPs, “NO TITLE… very much feels as though it’s intended to be experienced as a whole, and at the time of writing, I’ve only made the complete hour-long trip a handful of times. I’ve little doubt, however, that this will be a record I return to plenty in the coming years, and it may well climb in my estimation.

Across the six tracks and 39 minutes of Rising, Jasmine Myra’s alto saxophone is accompanied by minimal piano, delicate strings, and ethereal flute, but itself remains centre-stage. The majority of the compositions feel roomy, allowing both space in the mix (by Portico Quartet’s Glen Freeman) for the instruments’ glowing tones to shine, and time on each track for successive melodic developments.

On album high point ‘Glimmer’, Myra’s sax sits out for a minute, allowing the percussion and bass to build something new, on which the sax then returns to build. It’s one moment of mesmerising counter-play amongst several here, leaving the listener unsure as to the balance between composition and improvisation.

This was one of a few jazz-adjacent albums that caught and held my attention this year. Where Myra’s record won out is in its inviting warmth—a quality that had me reaching for it as the accompaniment to reading, writing and armchair daydreaming alike.

Middle Kids’ debut, Lost Friends, took eighth spot for me in 2018, and the follow-up, Today We’re The Greatest (2021), also narrowly missed inclusion. Of the former, I wrote ‘This is a sweet record, but one with bruises. Its heart is on its sleeve, and it wants to link arms with you and sing together.’ That open-hearted appeal to vulnerable emotionality is also the core of Faith Crisis Pt 1, a record on which the average song’s runtime is about three minutes, but on which each track conjures a powerful sense of wonder or yearning. Not that everything takes place in a heightened, high-key state. As the title may be taken to indicate, these are dispatches from a place of considered interrogation of one’s feelings.

We know by now that Middle Kids drop one track on each album that spends a healthy portion of the year stuck in my head. In 2018 it was (possible best song of the year) ‘Mistake’; in 2021 the role was played by the raucous ‘I Don’t Care’; here in 2024 we’ve got ‘Dramamine’, displaying the band’s talent for mixing sweet pop melodies with earnest vocals—each reaching directly for the heart: ‘You are the only reason I believe in anything / I hope you don’t take this the wrong way’. To my mind, its partner on the album is the slower, less forthright, hope-filled ‘Bootleg Firecracker’. Middle Kids operate well in both gears, and it makes for another polished collection of sing-along pop without a dud track in the bunch.

On first listen to Pearl Jam’s eleventh studio album Gigaton, a couple of years ago, I experienced a melange of emotions that felt familiar: a kind of nostalgic glow emanating from beneath a heavy silt bed of acceptance, that what made the band’s early albums special was undeniably in short supply. The reason for the deja vu was that those feelings had been my reaction also to the previous record, Lightning Bolt, almost a decade earlier. I had eventually come to like that record, as I had parts of its predecessor (Backspacer (2009)), and the three records before that. But, if it’s not too dramatic to say so, it’s been a long process of accepting that 21st century Pearl Jam are not the same band who put out five superb records throughout the 1990s.

Except that they absolutely are the same band, and Dark Matter is the proof. For the two decades’ worth of reasons outlined above, I came to the album with my expectations set firmly to mid. I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Track after track consistently and undeniably amongst their best work since Yield (1998). I could just about put together an equally strong set of 11 tracks from the 79 contained on the preceding six albums, but there wouldn't be much room to spare.

If one wishes to (unfairly) split hairs, Eddie Vedder’s voice is only at about 80% of its formidable prime these days, and there are a few spots where it shows. What isn’t diminished is the songwriting, or the uncanny ability to pin emotions to swelling grooves and soaring guitars. My goodness what a gift it is to have another record such as this from the last of the great Seattle-explosion bands.

