As 2025 gets underway, WeekInSound steps into the new year with a look over its shoulder at some new songs that stood out in 2024. Enjoy!
First Word
With a few exceptions, this blog tends to nostalgically focus on tunes from the past, as that’s where my musical heart generally lies. However, the transition from one year to the next offers the chance to take stock of some of the great new music created in the 12 months just gone by.
I’ve decided to make this a ‘bonus’ playlist but this time not doubling up to twelve tracks – I’m going with a whopping eighteen tunes! This is not an attempt to claim these are the “best” tracks of the year – far from it. They are just new songs I have heard over the last 12 months and have enjoyed enough to listen to them several times over. I’ve singled out the first six tunes as being particularly notable and, in keeping with the planned lean and keen approach for WIS in 2025, these will get a single (reasonably short by my standards) paragraph of supporting narrative. The following twelve tunes will only get one sentence – yup, one. But stand by for some judicious bending of the rules of grammar to achieve this laudable aim and still tell you something about the song. And I’ve grouped these tracks into incongruous pairings for no other reason than just because I can!
There is plenty of genre diversity across the 18 tracks and I really hope you hear some new music you may not have known about which intrigues you enough to explore the artist’s work further.
Broken Biscuits – English Teacher
Not only was the debut album by Leeds band English Teacher This Could Be Texas the proud recipient of the 2024 Mercury Prize. It also ended up being my favourite record of the last 12 months. When I wrote about it in WIS 13 Sept24 I had only just discovered it, but my initial enthusiasm evident in that post has continued. At the time, I attempted to describe the band’s musical style and, somewhat pretentiously, came up with: “rock, electronica, folk, prog, jazz and post-punk all melded together in their twisting dream-pop melodies with plenty of complex rhythms to keep you guessing where the tune is going next”. Well, my view hasn’t changed and the outstanding Broken Biscuits exemplifies this in spades with its hypnotic piano figure, off-beat drumming and the twin(?) saxophone part that takes the song to its dissonant climax. Lily Fontaine’s ‘sprechgesang’ vocal was what first caught my ear – I’ve read that she has said she uses repetition in the lyric to link together “things in my life that were broken or that have been broken”. The line “My mum’s bones are breakin’/And there’s cut-outs in the photographs” particularly hits home and the sense of things coming apart at the seams is cleverly matched by the music. If you liked this, go and explore the album – it’s well worth the effort.
Conversion – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
I expect few regular readers will be surprised to see a track from Wild God on my review of the year. The return of the Bad Seeds to Nick Cave’s musical fold in 2024 was celebrated by a series of astoundingly powerful live shows in the autumn where tracks from this August-released album were featured prominently. Like English Teacher above, I also posted about the Wild God album in WIS 13Sep24 and I was one of many people across Europe who were left astonished by the band’s performance on the album tour which rolled into Glasgow in early November. Although the live show came up on WIS 15Nov24, I didn’t playlist an associated track from the show so I can put that right now by playlisting the great Conversion, one of my highlights that evening. I described the musicianship of the Bad Seeds that night as a ‘mixture of muscular ferocity and precision playing’ and Conversion certainly highlights this. It begins more like a song from Cave’s …erm… ‘Seedless’ Ghosteen or Carnage albums with his restrained vocal describing “stones stacked on stones for ten centuries” over a gentle piano and layered synths and Warren Ellis’ high-pitched backing vocal. But halfway through, Thomas Wylder’s snare cracks announce the arrival of the band and the commencement of an extended outro which builds for the rest of the song. Driven by the backing vocal refrain by the Double R Collective – “Touched by the spirit and touched by the flame” – the synths wail, the bass moans, the drums clatter and, above it all, Cave’s vocal lets go with some wonderful free-styling. “Stop! Stop! You’re beautiful!”. Indeed.
