The Second Annual Wolfies, Part 1
The Best Music I Couldn't Cram Onto the Metal List, aka favorite 50 non-metal releases
Happy holidays to those who celebrate and happy Wednesday to those who don't (me). Hopefully, if you're stuck needing to log face time with the family, this list will provide you some relief from having to listen to your uncle complain that everyone is traveling in the nowadays NBA.
What a ridiculous year for music, huh? This could've easily been a top 100, but I don't want to burn out on writing (again, for the 80th time). If your favorites missed this list, know that (a) I didn't think about this that hard, (b) ranking albums is stupid, (c) I didn't have a chance to listen to a whole lot, and (d) you're the favorite in my heart. That should help you ignore the fact that I probably hate your favorite band. Onward. We list.
50. Sanctuary State - Pariah (Black Artifact)
From: San Jose, CA
Genre: noise
Shout out to Afterbirth's Cody Drasser for putting this in my feed. Industrial-y noise that also leans towards power electronics. Great work music, provided you're a freak. My only complaint is the tracks are so short. I really would've liked to sink into this stuff, such as the assaultively sublime "I Will Make You a Spectacle," which is an excoriating glitch monster reminding me a bit of my all-timer Namanax.
49. JK Flesh - Echo Chamber Music 01 (Avalanche Recordings)
From: UK
Genre: electronic / dub
JK Flesh is the alias of Justin Broadrick, one-half of Godflesh. I don't think you needed that explained to you; it’s evident in the name and sound. Anyway, the JK Flesh material is all over the map, from bass music to straight-up noise under the Exit Electronics subhead, albeit all adhering to a general Godfleshian throughline. For me, the most interesting stuff has been the forays into techno, particularly 2022's New Religions Old Rules, which was a warehouse-ready banger with a darker edge. Echo Chamber Music 01 is a sort of continuation of that album with one crucial distinction: it's very dubby. Yep, the reverb, delay, and everything else is turned way up, landing JK Flesh in Basic Channel country. Now, Basic Channel and Deepchord are foundational electronic acts for me that really opened up my ears to what killer sound design could do when paired with hypnotic beats and repetitious structures. Echo Chamber Music 01 is that, but again, with a darker edge, sharpening its steel with industrial techno. If you're in a malevolent mood come midnight after leaving the Hash Bar Loops, here's your go-to. "ECM0103" is a total belter. Release a split with Orion, my fleshy guy.
48. Yuvees - Dead Keys (Best Brother Records)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Genre: noise rock
What a good year for noise rock and its adjacent genres. If you like Drahla, here's YUVEES. These NYers are like if the aforementioned noisy post-punkers were super into the Pixies. Indeed, as I'm sure every Gotham resident would hate to be compared to, YUVEES has something of an early '90s Boston underground vibe, utilizing Morphine-esque rhythms and Throwing Muses-quality hooks. But, the closer comparison is something like Bush Tetras plus Romeo Void, especially with those brassy lurches that also have an underlying danceability. Cool. Good.
47. Träume - WRZASK (Quality Control)
From: Warsaw, Poland
Genre: hardcore / punk
Hot damn. Imagine if a crust punk band listened to a shitload of Cro-Mags and decided to cut a post-punk record. What a ripper.
46. Floating Points - Cascade (Ninja Tune)
From: UK
Genre: electronic
After a few years exploring the intersection of IDM and genres like jazz and krautrock, Sam Shepherd returns to the clubs on Cascade. I've been staring at this blurb in my drafts for a few weeks because I haven't entirely known how to describe the contours of this album, which is an admittedly silly bout of writer's block to suffer over an album that is this direct. Does it make your body move? Congratulations, you have unlocked Cascade. Still, I think a lot of Shepherd's smartness permeates these bangers. They still unfold into these limitless universes suffused with the atmosphere that swathed Kuiper and Reflections - Mojave Desert, the slightly more post-rock-inflected material I think of as Shepherd's most affecting works. But, yeah, I mean, this is more about that revelrous feeling when you're peaking at 1 AM in a warehouse. And Shepherd nails the DJ mandate of cutting songs that feel instantly recognizable and memorable, such as "Birth4000," which has a groove that feels like it's already a genre staple. For what it's worth, I like Cascade a lot more than recent work from Four Tet and Burial. It also feels more emotionally resonant than something like Fred Again, which, as far as I can figure, is just Disclosure for sad bois? I don't get it. Cascade, I get.