On paper, I should love The Smile: 66.6% of the band are 40% of Radiohead, whom my Apple Music Replay inform me are my second-most-played artist of 2024 despite having not released an album since 2016. (FWIW, they were also third last year, and first the year before.) The remaining third is Tom Skinner, current drummer for Sons of Kemet. My favourite of that group’s work to date has been 2018’s Your Queen is a Reptile, and percussion on that (pre-Skinner) record is actually by Seb Rochford, who made this list last year for his collab with Kit Downes on A Short Diary. But, you get it: two tastes I enjoy should taste great together.

Excessive biographical context aside, for some reason The Smile’s debut, A Light for Attracting Attention (2022), didn’t land for me, and—grossly unfair as it is—I can find no more likely cause than an acute case of the not-Radioheads. In the time since, I can report that I’ve revisited it plenty, and it’s grown on my quite a bit. (Revisiting lists isn’t something we do, but I would estimate that if I was putting together the 2022 top 20 today, ALfAA would find a home in the lower half.) What has helped tremendously with that reappraisal, has been a pair of great follow-up LPs, released within nine months of one another this year. (I’ve spent far more time with Wall of Eyes, by virtue of its January arrival; Cutouts has also impressed in the few weeks since its arrival.) There are new flavours here (a little dark synth undertone on ‘Teleharmonic’, a glitchy cut-up technique on ‘I Quit’), but it’s difficult to read this as a departure from The Smile’s original template, so much as the sound of three hyper-talented musicians still feeling out where they can go together. Regardless, that weirdly hypnotic riff at the spine of ‘Read the Room’, and the Beatles-esque piano of ‘Friend of a Friend’ are among the most affecting sounds I encountered this year. The latter also has a superb, simple idea for a music video that speaks to the group’s lack of ego.

With three albums under their belt, and a consistent touring schedule, it looks like The Smile may have transcended the realm of ‘side project’. On the evidence thus far, if they’re in it for the long haul, count me in.

Previously, New York’s preppy genre-blenders scored 4th spot in 2008 with their self-titled debut; 7th in 2010 for follow-up Contra; missed out on a spot for Modern Vampires of the City in 2013; and made a return to the list in 2019, taking 7th spot with the resurgent Father of the Bride. There are those who would disagree with that ranking, with consensus seeming to hold that MVotC is amongst the band’s career high points, and FotB a misstep. For those people then, Only God Was Above Us must read like a welcome return to form. (FWIW, whilst the 2013 LP has grown in my estimation over the years, it’s still my least favourite.)

Every bit of the Vampire Weekend spectrum is explored here: jaunty melodies, galloping guitar and frenetic piano, percussion engaging with a gamut of geographical influence, improbable string interludes, the delicate building into the cacophonous. And all of that is just statement-of-intent opener ‘Ice Cream Piano’. We’ve also got sample manipulation, surf guitar, too-clever poetic lyricism, layered vocals… you get the picture. When the opening drum patterning on ‘Connect’ lifts directly from debut album opener ‘Mansard Roof’, you can look at it two ways. Either this is a band running short on ideas, or this is Vampire Weekend doing Vampire Weekend things. There’s more than enough evidence on this album that creativity is not in short supply! Indeed, when so few acts sound anything like this, it’s hard to complain. Several tracks here are amongst their very best (though ‘Diane Young’ still holds that crown), and—on tracks like ‘Prep-School Gangsters’, ‘Gen-X Cops’ and epic closer ‘Hope’—it’s interesting to observe the ways in which middle age has begun to play a role in the former upstarts’ outlook on the world.

Rosie Tucker’s previous full length release—Sucker Supreme—narrowly missed out on a list spot in 2021. I found its marriage of arch, self-knowing lyrics with the unpolished character of their voice—off-balance gymnastic, approaching the melody aslant—to be immensely effective. On Utopia Now! they takes everything up a notch: hookier tunes for the crunchy guitars to chomp through; more ambitious vocal melodies for Tucker’s singular voice to somersault all over; and—perhaps most of all—an absolute banquet of wonderful lyrics.