All My Freaks – Divorce
Self-described “alt-country/grunge-ish” Nottingham band Divorce were my other great discovery of 2024, prompted by their appearance on the bill of the Black Deer Festival in June. In my prep for getting the most out of my weekend ticket, I compiled a playlist of all the acts appearing at the festival to allow me to develop a plan for catching the best band’s sets. Among the many songs, I included Divorce’s wonderful Checking Out from their 2022 EP Get Mean, which I had heard a few times on 6Music and had buried on one of my old playlists. But an overdue deeper dive into their few other recordings unearthed more good stuff. Their 2023 Heady Metal EP included the terrificly catchy Eat My Words as well as the brooding and brilliantly named Sex & The Millennium Bridge. Having worked most of my career for the firm that designed that (wobbly but now stable) structure, I’m pretty sure it was the first of our projects that made it into a song title! A couple of other Divorce singles had appeared in early 2024 before we made our way to see them play a great set in the warmth of that June weekend, a ‘review’ of which is included in my Black Deer blog WIS 21Jun24 along with Checking Out. (Divorce appeared again in WIS 23Aug24 when I used a celebrity divorce as a pathetic excuse to playlist Eat My Words.) Their debut album – to be titled Drive To Goldenhammer – is finally due for release on 7 March 2025 but was preceded this year by the release of yet another single All My Freaks which is playlisted here. I’m not sure about their “alt-country/grunge-ish” tag – this is a great pop tune that sounds to my ears like how Torn by Natalie Imbruglia might have been like if the Cocteau Twins had written and recorded it. Great stuff.
Alone – The Cure
And lo, it came to pass that 2024 saw the release of the first new recordings by The Cure since God was a boy – or at least since the 4:13 Dream album I got for my Christmas in 2008. Between then and now, they rode the re-issue/re-package wave which, by 2018, became an extended setlist, live celebration of the band’s 40-year existence, although only Robert Smith remains from the three imaginary boys that started it all. So Songs Of A Lost World was a bit of a surprise to those not scouring the internet for all things Cure-like. It is now suggested that this is the first of a triptych of new records and, if so, it starts from a doom-laden space filled with the existential melancholy that we’ve all come to expect from Smith’s pen. Eight songs clocking in at under 50 minutes means it’s a welcome short burst of bleakness, which pitches in somewhere between 1981’s Faith and 1982’s Pornography. Sonically rich, it is book-ended by its two longest tracks both featuring thunderous drumming, jagged guitars and and layers of keys and synths. I’ve chosen to playlist the album opener and lead single Alone, a song with a long intro. It is well over three minutes into its 6:48 running time before Smith finally steps forward to the mic and proclaims “This is the end of every song that we sing”. I suspect, for many of us of a certain age, there is something reassuring in his distinctive voice tumbling out of the speakers as if it had never been away.
Burial Ground – The Decemberists
One of the challenges with all this blogging is that listening to a lot of music every week means that you can let some things fall between the cracks or even pick up on something and then it goes back off your radar again. This was very much the case with the ninth album by the Decemberists As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, released in June this year. I had been listening to it while traveling in France and wrote about it in WIS 26Jul24 when, inspired by our time in the Basque south east of the country, I playlisted the Latin swing of Oh No!, the last single from the album. Since then, I confess I haven’t pressed play on this collection of tunes but then recently the lead single Burial Ground came on to the radio again. Bloody hell, that’s great, I thought – it will fit perfectly into the 2024 playlist. Back in July’s post, I had referenced this song which is driven by a classic jangly guitar riff and some dancing drums while the whimsical lyric deals with mortality, a subject frontman Colin Meloy is never far from. However, this invite to everyone to meet at a graveyard comes with a melody that could have been written by Brian Wilson and James Mercer of The Shins adds some harmony backing vocals towards the end to make that point even clearer.
Nothing – Paul Weller
My (very close) second favourite live gig of 2024 was the chance to see WIS frequent-flyer Paul Weller perform up close and personal in the confines of the Alhambra Theatre in Dunfermline back on Lynn’s birthday in April. A piece on the gig appeared in WIS 19Apr24 and the great February single Soul Wandering was playlisted. The performance came a month before Weller released 66, the album which marked his sixty-sixth year on the planet. I offer this up as an excuse as to why that April blog gets the title of his co-write with Noel Gallagher from 66 wrong – Jumble Queen not Jungle! What the blog does get right though is that, while a first listen to that track suggested it was a bit Weller-by-numbers, the other 66 track played that night was a standout. Nothing was excellent at first listen and, as it wasn’t available back then, it gets the nod now for this end-of-year playlist. The parent album is a elegiac triumph with a ruminative Weller adopting an affecting weariness in many of the songs. The Weller of 2024 is more like Ray Davies sat on a park bench thinking than Steve Marriot ripping a riff from his Rickenbacker. The melancholy Nothing was co-written with Graeme McPherson (aka Suggs) and its electric piano, muted horns and strings provide the perfect musical backdrop to a wistful lyric of lost times gone by. “Walking back through the silver trees/The light summer’s evening breeze/Across my face to a time and place/Then it was gone, gone, gone, gone”
Bonus Tracks
The South Atlantic – Public Service Broadcasting
The work of the cerebral J Wilgoose Esq will forever have a place in my heart and Public Service Broadcasting’s beautifully presented set based on the last flight of aviator and adventurer Amelia Earhart…erm…landed there too, with this beautiful track featuring lyrics and vocals by Kate Stables aka This Is The Kit.