45. Fabiano do Nascimento - Olhos D'água (Nascimento Music LLC)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: folk / jazz
Fittingly, Olhos D'água might as well be the guitar record equivalent of two bodies of water flowing into each other. When other musicians enter, such as Sakura Okamura on Sho and Jennifer Souza on guitar and vocals, they too rush into the stream of sounds. All seem to know precisely where the others are going, carried along on this gentle current that never feels inert. That propulsion gives Olhos D'água the juice that some hushed guitar albums lack, a real sense of movement through exemplary songcraft. Sure, everyone involved can shred, but this is more about creating a lasting impression. Thus, Olhos D'água imparts a serene melancholy, like what washes over you on the final day of a vacation trip. It's that gentle ache in your heart, of wanting to see the sunrise again in a land that's not your own.
44. Sexual Jeremy - Bleachers (Decoherence Records)
From: Texas
Genre: noise rock / no-wave
The heir to US Maple's oddly shaped, incredibly uncomfortable throne has gone all local theater troop King Crimson. Look, we all knew they'd get there. After casting off the shackles of Shorty impersonator, Sexual Jeremy has gotten increasingly progressive and, well, dramatic. There's some soap opera-style melodrama on display here. Think STNNNG, but even more theater-kid energy. That said, Bleachers is also strange in a funny way, like those early, 'am I really seeing this?' episodes of Letterman or Conan, that anarchic, almost confrontationally surreal blasts of funny. Like, the fake-out SNL sign-off saxophone? C'mon. More noise rock doing 30 Rock, please. While this amount of quirk could bug, and it certainly did keep some other artists off this list, Sexual Jeremy's sense of songwriting and technical acuity ensures that the quirks are, like, the eighth most interesting thing about each song.
43. Corker - Hallways of Grey (Feel It Records)
From: Cincinnati, OH
Genre: punk / post-punk
Corker, a well-named punk and post-punk curious quartet, has members of The Drin and is thus in the same orbit as Motorbike, the breakout rock band of last year. I think of Corker as Motorbike if it were more into coldwave. There's a sullen, downtroddeness to Corker's music that places it much closer to, like, the la vague froide set. (Really, you should think of Corker as Total Control remaking Henge Beat after going on a months-long Marquis de Sade binge.) Still, like its distant cousin, Corker is able to spin out these wonderfully hypnotic passages where it feels like you're being swallowed up by the music. The title track, "Hallways of Grey," encapsulates that quality the best, but there are a lot of gems here worth dusting off. Definitely a grower. It might not be your favorite album of 2024 but don't count out 2025.
42. Frail Body - Artificial Bouquet (Deathwish Inc.)
From: Rockford, IL
Genre: screamo
Perhaps Frail Body is making it explicit just how intertwined modern black metal and screamo are these days. (Shout out to Doug for calling black metal "snow screamo.”) When Artificial Bouquet blasts off, it's hard to distinguish it from the black metal that is as indebted to Envy as it is to Emperor. A few bands are walking this sharp blade, including Infant Island and the like, but Frail Body is the best of the big production cohort, pairing its emotional onslaught with a sonic onslaught seamlessly. It also doesn't hurt that it sounds like Jeromes Dream at points.
41. Reggie Quinerly - The Thousandth Scholar (Redefinition Music)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: jazz
My year in jazz saw me retreating into piano trio territory, needing a respite from the bombast and brutality of my day job listening. Reggie Quinerly's fifth album as a leader surrounds the drummer with a talented quartet, adding percussionist Samuel Torres to the traditional piano trio for an Afro-Cuban workout. Quinerly and bassist Matt Brewer are fantastic as always, but good on them for ceding space for pianist Manuel Valera to shred. Dude. What an absolute monster on the keys and arrangements.
40. Kevin Hufnagel - Dusting For My Fingerprints (Nightfloat Recordings)
From: New York, NY
Genre: folk / classical
Listing this album is bittersweet. It's another triumph for Hufnagel, a gorgeous record of six- and twelve-string guitar compositions. If those Menegroth echo’d twelve-string notes on "Ashes in the Snow" don't get you, along with that 'looking at the snow fall at night' chord progression, we want different things in life. However, the bittersweet aspect is that Hufnagel's house has just burned down. You can find a GoFundMe here.
39. White Suns - Dredging Heaven (Decoherence Records)
From: New York
Genre: no-wave / noise
For someone who says they love music, I’ve been on a decades long quest to lose most of my hearing. White Suns are a prime culprit. The band has been vacillating between no-wave and power electronics for a bit, a pairing that makes a lot more sense in practice than it does on paper. Dredging Heaven, though, is its clearest proof of concept of the fusion. Hearing the crackle of distortion matched by noise rock riffs on "Sport & Spectacle" makes me want to run through a wall. Turns out two of your favorite things can sound better together.
38. Gordon Grdina's The Marrow - With Fathieh Honari (self-released)
From: Vancouver, Canada
Genre: jazz / Persian music
Gordon Grdina is a master practitioner of the oud. (Grdina also shreds on guitar; this year's Duo Work is evidence of that.) This tribute to Reza Honari showcases unique approach to Persian music, outfitting the ensemble with bass, cello, and percussion. The Honaris, Hamin (percussion) and Fathieh (vocals), star, with Fathieh in particular delivering a right-in-the-guts, emotional performance. I’ve had some of these melodies echoing around my melon for days at a time.