For me, with its mix of laid-back sweetness and post-grunge guitar textures, Tucker’s sound here calls back to the mid-90s rock of early Weezer and that dog. The kicker is that they're a superlative lyricist. Vibrant images, revelatory metaphor, surrealist poetics… Tucker has it all in their toolkit, and deploys each in turn in a singular mix. The sticky melodies alone would be more than enough reason to revisit the album, but it was some of the best lyrics that I found brought me back time and again.

I throw stones like if I keep in motion I won't sink

​If at the bottom of everything we are all alone

​Then I want nothing but unending bliss for my enemies

Jamie previously garnered a spot in my top ten for his only other solo outing: In Colour (2015). The nine year wait for a follow-up has been made both easier and more difficult by the arrival of a third excellent record from The xx in 2017, and his bandmate therein—Romy—taking third spot on last year’s list with Mid Air, her miraculous treatise on the ways in which to love is to make oneself vulnerable.

Romy is but one of several high profile features here (she, and the other 1/3 of The xx, Oliver Sim, essentially making ‘Waited All Night’ a full band cut). Panda Bear helps bring the ethereal sheen of ‘Dafodil’ to life; Robyn (4th back in 2010 for unimpeachable (and undiminished) dance-pop masterpiece Body Talk) adds to the celebratory bombast of ‘Life’.

But, needless to say, the record’s real power lies in Jamie’s ear for matching melody with beat with sample, and cutting the sum up in arresting, captivating ways. A dive into the macro on how—for example—the illusion of simplicity on ‘The Feeling I Get From You’ comprises halting percussion, minimal piano and multiple samples in conversation with one another… makes one wonder how such a melange can be conducted into something so pristine. Step out another level, and witness the record’s wider tapestry as track after track carries an argument for euphoric acceptance of one’s time and place, from the individual breath (‘Breather’) to the cosmos writ large (‘Falling Together’). But, you know… interspersed with throwback bangers like ‘Baddy On The Floor’.

Please don’t make me wait another nine years Jamie, or I’ll throw my back out dancing to the next one.

A couple months ago, Dua Lipa made a return visit to the NPR Tiny Desk concert series, turning in a thoroughly delightful performance that was nevertheless not a match for her previous appearance. The fact that her 2020 set is perhaps the best in the show’s 17-year history speaks to the difficulty in following up near perfection.

Now—in contrast to Fabolous (feat. Snoop Dogg) back in 2003—I don’t claim to be ‘up on things’, but my limited understanding is that Radical Optimism is generally regarded to have been a miss. In a pop environment dominated this summer by Sabrina Carpenter’s effortless, sunny ‘Espresso’, and the dizzying ascent of Chapell Roan, perhaps there wasn’t room enough for another set of disco-infused relationship dissections from London’s reigning queen of the dance floor.

If that’s the case, I’m here to tell you—not for the first time—that the general opinion is deeply misguided. In the years since Dua’s previous LP, Future Nostalgia, topped my list in 2020, I’ve wondered whether it was even possible to match on its own terms. There are only a handful of tracks here that can truly hang in that record’s illustrious company, but that in itself should be counted as a minor miracle. ‘Illusion’ and ‘Houdini’ are a forthright one-two punch of self-empowerment; ‘These Walls’ is a softer relative, sweet in its admitted sadness; lead single ‘Training Season’ is the album’s brightest firework, its impeccable beat and flawless, nuanced vocal performance placing it firmly amongst my ten most-played songs of 2024.

I’ve not seen this record on any of the big critics’ lists to date, and that seems wild to me. Still, surely another top five finish on this list is what counts.

