The Bagging Area 2024 End Of Year Lists

The end of year list is a bit of an indulgence but also a good way to look back, revisit albums and songs and enjoy again the music that's made my year. People like lists. The exact positions are very arbitrary. What does it matter if I think something was the 26th or 27th best album of the year? It doesn't. But pulling together my favourite releases of the calendar year is always a fun thing to do and a good way to draw a line under the year. Last year I wrote a massive piece with multiple sections, categories, sub- categories and sub- lists, the total number of releases heading up towards three figures. I must have had more time to think about it and to write it last year than I do now. This year I've slim- lined it to two lists, one for albums and one for singles/ EPs/ remixes, each numbering thirty. 

Some years feel like singles years and some feel like album years- 2024 has been a big year for albums, some big hitters and 80s/ 90s bands and artists with big comebacks. I like to think I keep up with new music to some extent and the number of 'old' artists in this list makes me wonder how accurate that is, whether I'm kidding myself about that. But, as they say, it is what it is. Inevitably I will have missed something out from one of these two lists, if not both. Equally inevitably, I will buy an album in the new year that came out in 2024 which should have been in  the top 30. Nothing is ever fixed. Maybe that's the way it should be, a constantly fluid and shifting list. 

Singles, EPs and remixes

30 Silvertooth: Shut Um Down (A Dub From Outer Space)

29 The Liminanas and Bertand Belin: J'Adore Le Monde

28 Richard Norris: Weatherall's Last Stand

27 Jezebell: Weekend Machines EP

26 Causeway: Dancing With Shadows

25 Hinds with Grian Chatten: Stranger

24 David Harrow and Hugo Nicolson: Revolvalution EP and Rude Audio Remixes

23 Cole Odin and Marshall Watson: Voyager

22 Mick Harvey: When We Were Beautiful And Young

21 Electric Blue Vision: Trance Stance

20 BTCOP: The Custom 88 EP and Rude Audio Remixes

19 Mildlife: Return To Centauri

18 Puerto Montt City Orchestra: Hey You (10:40 Remix)

17 Pandit Pam Pam: Pass A Wish EP

16 Theis Thaws: Fly To Ceiling (David Holmes Remix)

15 Ammomite: You Don't Know Me (David Holmes Remix)

14 Ride: Last Frontier

13 C.A.R.: Anzu (Hardway Bros Remixes)

12 Acid Klaus: PTSD By Proxy EP

11 Raxon: Your Fault

10 Peak High: Dance Hall Days

9 Psychederek: Alt! EP

8 Iraini Mancini: Undo The Blue (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- animation)

7 Lisa Moorish: Sylvia (David Holmes Remix)

6 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

5 Galliano: Cabin Fever Dub

A limited edition 7" single that was a very timely release with its line, 'don't want to take my country back man/ Want to take my country forwards', arriving to coincide with the Farage race riots in the summer, Galliano making a return to action and being a voice of reason. The song sampled Andrew Weatherall's remix of the band from 1992's Skunk Funk and borrowed Joe Strummer's vocal phrasings from This Is Radio Clash, and was a very unexpected treat. 

4 Amyl and The Sniffers: Big Dreams

As was this, a single ahead of the Melbourne pub punk's third album that showed a different side to the band. Over a picked, circling guitar riff and some spacious production Amy sang a punk rock torch song for all those people stuck in dead end towns and dead end jobs amid a cost of living crisis who want to get out and realise they're another year older and still stuck. The video for Big Dreams, with the band on motorbikes in the desert, was pure rock 'n' roll cool. 

3 Alex Kassian: E2- E4 (A Reference To E2- E4 By Manuel Gottsching)/ Mad Professor remixes

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds of perfection- pulsing spaced out synths lines that lit up the summer. Not that summer really happened in the north of the UK this year. But when E2- E4 played it felt like it did. 