Starburster – Fontaines DC
With their fourth LP Favourite, the strident Irish punks are on the verge of global arena fame some way from their ragged Dublin beginnings and while lead single Starburster borrowed from hip hop and nu-metal in Grian Chatten’s vocal delivery, it still benefited from bursts of lush orchestration.
Fool – Prima Queen
Another discovery from Black Deer, Prima Queen are indie-pop guitar girls Kristin McFadden and Louise Macphail who charmed the summer festival audience with their catchy tunes, tight harmonies and cool shapes – Lynn liked them so much she bought the T-shirt.
She Cleans Up – Father John Misty
Having long left the Fleet Foxes drum stool behind for the FJM persona, the prolific Josh Tillman continues to release great baroque-pop records, but this uncharacteristically funky track comes from his 2024 album Mahashmashana – easy for you to say, Josh.
N29 to Berlin – Ezra Collective
The 2023 Mercury winners’ follow-up album Dance, No One’s Watching showed that Ezra were no flash in the pan but it was this live version of N29 taken from their show at Colors Studios that really caught my ear – their command of their instruments is fantastic but the drumming towards the end is just awesome.
Fountain Of You – Peter Perrett
Winner of the 2024 “But I Thought You Were Dead” award, former Only Ones frontman Peter Perrett seemed to be in the form of his long life when he knocked out an album full of simple but great tunes like this one – chapeau, old fella!
H Into Hurt – Paul Heaton & Rianne Downey
Much-loved Alternative National Treasure Paul Heaton hooks up with a new singing partner but keeps his pop sensibilities to the forefront as he rattles through a series of pithy, melodic songs like H Into Hurt which has a horn arrangement to die for – and he stands his round in the pub too!
Lion Rumpus – Mogwai
I know I referenced this recent single by Mogwai on the blog only a few weeks ago, but ever since then I just can’t get enough of its thundering drums, swirling layers of synths and crazy guitar lines – and whatever bit of kit it is they use to make those screeching noises in the last 30 seconds.
Afterlife – Sharon Van Etten
I’ve been aware of perennial collaborator Sharon Van Etten for some time (via Angel Olsen, The National, J Mascis, etc) and a couple of her own singles have caught my ear (particularly the great Every Time The Sun Comes Up) but this track from 2024, with its Arcade Fire-style synths and hook chorus, suggests I should listen out for more.
Joker Lips – MJ Lenderman
He’s a recent discovery for me but Jake Lenderman’s fourth LP Manning Fireworks had the critics purring this year over his dry, witty writing and his understated folk-rock guitar playing, exemplified by the excellent Joker Lips – if someone can just tell me who his voice reminds me of, that would be great as it is really bugging me.
Floating Parade – Michael Kiwanuka
With a Mercury win four albums into his career, I finally tuned in to Michael Kiwanuka’s belated fifth LP and was rewarded with exquisitely crafted soundscapes like the gentle burbling bass and layered strings of Floating Parade – and that voice!
Heavy – Sprints
Proving that their terrific 2023 single Literary Mind was no fluke, Dublin post-punk band Sprints debut LP Letter To Self shows there is plenty of life yet in loud and distorted, frantic and ferocious guitar music – he says, from the back of the hall, some considerable distance from the mosh pit.
Last Word
Well, the carnival is now over and the harsh realities of January are now staring us all in the face – with added snow and ice here in Scotland. Which is why we are off on our travels again at the end of the month. This time there will be no aural postcards from afar but I’ve lined up a short series of guest blogs to take over the airwaves with some previous contributors returning and one making their WIS debut. Choice cuts will flow, trust me.
The Master Playlist gets a significant uplift from this bonus edition of the blog and the whole kit and caboodle can be located in the usual place.
AR
If you enjoyed this, there is plenty more where that came from. Subscribers receive a link in their inbox every Friday evening at 5pm UK time. You can’t start the weekend without it.
Week In Sound 
Leave a reply to WIS 4 Apr 2025 – Week In Sound Cancel reply