37. muffin - We Are Like The Dreamer (self-released)
From: Tokyo, Japan
Genre: folk
That muffin is still this obscure is a crime. Perhaps it's because the artist does things like releasing hand-made, one-of-one CDs. That will endear you to a specific set of music nerds, but it's not going to get your name out there. Of course, there's a question of whether muffin wants to get muffin’s name out at all. We Are Like The Dreamer, like past efforts, is so intimate in its quietude, like you're hearing this material sitting next to muffin on the bed. Lines can be drawn to, like, Bridget St. John and the like, but the seemingly private, intensely personal nature of muffin's folk makes it muffin's and muffin's alone. It feels like it's a privilege to be able to hear this music. And it is, really.
36. Winifred Horan, John Williams, Katie Grennan, Utsav Lal - Reverie Road (Mango Paws Music)
From: New York, NY
Genre: folk / Celtic music
I love this album. Lord, do I love this album. Out of all the peerless shredding metal I listened to this year, this Celtic folk fusion has some of my favorite leads. Winifred Horan and Katie Grennan lay down some killer fiddling for sure, but check out John Williams's accordion coming in from the top rope. And Utsav Lal, a jazz and raga pianist by trade, gives Reverie Road some extra sauce. Hate to use the word enchanting, but it is enchanting. It works from the same spell book as Sarah Hayes’s Woven, one of the prettiest albums no one seems to know about. Hopefully Reverie Road fairs better.
35. Public Acid - Deadly Struggle (Beach Impediment)
From: North Carolina (c’mon and raise up)
Genre: hardcore / d-beat
In a year of raging hardcore, especially coming from the fastcore and d-beat varietals, Public Acid was one of the best thanks to its noisiness. On Deadly Struggle, Public Acid even approaches the fury of Protocol, the best modern band in the style. Hard, fast, and a hell of a racket.
34. Raoul Eden - Anima (Scissor Tail Records)
From: Le Puy, France
Genre: folk
I like it when we get this stuff from other countries so I can write things like "American primitivism from France." This one goes out to all my Robbie Basho heads. Raoul Eden definitely crushes the celestial and spiritual side of Basho's music. Where Anima diverges is its more forward embrace of Middle Eastern music. "He has also modified his Guild D55 with an extra fret that allows him to play microtonal embellishments like in Tuareg blues or Turkish saz," the Bandcamp liner notes state. Naturally, that adds another dimension to the music, one that feels like it doesn't adhere to one particular style but is at the center of everything. Lastly, the production is outstanding, with Eden's guitar sounding crisp and clear as a bell while retaining the authenticity of a lofi recording.
33. divr - Is This Water (We Jazz Records)
From: Switzerland
Genre: jazz
Hell yeah. Is This Water is the most effortless music to listen to that will still munch your mind if you try to think of how it negotiates time. "We play in multi-directional time," the band said in the Bandcamp liner notes. "You could hear three different timings, but on the other hand it's together. We land in the same place. It's not done with maths, it's more about entering a flow." Divr definitely dives down into that flow, finding a way to individually loop each of the trio's parts without it sounding like three different songs. It's a hell of an effect, and yet, you can just sit back, close your eyes, and let the music wash over you if you want. Supremely chill. Supremely complex.
32. Abandoncy - Assailable // Agonism (The Ghost Is Clear Records)
From: Kansas City, MO
Genre: noise rock
I liked but didn't love this KC noise rock trio's 2022 album, Pastel//Anguish. Assailable//Agonism, though, is a giant leap forward, landing the band in noisier environs. There's also more of a dramaturgical bent to how these songs are constructed, which makes sense given the Eugene Robinson cameo on the closer "Night Drive." To that end, Abandoncy reminds me a bit of STNNNG, another band that spun stories with a sprinkle of vocal charisma. But this six-song set, which is available for free download, is a lot more despondent and dirty, a noise rock album fighting off DTs while rolling around in the spillover of a storm drain. Besides the performance, the herks and jerks of the weird timing are the big sell here, which is like if Sexual Jeremy fused with Bodychoke. The word "harrowing" has become so de rigueur describing noise rock that it means nothing now, but hey, it feels more like a fit here than when it's dressing most others.
31. Tyshawn Sorey - The Susceptible Now (Pi Recordings)
From: New York, NY
Genre: jazz
The best and most challenging thing about The Susceptible Now, the third album from drummer Tyshawn Sorey's piano trio, is how long it is. The shortest song is 15 minutes. The longest eclipses 26 — that's almost one whole Reign in Blood. Pro: You can get a good groove going. The Susceptible Now is one of the better dinner albums for that reason; throw it on in the background and decompress. Con: There's so much musical invention happening, so many neat turns, so many brain-pulping virtuosic intra-band telepathy, that Sorey and Co. require your undivided attention. In a year when I didn't have much time to begin with, that was a hard ask. I get the feeling that a few years from now, once I have fewer professional commitments, I'll regard The Susceptible Now as one of the best albums of this year. Fitting and/or ironic title, then.