2 Orbital, David Holmes, DJ Helen and Mike Garry: Tonight In Belfast

Tonight In Belfast, Mike Garry's beautifully moving poem and voice over David Holmes' remix of Orbital's Belfast, a re- imagining of the Hartnoll brothers 1991 masterpiece is as good as anything else released this yea. It could easily be my number one. David remixed Belfast for the Orbital 30 project, updating it for the 2020s. DJ Helen got Mike Garry to speak his Tonight poem over the top. Mike's words speak to me in all sorts of ways. When I first heard it, so many of the lines for me were about Isaac, it seemed almost like he'd written it for me. Transcendent and emotional, everything music can/ should be. Magical. 

'Tonight I want to paint pictures of you/ Write poems and songs and novels all about you/I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit'

'I love to speak your name aloud/ Simply 'cos I love its sound/ It feels like I'm kinda calling yer/ It feels like I'm kinda talking to ya/ It feels like I'm trying to break through/ You know across this divide'

'I'll tell you what/ Let's slip beyond the confines of this world/Let's forget every single thing we've learned/ Let's rewrite the way this world can turn'

1 Fat White Family: Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

This came out in June, a 12" remix of one of the songs from Fat White Family's latest album Forgiveness Is Yours. The Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix takes Bullet Of Dignity, already a fucked up, sordid and groovy number and spins it further, kicking off with percussion, timbales, early 90s kick drum and then a squelchy bassline that oozes dance floor action. It builds, echoes rattling around and the rhythm gathering steam, some piano stabs and then finally, after a drop out and pause, Lias' vocal comes in, a blur of standout lines and attention grabbing phrases- 'You say you're just thirty one/ What's that in cannibal years?' I have no idea what it's about but it keeps giving with imagery, lines about fatal caricatures and suicidal cassettes, words walking in pairs, and how the dialogue's dubbed. There's a Middle Eastern/ North African guitar line that appears and re- appears. At five minutes it takes off even further, the groove and rhythms bouncing around, moving ever forwards. 

Bullet Of Dignity (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Re- Animation)

There are a couple of singles that should really be heading up the singles list but they're both going to appear as part of the albums near the top end of this second list, as much for variety as anything. 

Albums

Edit: I've forgotten to include any of 100 Poems brilliant trio of albums from this year- I knew I'd forget something! Out of the three the most recent, Balearic As A System Of Belief, just about edges it. Album number 31. 

30 The Jesus And Mary Chain: Glasgow Eyes

29 Fat White Family: Forgiveness Is Yours

28 Reverb Delay: The Storm Has Passed

27 SubDan: Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

26 Duncan Gray: Five Fathoms Full

25 Saint Etienne: The Night

24 Richard Norris: Oracle Sound Volume Three

23 Khruangbin: A La Sala

22 Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band: Loophole

21 The Woodentops: Fruits Of the Deep

20 Dirt Bogarde: Love, Sweat And Beers

19 M- Paths: Submerge

18 Coyote: Hurry Up And Live

17 Klangkollektor: Dub Tapes Volume 1

16 Various Artists: Virtual Dreams Volume II (Ambient Explorations In The House And techno Age, Japan 1993- 1999

15 David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse Remixes

14 Fontaines DC: Romance

13 Richard Sen: India Man

12 A Certain Ratio: It All Comes Down To This

11 J- Walk: Broken Beauty

10 Five Green Moons: Moon One

9 Sedibus: Seti

8 Underworld: Strawberry Hotel

7 Four Tet: 3

6 Jamie Xx: In Waves

5 The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World

I had no idea, along with thousands of other people I imagine, that what I really needed in late 2024 was a new album from The Cure. The opener, Alone, released as a single in the autumn, was an exercise in majestic beauty and beautiful gloom, a three minute instrumental intro and then Robert Smith singing as well as he ever has, about life, love, loss, mortality, and 'the end of every song we sing'. Stunning. The album continued in that vein for the next seven songs, meditations on aging and loss, ending inevitably with Endsong.

