Staff Picks: Favorite Albums of May 2024
The post Staff Picks: Favorite Albums of May 2024 appeared first on Consequence.
With Staff Picks our writers and editors select their favorite albums of the month. Check out the best of May below.
So much happened in May: Kendrick and Drake engaged in an entertaining-but-serious rap war; festival season is in full swing; and we celebrated post-grunge week with karaoke jams, crosswords, and a list of the best post-grunge tracks.
Luckily, the music was as memorable as ever. Billie Eilish deepened her sound with the stylish Hit Me Hard and Soft, and Vince Staples embraced a moody palette on Dark Times. We also got terrific follow up albums from Mdou Moctar, DIIV, and Shellac, whose LP To All Trains served as a gripping posthumous document of Steve Albini’s brilliance.
Listed in alphabetical order, here are the best albums of May 2024 as selected by Consequence writers and editors.
Another Michael — Pick Me Up, Turn Me Upside Down
Another Michael are back with their second album in less than a year, and it’s filled with some of their most majestic tracks to date. Their last record felt like it could be your best friend, but this one is a little bit more fraught, like the grainy resolution of Pick Me Up’s album cover. Still, the Philadelphia band has not lost their sense of whimsy or wisdom, finding moments of wholesome beauty packed within simple phrases or evocative details. Pick Me Up, Turn Me Upside Down is as enchanting as ever, showing that Another Michael are at the height of their powers. — Paolo Ragusa
Listen via Apple Music
Billie Eilish — HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
Billie Eilish has always been inventive, but she’s never felt more comfortable than she does on her new studio album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. There’s a lovely flow to the project, and more than a few notable standouts — “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” hive let me hear you!
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT overall boasts a particularly excellent vocal performance from Eilish. She’s gentle and entrancing on moments like “WILDFLOWER,” coy and playful on “LUNCH,” and explosive on “THE GREATEST” in a way that recalls “Happier Than Ever.” Together, the album is a showcase of an artist who is still very much expanding. — M. Siroky
Listen via Apple Music
DIIV — Frog in Boiling Water
DIIV are bearing quite the load on Frog in Boiling Water. The quartet were once operating with a serenely simple framework on their 2012 debut Oshin, where the band’s guitars would land like droplets of water in a deep pool. Now, three albums in, those same guitars are smearing around in shallow water, creating sour, murky shoegaze and finding moments of weightless beauty in anguish-ridden musical phrases. Where they would once fashion their dream pop purely as a reprieve, Frog In Boiling Water demands you sit with moments of dissonance, change, and uncertainty. Produced by Chris Coady, the album sounds rich, vivid, and entrancing — without a doubt one of DIIV’s finest works. — P. Ragusa
Listen via Apple Music
From Indian Lakes — Head Void
From Indian Lakes returned this month with the excellent Head Void, and it sounds like mastery. The album is crammed with both bliss and doubt, all tied together by Joey Vannucchi’s crystal clear, gorgeous vocals. There are catchy dream-pop cuts like “The Lines” and “Spilling Over,” hard-edged activity on “The Flow” and “The Wilderness,” and a memorable exercise in attack and release on the stunning “I Lay Different.” But even with these singular tracks, the album achieves a gorgeous flow state that enlivens and sedates at the same time. — P. Ragusa
Listen via Apple Music
Knocked Loose — You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To
Hardcore is having its moment, and Knocked Loose are one of the flag bearers leading the way. For a band their size, one might have expected them to lighten up their sound for their latest record, going the way of tourmates Bring Me the Horizon by introducing pop production and a greater emphasis on melody — but You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To does exactly the opposite. The Kentucky act is as ferocious, pit-calling, and head-splitting as ever. Throughout the album’s brief 27-minute runtime, vocalist Bryan Garris shrieks over nasty-as-hell riffs, pummeling double-kick grooves, and neck-snapping breakdowns. Which is all to say, you might want to put on a helmet before hitting to play. — Jonah Krueger
Listen via Apple Music
Lip Critic — Hex Dealer
Lip Critic’s Hex Dealer is a fucking bonkers record. As our May CoSigns will tell you themselves, the whole concept of the project (and the band itself) is misguided and reckless. And yet, with no more than two drummers, two samplers, and enough aggression to power New York City, Hex Dealer is a triumph of electro-punk. The production is exhilarating, the performances are unhinged, and the loose narrative that runs through the tracklist matches the absurdity of the record’s sound. The result falls somewhere in between Death Grips and Nine Inch Nails, Autechre and Rage Against the Machine, Burial and smashing your head against the wall. — J. Krueger
Listen via Apple Music
Mdou Moctar — Funeral for Justice
Mdou Moctar’s latest effort amplifies the generational struggle for liberation. “Dear African leaders, hear my burning question: why does your ear only heed France and America?…They possess the power to help out but chose not to” asserts the Tuareg guitarist in the fiery title track. With thunderous guitar riffs, they capture the rage of people devoid of peace and stability, addressing issues of violence and colonialism. Funeral for Justice serves as an urgent and defiant testament of resistance. — Sun Noor
Listen via Apple Music
Shellac — To All Trains
Mere days before the release of Shellac’s To All Trains, their first collection of new songs in a decade, Steve Albini passed away, turning what was supposed to be something of a return into a swan song. Somehow, as if they knew what was coming, To All Trains serves as a masterful, shockingly fitting project for Shellac, even down to the foreboding, black and white album cover.
From the stunted riff that kicks off opener “Wsod” to the irreverent lyrics of “Girl from Outside” or “Scabby the Rat” to the rhythmic fuckery of “Tattoos,” the album dials in on the formula Shellac had been chiseling away at for over 30 years. Then, there’s closer “I Don’t Fear Hell,” a tune that takes on new meaning in the wake of Albini’s death. “If there’s a heaven, I hope they’re having fun/ ‘Cause if there’s a hell, I’m gonna know everyone,” he characteristically sneers. Truly, it’s the most Albini way he could have possibly gone out — a distorted guitar in one hand and a middle finger in the other. — J. Krueger
Listen via Apple Music
Vince Staples — Dark Times
The Long Beach rapper’s latest album is honest, contemplative, and focused on the present moment. Vince Staples presents another complex, narrative-driven body of work that sees him grappling with fame and survivors’ loss as he tries to make sense of everything. Overcoming trauma remains a constant struggle and acceptance a hard pill to swallow. Above everything, he finds meaning in honoring his community and making light of difficult moments, coming to terms with how the grass is most definitely not greener on the other side. Dark Times offers perspective from the present moment while continuing to pay homage to his roots. — S. Noor
Listen via Apple Music
Staff Picks: Favorite Albums of May 2024
Consequence Staff
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