Going into this year’s albums of the year list, I knew two things for certain: I wanted a list of at least 20, but I could only name five off the top of my head that were absolute locks to make it. The result is a list in which I feel much stronger about the top-ranked entries than the bottom 15 or so – but that uncertainty also made for a fun process of revisiting and evaluating some albums that I had heard and forgotten about over the course of year, then determining where they stacked up against the top 1% of releases that really grabbed my attention. The end result is a group of records that I think is a smidge more diverse than lists past – and one that I hope includes some favorites of yours as well as some new discoveries. Read Part 1 here.

Just as he did for our songs of the year list, Postrider contributor Alex Hunter compiled his own list of albums of the year, which I’ll let you take a peak at before getting to the rest of my picks. 

• Blue Lips – Schoolboy Q
• Still Praying – Westside Gunn 
• GNX – Kendrick Lamar
• Underdressed at the Symphony – Faye Webster
• The Auditorium Vol. 1 – Common and Pete Rock
• WE DON’T TRUST YOU – Future and Metro Boomin
• CHROMAKOPIA – Tyler, the Creator
• ORQUÍDEAS – Kali Uchis
• The Game is the Game – El Camino, Real Bad Man, and Black Soprano Family 
• Timeless – KAYTRANADA
• Saaheem – SahBabii
• Alligator Bites Never Heal – Doechii
• HEAVY – SiR
• Mid Spiral – BADBADNOTGOOD
• CHUPACABRA – JasonMartin and DJ Quik
• Why Lawd? – NxWorries
• Soul Burger – Ab-Soul
• Born in the Wild – Tems
• The Tonite Show Part 2 – Jay Worthy and DJ.Fresh
• MADeMAN – Cardo Got Wings
• Conductor We Have a Problem, Pt. 3 – Conduct Williams
• Falling or Flying (Reimagined) – Jorja Smith
• You Only Die 1nce – Freddie Gibbs
• Pacific Time 2 (EP) – Phonte
• Penalty of Leadership – Nicholas Caven and Boldy James

Listened to all of those albums yet? Great, now here’s ten more to add to your list:

10. Tigers Blood – Waxahatchee

Steven Hyden once compared Tom Petty to “tap water or concrete,” something so ubiquitous and tacitly appreciated that it made no sense to have an opinion of. Waxahatchee hasn’t quite reached that level of exposure, but Tigers Blood does feel like the project’s transition into a sort of sustained level of quality. After reembracing country music and Americana on 2020’s Saint Cloud, Katie Crutchfield digs further into her roots on this album, foregrounding her acoustic guitar and simplifying the arrangements to put her songwriting and singing voice in the spotlight. She’s grown in both respects: her lyrics, sometimes wordy, have been streamlined and simplified without sacrificing any narrative or emotional depth, and her vocals more confidently delivered. The many evolutions of Waxahatchee have always made it feel like Crutchfield was searching for a template on which to draw from – the steady reliability of Tigers Blood (and the proliferation of country-influenced artists throughout indie rock) reveals that she’s become the template.

Recommended tracks: “Ice Cold,” “Right Back to It” feat. MJ Lenderman, “Burns Out at Midnight,” “Bored” 

9. Only God Was Above Us – Vampire Weekend

After four albums that progressively raised the stakes, I was initially disappointed at what felt like the reduced scale of Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend’s fifth album. But while this record may lack the musical ambition of Modern Vampires of the City or the zeitgeist-capturing lyrics of Father of the Bride, it still stands as a testament to the band’s constant quest for reinvention. Despite being meticulously produced and arranged, the introduction of noisy guitars and dusty hip-hop beats makes Only God Was Above Us feel like the loosest Vampire Weekend album to date, a laid back exploration of the 90s sounds that soundtracked their childhood and sets them off on a Beastie Boys-esque musical adventure. It may not go down as the very best of their vaunted discography, but it certainly stands out as a valiant attempt to break their own mold. 