4 GLOK/ Timothy Clerkin: Alliance

Electronics and guitars, swirling, woozy modern psychedelia recorded remotely after the pair met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral. A collision of early 90s sounds and 2024 trippiness. For some time it was all I played, a totally addictive seven track album. 

3 Bill Ryder- Jones: Iechyd Da

This could easily be album of the year, a January release that I keep returning to. Beautiful songs with acoustic guitars, pianos and grand, sweeping strings, a children's choir from a Birkenhead primary school, Mick Head reading Ulysses, a Gal Costa sample, and amazing stirring production- and then Bill's battered and beaten voice, sounding like a man who's reached the end of the road, has nowhere left to go, broken. The pain he sings about is from experience, the death of his brother as a child (Daniel fell off a cliff while they pair where on holiday, his family forever scarred) and mental health issues ever since. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the end though he gets there and we do with him- 'I'm still lost/ But I know love/ I know loss/ But I chose love'.

2 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Wild God

Wild God was a step into the light, a conscious decision by Nick Cave to choose joy over sorrow- a line that appears in the song Joy where Nick is visited late at night by a ghost, a boy with giant sneakers and laughing stars around his head, who tells him, 'we've all had too much sorrow/ now is the time for joy'. It shakes me when I hear it. 

By this song, the fourth on the album, its clear we've stepped into a new Cave world. The first song, Song Of The Lake, explodes orchestrally Nick muttering 'never mind, never mind...'. It's follow by Wild God, with its heart stopping cry of 'bring your spirit down'. That is followed by Frogs, easily one of the best songs of this year and one of Cave's best, a song where Nick walks home on a Sunday in the rain, amazed at the wonders of the world around him- frogs in the gutter, the rain, Kris Kristofferson. The band sound reborn too. The previous albums were so grief stricken and spectral it was difficult for them to find a way in, Warren Ellis's synths were the core of the sound. Final Rescue Attempt tells of Nick being saved by a woman, and how after that, 'nothing really hurt again/ nothing ever really hurt/ not even real pain'. It's extraordinary stuff, magical, life affirming songs. By the end of side two, when former partner Anita Lane's voice appears (from Nick's answer phone. She died in 2021), we've gone through the wringer and come out the other side, the sheer joie de vivre evident throughout, no more so than in the fade out to Conversion where Nick and the choir sing/ shout, 'Stop! You're beautiful!', at each other.

Both Frogs and Wild God could have been near the top end of the singles list- I've not listened to any songs more than either of those two all year- but now they're fully part of the album as a whole, an album that when I put it on, I play all the way through and one I imagine I'll still be playing long into the future. 

Joy

1 Various Artists: Sounds From The Flightpath Estate

What else could it be? I did wonder whether I could/ should put the album me, Martin, Dan, Mark and Baz pulled together into my list, if doing it was a bit much. But in the end, it has been the album of the year for me. This time last year we were receiving tracks from the artists we'd approached, music from Justin Robertson, David Holmes, Timothy J Fairplay, Richard Sen, Hardway Bros, Sons Of Slough, Rude Audio and 10:40. Andy Bell's cover of Smokebelch arriving at the last minute was the cherry on top. An unreleased Two Lone Swordsmen track too.  

We knew we had something good, all the music was so strong, everyone had really responded so well to us (a bunch of unknowns let's be honest). But we did not expect what then happened. Selling out 500 vinyl copies in a day. Repressing 500 more and selling all of them too. Three of the tracks being played on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show. Having the window display in Piccadilly Records. 

Giving a copy to Paul Simonon at The Golden Lion was as memorable and surreal as anything else that happened in 2024. Appearing in two end of year lists (Piccadilly records and Uncut). All of it has been unreal and yet, there it is, it happened. It would have been nothing without the music though- from the chunky cosmic chug of Sons Of Slough (recorded live at The Golden Lion) to Tim Fairplay's centurion dub, Justin's weird folk/ dub collision and Richard Sen's massive sounding Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug, the dub techno of Rude Audio and 10:40's fairground swirl, Hardway Bros writing our own theme, Theme For Flightpath Estate, and Holmes' magnificent Human: Remains, to Andy's gorgeous cover of Smokebelch, it's a brilliant and beautiful thing and it's my album of the year. To everyone involved, all the artists, my Flightpath friends, Waka, Gig and Matt at the Golden Lion and GLS, Andrew Liles, Rusty for his incredible sleeve art, and the memory of Andrew Weatherall (for whom it is a tribute)- thank you. 

