Favourite Albums of 2024 - The Top 10

 

It’s the end of the year and that means it’s the appropriate time to post an end of the year list. Not November. Not even the middle of December. But at the end of the year.

So here is the Breaking More Waves Favourite Albums of 2024 list.

There’s no big commentary or no real explanation of the records here. This is because if you are the sort of person that pays any interest in end of year lists, you probably can’t stand any more essays on why such and such a record is so good.

There are just 3 short points to be made about this list:

1. I only post my Top 10 records here, because as I’ve said in previous years, who really wants to listen to an album that someone says is their 89^th favourite release of 2024?

2. However, if you do want more than 10, you can find the Breaking More Waves Top 30 on a Spotify playlist here. 1 track from each record.

3. Having first appeared on the blog in 2009 after releasing the song Do It Well, Charli XCX is no stranger to the Breaking More Waves end of year list. She previously featured in 6^th (True Romance 2013), 10^th (Sucker 2014), 14^th (Charli 2019), 6^th again (How I’m Feeling Now 2020) and 28^th places (Crash 2022). But this time she goes higher. Brat is number 1. The album topped a lot of end of year polls. This one is no different. It’s the most forward thinking, modern, exciting, honest, danceable pop record I’ve heard all year and is packed full of good songs.

Brat is also unusual in that it’s an album that has made album artwork important / talked about again. Streaming has to a large extent destroyed interest in album artwork which relies generally on a bigger canvas than a small square on someone's phone. With Brat, Charli has made it important again. It’s influence has gone way beyond pop music.

Here’s the top 10. The playlist of the top 30 can be found on this link here.

Top 10 Albums of 2024

 1st Charli XCX – Brat

2nd The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy

3rd The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World

4th Fabiana Palladino  - Fabiana Palladino

5th English Teacher – This Could Be Texas

6th Kneecap – Fine Art

7th Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft

8th Ezra Collective – Dance, No One’s Watching

9th Sprints – Letter To Self

10th Lady Blackbird - Slang Spirituals

Charli XCX - 360 (From Brat)

charlixcx · 360

Ones to Watch 2025 #10 Man / Woman / Chainsaw

 Man/ Woman/ Chainsaw is Billy Ward (vocals, guitars), Emmie-Mae Avery (vocals,keys/synths), Vera Leppänen (vocals, bass), Clio Harwood (violin) and Lola Cherry (drums). The final choice on this year’s Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch list they are arguably the least ‘new’ of the 10 acts on the list, having released their first song Any Given Sunday late in 2022. Two further songs followed in 2023 and it was one of these that first caught our attention – the ambitious What Lucy Found There. It wasn’t until November 2024 though that the band released their debut EP and established themselves as a true force to be reckoned with.

If you are a fan of early Black Country New Road, The Delgados and what is often known as the ‘Windmill Scene’ bands but think that Black Country New Road are becoming a little too twee recently then Man / Woman/  Chainsaw may well be your cup of musical tea. Taking indie guitars and both male and female vocals as a base, the band create a bigger widescreen sound through the addition of violin and piano that gives them a broader folk-orchestral scope than many of their indie rock contemporaries. Man / Woman / Chainsaw have moments in their songs where they sound genuinely pretty but it’s often then cut with aggressive punkish outbursts. It's this contrast and not knowing what is going to come next that is part of their appeal.

Man / Woman / Chainsaw still sound like a band that are growing and developing, but that development is fascinating; where their potential takes them only time will tell.

Man / Woman / Chainsaw - Ode To Clio

Man/Woman/Chainsaw · Ode To Clio

Ones to Watch 2025 #9 Disgusting Sisters

The ninth Ones to Watch 2025 is Disgusting Sisters; a duo that featured on the blog in September prior to releasing any music.

Since then they’ve released they’re debut single Killing It and Breaking More Waves has managed to catch them live.

From that live show I can confirm that they are the new queens of dancing in front of the bedroom mirror pop. They’re cool, sassy and fun. They describe themselves as “Gucci Beavis and Butthead.” They probably spent their youths listening to Girls Aloud and Shampoo. They may get you grooving like a wolf. (Honestly). Killing It is probably their weakest song – there is better to come. The single was released by the forever on the case record label Speedy Wunderground.

They are the penultimate Ones to Watch 2025 on Breaking More Waves.

Disgusting Sisters - Killing It

 

Ones to Watch 2025 #8 The Itch

 

The next selection on the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch 2025 list is a bit of a stab in the dark. To date The Itch have released just 1 song – the mighty Ursula. Released last April it was immediately featured as the Breaking More Waves song of the week. 

This is how it was described on the blog at that time: ‘For Georgia Hardy and Simon Tyrie (who are The Itch) have created something rather magnificent. An ambitious meandering piece of electronic retro-pop that hints at the likes of Depeche Mode circa Violator and Your Love by Frankie Knuckles, it’s in no rush to finish as it tells us that pain is stronger than love and builds to an early proclamation that: “We can bring down the government, we could put their heads on spikes.”’

The song ended up being one of my top 10 most streamed tracks of the year. Of course I fully expected something else to follow. It hasn’t. 

So was that it? Or are The Itch just scratching the surface and then making us wait at the opening for a very long time?

It’s hard to tell, but there are clues that there will be more to come. In October there was some proof they hadn’t jacked it in already when I witnessed the band play at Swn Festival in Cardiff. Expanded beyond a two piece they looked like a going concern. The shock was that the other songs in their set didn’t sound anything like the Ursula. A number of tunes burst with funkiness, there was a hint of Talking Heads and an element of danceable drama to their performance. Unexpected but unexpectedly good.

So that stab in the dark assumes that some of those tunes they played will surface at some point and that in 2025 The Itch will come marching forwards with some brilliant recordings. Let’s just hope they don’t do the same as Priestgate in 2023 or Pink Kink in 2018 and having seemingly just got going split just a few months after I’ve tipped them.

The Itch - Ursula