Recommended tracks: “Capricorn,” “The Surfer,” “Gen-X Cops”

8. GNX – Kendrick Lamar

I know that Drake is the music world’s favorite punching bag right now, but I feel like we all owe him a thank you for getting Kendrick Lamar so angry he started writing exciting music again. After the self-important slough that was Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, GNX feels like both a breath of fresh air and a return to form, simultaneously a celebration of LA hip-hop and a victory lap for Kendrick, who rode his beef with Drake all the way to the Super Bowl halftime show. What GNX lacks in Lamar’s trademark storytelling it more than makes up for in swagger, aggression, phrasing, and flow – all of which come together for a lean and mean display of both Kendrick and his features’ chops. The end result is a modern hip-hop classic that will hopefully usher in a new and exciting phase of Lamar’s career. 

Recommended tracks: “squabble up,” “hey now” feat. Dody6, “tv off” feat. Lefty Gunplay, “gnx” feat. Hitta J3, YoungThreat, and Peysoh. 

7. I Got Heaven – Mannequin Pussy

Alternating between melodic indie rock songs and bursts of punk rage, Mannequin Pussy’s albums have always been delightfully messy affairs that seem to regard sequencing and cohesion as an inconvenience. I Got Heaven is probably their best flowing album to date, but it’s also the one that’s the most self-evidently about mess – namely, the mess of love, hate, desire, and revulsion, and the way all of those things can collide together. I Got Heaven is also probably their slickest and most pop friendly album to date, but with Mannequin Pussy, those are relative terms – fantasies about sexual domination and being pleasured by Jesus clash with soft love songs and pop punk tracks about romantic anxiety, culminating in a simultaneously ugly and beautiful record about the brutality we put ourselves through to satisfy our romantic and carnal urges. 

Recommended tracks: “Loud Bark,” “Sometimes,” “OK? OK! OK? OK!,” “Softly”

6. No Name – Jack White

In recent years, when I’ve put a Jack White record on an end of year list, it’s always with a whiff of apology – as much as I still enjoy him, there’s no denying that he’s past his peak and has a tendency to pursue odd directions that don’t always pay off. Well, I’m happy to report that I have no such reservations with No Name, White’s return to the meat and potatoes rock and roll that he made his name on with the White Stripes and other projects. For most artists, such a reversion might signal that they’ve run out of ideas, but White is one of the most inventive and mischievous guitarists in modern rock, always game to play with texture and song structure in a way that constantly keeps his listeners guessing. Some of the tricks he deploys on No Name – like the pseudo-rapping on “Archbishop Harold Holmes” – will be familiar to longtime Jack fans, but others, like the clean-distorted-clean structure of “It’s Rough on the Rats (If You’re Asking)” and the funky intro-riffage of “Number One With a Bullet” are welcome additions to his bag of tricks, and a heartening indication that the 49-year-old isn’t quite out of ideas yet. 

Recommended tracks: “Bless Yourself,” “It’s Rough on the Rats (If You’re Asking),” “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” “Bombing Out” 

5. The New Sound – Geordie Greep

A prog rock album about charmless men failing to get laid unless they pay does not sound like the most appealing project to me, but even I can’t deny the ambition and execution of The New Sound, the debut solo album of black midi frontman Geordie Greep. Greep’s chaotic take on art rock, jazz, salsa, and lounge music feels like an even gnarlier Brett Easton Ellis novel where the wannabe Patrick Batemans are simultaneously more revolting and more sympathetic than the famous serial killer, and where the in-house band at the bars they frequent launch into noise-filled passages between smooth easy listening selections. It’s not the kind of record one puts on to do chores around the house, but it is nonetheless a sight to behold, a once-every-five-years achievement in arrangement and vision that always threatens to spill over the top before simmering back down again. 

Recommended tracks: “Blues,” “Holy, Holy,” “Walk Up,” “Motorbike,” “As If Waltz” 

4. Triple Seven – Wishy

Even when it touches on feelings of anxiety and desperation, Triple Seven stands out as probably the warmest album of 2024, a ray of sunlight in what was an otherwise distressing year. It’s also an innovative variation on shoegaze, warping the genre’s trademark guitar effects to create psychedelic pop soundscapes and introducing vocal hooks to what can sometimes be a melody-averse style. It’s an album that is, despite its sugary exterior, deceptively groundbreaking and deep, an invitation to fearlessly dive into life that also pushes the genre forward. 