Did someone say Volume 2? Sequels are hard....

Iechyd Da

Iechyd Da is the new album by Bill Ryder- Jones, one that came out in mid- January. At the end of December I posted the first single from it, the massively moving, emotionally close- to- the- edge song This Can't Go On. That song sounds like a man at the end of his tether, the lyrics describing being out of control, losing it, declining mental health and the advice of his Dad, 'You've got to go outside/ Got to get some sun/ Get yourself together/ because this can't go on'. 

I got the album two weeks ago, the digital first and then the vinyl. Straight away it's worth pointing out that this an album that needs to be appreciated on vinyl for the sleeve art if nothing else- the oil painting on the cover, a row of cottages with shadows falling, by Dale Bissland, is beautiful and deserves to be seen 12" by 12". The back cover is a collage of family photos which I think offer some clues about the album, the songs and about Bill's attempts to deal with his mental health. I have to say as well that this album has on a couple of occasions left me feeling totally wrung out, it's moved me to tears more than once, and on occasion I had to turn it off, it was too much for me. 

Iechyd Da (Welsh for good health, a toast when drinking a pint) is a beautifully recorded and produced album, the songs a balance of epic and intimate, both grand and close up. It starts with a crackly sample of Baby by Gal Costa, a line about 'walking all night to The Killing Moon', and Bill sounding like late period Velvets, if Lou Reed had been from New Brighton not New York. During the course of the next forty minutes, two sides of vinyl and thirteen songs there is a guest appearance from Mick Head at the start of side two, reading  a passage from Ulysses, there is the Bidston Avenue Primary School Choir (all thanked by name on the credits) and there are some songs, at least three, that unpick Bill's past, a childhood trauma and tragedy, and the impact of that event on his mental health. 

Bill Ryder- Jones joined The Coral as a teenager and found success and a certain level of fame quickly. He unravelled rapidly too- depression, undiagnosed ADHD, complex PTSD and massive stage fright. Add in the lifestyle and the habits of young men in rock n'n roll bands and Bill had a breakdown. Jumping forward a couple of decades he found lockdown 'fucking unbearable', holed up in West Kirby with a new girlfriend who was only supposed to be stopping over. He says they both went mad. Some of the songs on Iechyd Da came from that period.What also unpicks a lot of what has gone into the album is the incident from his childhood. On holiday on Ramsey Island, Bill aged seven was playing with his brother Daniel, aged nine. They were playing near a cliff with some other children and Daniel fell off the edge and was killed. Bill witnessed it. Afterwards his family shut down completely,  everyone dealing with their grief on their own, his Mum refusing to share her grief with anyone, his Dad unable to and Bill, a child, in a fugue state. The family were unable to even say Daniel's name. Unsurprisingly Bill has carried this around with him ever since and the songs on the album (and the photos on the back cover) seem to be an attempt to acknowledge Daniel, to bring the loss to the surface and to reckon with the impact on his mental health. In a recent interview in Mojo Bill said, 'My family definitely has a genetic predisposition to mental ill health but my problems are very specific... I can't picture myself without Daniel's death'.

The songs that seem to deal with this jump out at me through the speakers. The album is melancholic throughout and at times desperate. In This Can't Go On it's not just the lyrics and the vocal, the strings are right at the edge, fraught and about to collapse. In Nothing To Be Done Bill sings, 'Oh no I'm feeling blue/ It's all because of you/ It's no one's fault/ There's sometimes nothing to be done/ I just don't see myself getting past this one'. 