30. Shellac - To All Trains (Touch and Go Records)
From: Chicago, IL
Genre: rock
Unlike The Susceptible Now, I had time to dedicate to Shellac's unintended swansong. But it was such a hard listen that I didn't take the trip as often as I should've. Outside of people I knew or peers, Steve Albini's death was one of the few times I felt genuinely devastated by the death of a public figure. I know that's precisely what Albini wouldn't have wanted, but the heart does what it does. Thus, the reason To All Trains ranks so low is because it was difficult to check in, to hear that voice, knowing that it was the end of the line. We talk a lot about the internal factors of music but rarely broach the external. Sometimes, the external exerts a far greater force on why we do or don't listen to music. I can’t even listen to it while writing this blurb. Give me some more time. Rest easy, Steve, from one world-class hater to another. May I hate what I hate and love what I love with your same passion.
29. Yurei - Oslo Hollender (Bjeima)
From: Olso, Norway
Genre: rock
I finally relented and put Yurei in the non-metal section. I had this to say about the last one:
For anyone who has missed the airy, guitar-focused obscurity of later Virus, Ad Aqua will fill that hole. Not only does Yurei have the provenance — Bjeima, a member of Manimalism and Delirium Bound, additionally worked on multiple Virus releases — but it nails the vibe. Tracks like "Akrotiris Tårer," with its twisty structures that are allowed to shine thanks to the spartan production, sound like Television trying to describe an Edward Gorey drawing via riffs. And there are so many details to notice, a lot of which are hidden in plain sight (hearing?) by the coolness of the entire package. Indeed, this is a ruminative record for 'round midnight. That may lose a lot of my red-hot metallers and goo fiends, but if you like the journey, this is such a cool way to take it. Hat tip, as always, to Rennie's newsletter for bringing this to my attention.
That pretty much holds true for Oslo Hollender, although it has a sharper focus. If you want to start somewhere, it is here.
28. Drahla - angeltape (Captured Tracks)
From: Leeds, UK
Genre: post-punk
Evidently, we've reached the stretch of the blurbs where it feels like hour 23 of Le Mans, so it's time to go more quote-heavy than usual. As I often say, the good thing about having a lot of clips is that you only have to think once. "It's fascinating how a band this biting and jittery can sound so cool and collected at the same time," I wrote about angeltape in the midyear report. Yeah, that. Because of that jittery/cool dichotomy, Drahla is one of those bands where a lot of other bands sound like it, especially now that we have this new wave of "Never Say Never" acolytes, but Drahla doesn't sound like a lot of other bands if that makes sense. The cream of the crop of quirky noise rock-adjacent artists that don't go full skronk. You could conceivably play this for normal people, provided they think saxophones are alright.
27. Pizza Hotline - Polygon Island (WRWTFWW Records)
From: London, UK
Genre: D&B
Figures that one of the best electronic releases of the year comes from an artist named "Pizza Hotline." We're running out of DJ names, I say, looking squarely at DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. Anyway, this bangs. The early PlayStation aesthetic translates perfectly to liquid D&B. In fact, in the midyear report, I wrote, "If Soichi Terada dropped a track on the Logical Progression mixtape." Yeah, that. When Polygon Island is cooking, it's like hitting a flow state in a video game, that belt of bliss when concepts of time evaporate, and you're playing Balatro on the Stairmaster for three hours. I like this one a little bit more than the previous album, Level Select, primarily because it's smoother. Just a good hang.
26. Miki Yamanaka - Chance (Cellar Music)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Genre: jazz
Here's some TMI: Whenever I'm impressed by something, I emit an involuntary peal of laughter. If I'm really impressed, I'll whisper a "let's go" addendum, something I usually reserve for driving through tunnels. (I love tunnels, a depressing fact I've learned by watching dash cam footage.) These are probably some of the multitudes of icks that continue to conspire to keep me single. I am only ick. Call me a wasp because I'm all ickneumon. Anyway, I bring all of this up to say Chance made me whisper "let's go" almost more than any other non-metal album this year. Miki Yamanaka can simply shred the piano. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Yamanaka lets loose on Chance, absolutely going for it every, ahem, chance she can get. As evidenced by the fact I think Hiromasa Suzuki's Colgen World is the second-best piano trio album of all time, I love a trio that stomps the gas and plays fast. On Chance, Yamanaka is ripping it up. You can hear the turbo whip within her piano. Let's goooooooooo.
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