Recommended tracks: “Triple Seven,” “Persuasion,” “Love on the Outside,” “Just Like Sunday”

3. Manning Fireworks – MJ Lenderman

“Once a perfect little baby, who’s now a jerk” is how MJ Lenderman describes the character of Manning Fireworks’ title track, and it serves as a helpful template for the rest of the album. The cheating, gambling, drunken men that Lenderman describes throughout his fourth solo studio album are, by any measure of polite society, jerks – but they weren’t born that way. Instead, they’ve fallen from grace, broken by bad luck in love and life, reduced to cleaning up after other lonely men in hotel rooms and filling their free time binging Guitar Hero. It’s probably no coincidence that Manning Fireworks is Lenderman’s most “country” record to date – its stories of loneliness and isolation reflect those of the great country balladeers of the past, but instead of pondering their lot on the great American frontier, Lenderman’s characters have to pick their way through the post-industrial detritus of modern America, where a singer’s cracked drawl and fuzzy guitar are all the comfort they have. 

Recommended tracks: “Joker Lips,” “Rudolph,” “Wristwatch,” “She’s Leaving You”

2. Diamond Jubilee – Cindy Lee

Beyond the music itself, part of what makes Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee such a thrill is the unlikely story of its success – the former frontperson of a Canadian indie rock band, disdainful of fame and media attention, released their two-hour magnum opus only on YouTube and a sketchy Geocities site, garnered critical praise, then embarked on a highly anticipated tour that they canceled early. The mystique of Cindy Lee feels like a throwback to an earlier era, when it was still possible for artists to release music through non-streaming channels and find success, but the music of Diamond Jubilee feels like something of a throwback as well. It recalls 60s psychedelia and girl groups, yes, but it also recalls a moment in the late 2000s and early 2010s when indie artists were interested in recalling those genres, a kind of nostalgia for nostalgia that turned into catnip for 30-something indie fans convinced that music was just a little bit better ten years ago. 

But all of this context just serves as a framing device for the record. When I was younger, there was a radio station in my hometown that alternated between playing oldies and blocks of pure feedback – knowing that I can only access Lee’s ghostly vocals and rich guitar leads through relatively archaic methods restores that sense of magic and mystery, but it never overshadows it. Diamond Jubilee is a sonic delight that, textually and functionally, also reflects our desire to withdraw, and the way that the pop culture of decades past embeds itself into our psyches. 

Recommended tracks: “Diamond Jubilee,” “Baby Blue,” “All I Want Is You,” “Olive Drab,” “Always Dreaming,” “Flesh and Blood,” “Kingdom Come,” “Stone Faces,” “Dracula,” “To Heal This Wounded Heart,” “Wild Rose”

1. Box for Buddy, Box for Star – This Is Lorelei 

What do you do when the awesome sight of Stonehenge inspires you to kick your daily weed habit? If you’re Nate Amos, you take all of that free time and channel it into a “delayed recovery record,” which eventually turns into Box for Buddy, Box for Star – a delightfully idiosyncratic, sensitive, and moving album that draws on such a wide range of genres and styles it’s almost unclassifiable. Amos is best known as one half of avant-garde pop duo Water From Your Eyes, whose noisy, fractured sound is probably what comes to the mind of most people when they think of “weird” music. But Box for Buddy, Box for Star – Amos’ first proper album as This Is Lorelei after releasing literally dozens of smaller works – is wacky in a more appealing way, hopping from a country ballad about an alien abduction, to a low key pop song, to a jittery misadventure narrative, to a wistful electro jam, all in the span of the album’s four opening tracks. But the album’s omnivorous approach to genre both belies and harmonizes with Amos’ vulnerable, deeply felt songwriting, which ponders how the dawn of adult responsibility grows out of youthful recklessness and regret. 

Perhaps it’s no surprise that my favorite album of the year in which I turned 30 is also one in which someone sings “I’m not looking thirty, I’m looking one,” but the kind of progress and revelations that Amos sings about on Box for Buddy, Box for Star are relatable no matter your age. All you need is a desire to be open to love and healing, and a drive to take control of your life. It’s both a security blanket and a kick out of the nest. The soundtrack of a wasted prologue and the rest of your beautiful life. 

Recommended tracks: “Angel’s Eye,” “Perfect Hand,” “I’m All Fucked Up,” “Dancing in the Club,” “Where’s Your Love Now,” “An Extra Beat for You and Me”