Nothing To Be Done

In the months and now years since Isaac died I recognise this so much it seems like Bill wrote it after looking inside me, after seeing the ball of grief that sits inside my chest most of the time. There is some optimism (I think), some hope- in the same song, later on he sings, 'And I know one day you'll find your way back to me'. On How Beautiful I Am, after a verse that describes being in a hotel room with someone, he sings/ mutters, 'I think about it all the time/ I think about it all the time', and then, 'I'm dancing with shadows/ The sun just sits on your face... I think about it all the time'. 

I don't think these are love songs or about relationships that have come to an end. I think these are about his brother and his death on that cliff three decades ago and what Bill's carried around ever since. There is a darkness and intense emotion that sits at the centre of this album and some/ many of its songs. I feel it when I play it. Sometimes it feels good (and helpful) to listen to it, to recognise it, to match it, to use it as a mirror for my own grief. A couple of times it's been too much, too close to the bone, an unbearable connection with the songs. I played it the other night and loved it and I think it's a very open and accessible album- I think many people could listen to it without having the response to it I have had, that you could just enjoy it as a set of personal songs, beautifully played and recorded with acoustic guitars, a world weary voice, organ and accordion, piano and strings, a children's choir and some clever little touches, a set of songs that look back and reflect, shot with melancholy. The last two songs, Thankfully For Anthony and Nos Da, point to better times. The former, piano and voice and then sweeping strings and Bill singing, 'I know loss but I chose love... I know love', which is making me tear up just typing it. Catharsis. The latter Nos Da, is one and a half minutes of organ, sounding like a half remembered children's tv theme from the early 70s, suddenly swallowed up by cellos. It sounds like a conclusion, a nod to the past and (possibly) a moving forward. 

Iechyd da everyone. 

Forty Minutes Of Mick Head

Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band have a new single out this week, Shirl's Ghost (on Wednesday) with a new album to follow. The perfect time to revisit Mick's back catalogue, one stuffed full of some of the best songs of the 90s and 2000s. I don't listen to a huge amount of guitar based songs any more but always make an exception for Mick. I meant to include some of the songs from 1998's The Magical World Of The Strands, Forever Changes transplanted to late 90s Liverpool, but couldn't find my CD copy, something that concerns me a little. Instead there are songs here from Shack, the group he formed with his brother John, and from various Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band releases, any and all of which you should own. Mick Head is one of the greats, barely known about, still playing small venues (all the better to see him in) and about to put out one of 2024's best albums no doubt. 

Forty Minutes Of Mick Head

• I Know You Well (Extended Mix)
• Undecided
• Velvets In The Dark
• Picasso
• Josephine
• Lucinda Byre
• The Ten
• Tie Me Down
• Comedy (Radio Edit)

I Know You Well was a standalone single in 1990, the chiming guitars, backwards effects and Beatles in '66/ Revolver bassline coupled with 1990 drums sounding still very fresh all these years later. 

Undecided is from the legendary Waterpistol album, Shack's 1991 which went unreleased until 1995. Bad luck and disaster beset the album- the studio containing the master tapes burnt down, Shack broke up, Mick developed a serious drug habit- but when it saw the light of day it was widely praised but rarely heard. By '95 and the resurgence of 60s guitar rock these songs should have topped charts. Shack didn't manage to get it back together until 1999 and their HMS Fable album. 

Velvets In The Dark was a 2014 single, Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band, a 7" on Violette Records. Mick wrote the song after hearing of Lou Reed's death. The blend of Mick's voice, the acoustic guitars and trumpet are irresistible, with Mick singing, 'you found me in the park/ listening to The Velvets in the dark'.