Call me an uncultured philistine, but Floating Points’ last full-length outing—in the company of Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra—left me a little cold. Not only did I see that record at the top of multiple lists at the end of 2021, I have heard people say that it’s their favourite record of the last decade. To this unrefined palate however, it came as welcome news that Sam Shepherd had a new solo album in the works—his first since Crush took ninth spot for me at the end of 2019. Of that record’s intricate beats and dense loops, I wrote ‘the listening experience is akin to visiting a gallery of impressionist visual art - sometimes bewildering, at points confrontational, but constantly intriguing and compelling.’ By comparison, Cascade is markedly more straightforward, with Shepherd reaching into his bag of tricks to extract big techno-adjacent rhythms and 1990s acid bass lines. The result is an hour long trip through some of the most compelling electronica I encountered this year. Like Crush before it, Cascade works with AirPods in, but also plays on the level of a measured, confident club set.

This album dropped a week ahead of Jamie xx’s In Waves (see above at 5), and for a few weeks I had the two in lock-step, one after the other in a loop. Both are exceptional showcases for masters at conjuring mood from electronic composition. Whereas In Waves is more forthright in its bid to conjure euphoria, Floating Points’ genius here is teasing nuance out of big sounds rooted in throwback dancefloor genres.

Here’s a record, the arrival of which in late September proved to be one of the most disruptive events of the year with respect to this list.

Opener ‘Hide’ matches Anouska Sokolow’s easy vocal with a mix of guitar stabs and the subtlest of ethereal synths. It’s the first in a series of superb, authentic repurposings of 80s and 90s sounds. Where tracks like ‘Pretty Girls’ and ‘Real Deal’ harken back to the mid-90s slacker rock of Pavement, it’s Sokolow’s voice that elevates them to something new-feeling. Likewise on the sad, coy, Smiths-adjacent ‘Ghost’. With ‘Safety Pin’, the mix of demure lyrics and increasingly-strident melody is reminiscent of Placebo’s Without You I’m Nothing (1998).

The record also has plenty of its own signature moments, of which the melody switch at ~2:20 on closer ‘Movies’, and the ratcheting up of vocal tension to a breaking point at ~1:35 on ‘Don’t’, are the first two of several to come to mind.

Real Deal was a record that I found to be enormously rewarding on repeat listens, always disclosing another texture in its tapestry. Where I’ve listed influences above, the real marvel of Honeyglaze’s second LP is in making them feel fresh and alive. I listened to a lot of records in 2024, and very few delighted me as much as this one.

There has been little doubt as to my favourite album of 2024 since a day in the first week of February, when I took my AirPods out, having just finished listening to Prelude to Ecstasy three times straight through.

What struck to the core of me on first contact, and which remains as potent ten months later, is this album’s remarkably-assured art pop mixture of 60s baroque and 80s new wave. A little gothic, more than a little dramatic, this is an album equally in love with poetry and bombast. It takes what I loved about Florence + the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (18th in 2015), mixes in a shot of The Black Parade’s sense of the operatic, and amplifies the result through its unwavering commitment to beautiful melodies, impeccable song structure, and perfectly-judged production aesthetics.

Had you proposed to me at the start of the year something like a mix of The Zombies’ Odyssey and Oracle (1968), Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside (1978) and Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair (1984), I would have been skeptical. As it turns out, that’s close to a recipe for something truly remarkable. PtE is an album from which I dare not attempt to select a favourite track. I can tell you there’s nothing here that rates fewer than five full stars, and that the album’s most subtle magic is in how one song slides into the next, forming in sum a truly special whole.

Not only is Prelude to Ecstasy my most-played album of the year (despite a legitimate effort to take breaks from it so as not to wear it out); five of my top ten most-listened-to songs of the year are from this LP. The Last Dinner Party are my eighth most-listened-to artist, and the only ones in the top 15 with only a single album to their names. I watched their set from Glastonbury at the beginning of summer, and their set at Reading Festival at summer’s end. I think the album’s accompanying 15 minute short film is the most impressive sustained translation of a record into visuals since Beyonce’s masterpiece in support of Lemonade (2016).

Prelude to Ecstasy is in the conversation for my favourite album of the last decade. I wish The Last Dinner Party good luck following up a debut like this.