Picasso and Josephine are from 2017's Adios Senor Pussycat, scouse cosmic folk, an album that is pure brilliance from start to finish. I could have included any of the songs from it here- warm, wise, melancholic, melodic, confessional and storytelling, human and emotional. It's got everything. My favourite Mick Head album. 'It's not like it in the movies/ There may be police involved', Mick sings on Picasso

Lucinda Byre was song from a 2014 EP titled Artorius Revisited, a song that starts out in a cafe with Mick taking acid and then walking up Liverpool's Bold Street and trying to see if he can get to the top. Lucinda Byre was a ladies clothes boutique on that street which opened in the mid 60s and survived through until the 80s. The song is a melancholic wonder, all violin and strummed guitar and acres of reverb.

The Ten is from 2022's Dear Scott, a record beautifully produced by Bill Ryder- Jones in West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula. The Ten tells of some of the places to be found in Liverpool L10, while sounding like Love updated for 2022.   

Tie Me Down was the opening song on Shack's 2006 album On The Corner Of Miles And Gil, Mick's love of West Coast 60s folk rock, Love and The Byrds, evident throughout. Tie Me Down starts out with a fanfare of horns and then lyrically dives into the sweetly sung world of Louise and her love of bondage. 

Comedy was on Shack's 1999 H.M.S. Fable, an album packed with songs that saw Mick christened 'the UK's greatest songwriter' by the NME. The album is unflinching lyrically, desolate songs about trying to score heroin on the streets of Liverpool's Kensington, but has some uplifting moments too, not least on Comedy, a heartfelt and rousing song that jangles and soars, guitar lines peeling off like bells and Mick singing one of those hard- won wisdom lyrics he's so good at, a voice that sounds like it's got a mouthful of the Mersey in it, 'when you cry it pulls me through', he sings as the strings swirl around. 

This Can't Go On

Something else I missed off my 2023 list is this single from Bill Ryder- Jones. It came out three months ago but I didn't hear it until I read about it at Khayem's Dubhed. Then I forgot about it and only remembered it again when reading an interview with Bill and went back to it. The song is completely at the edge, strings so close to the precipice they teeter, almost collapsing. Bill's voice sounds like he's on the verge of tears, and there's a video to match, the young boy (Lincoln McDonagh) running away from something, filmed in bleak British landscapes. It's emotive, big sky music but achingly personal too. I think (hope) there's some redemption or at least survival at the end- as the song says, this can't go on. This Can't Go On will be on the album Iechyd Da, recorded at Bill's West Kirby studio, is out next month.

Ciao Ciao Bambino

Mick Head and his Red Elastic Band are back with the first new song since their 2022 album Dear Scott. The new song, Ciao Ciao Bambino, doesn't stray far from the Mick Head template but it is everything that makes him great in a three minute nutshell. Produced by Bill Ryder- Jones it sounds like Love transplanted from West Coast USA in 1967 to Liverpool in 2023, a perfect blend of fuzz bass, trumpets, gently strummed acoustic guitars and Mick's voice of experience singing lines of hard won wisdom- 'I used to do the gee gees/ But they done me/ I had to ditch tequila/ She set me free'. It's the sort of song you can't imagine hasn't existed before last week, it sounds like it's been around forever. 

If you don't know Mick Head and The Red Elastic Band's two recent albums, Dear Scott from last year and 2017'w Adios Senor Pussycat then you're in for a treat playing them for the first time. If you do know them, re- listening and rediscovering is a treat too. 

Adios Amigo is from Adios Senor Pussycat, a jangle of guitars and sweeping strings to close the album, with Mick singing adieu, 'Goodbye Saint Domingo/ Farewell Letitia Street/ It's adios amigo/ Gonna have to set you free/ Still got no time for money/ And money's got no time for me/ It's adios amigo, Gonna have to set you free...'

Adios Amigo

On 2022's  Dear Scott Mick found himself on the crest of a wave, the album featuring at the top end of many end of year lists. In the middle of side two was The Ten, a lush, gorgeous, melodic gem, a lyrical  tour through Liverpool, and ending with some very evocative strings, the fade out to an imaginary film from the 60s about a young couple running away from everything, reaching the beach and finding there's nowhere left to go. 

The Ten