2024 In Review (Also Cool's Top Albums)
Listen along with the official Sounds Cool 2024 playlist!
Available on YouTube and Spotify below.
2hollis - boy
Electroclash has merged with cloud rap, creating 2hollis, the bleach blonde “god boy.” Backed by his SoundCloud cult following, 2hollis gained exponential momentum opening for Ken Carson on tour earlier this year, and will be headlining his own tour in 2025. boy is as aggressive as it is tender, with almost ambient tracks like “you said my name for the first time,” contrasting with 2009-electroclash-pop style bangers like “two bad.” The album was also produced by 2hollis, and feels sonically unafraid – melding genres in a way that’s innovative without being obnoxious.
Alix Fernz - Bizou (Mothland)
“On Bizou, Fernz leads us down a drainpipe into an unabashed, palpitating reverie of studded leather, troublemaking and lipstick-stained dive bar mirrors. Produced in the bedrooms of three different apartments, with vocals tracked on Fernz’s iPhone mic, Bizou fearlessly criss-crosses remnants of bratty 70s-punk with new wave romanticism in a blistering 32-minutes.”
- Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter, From Bartender to Headliner: Montreal's Alix Fernz Turns Heads with Debut Album "Bizou" (Mothland), April 15th, 2024
Banggz - 4 THE BANGGERZ
“The sophomore record of Nigerian-born, Ottawa-based Afro-rap vanguard Banggz has been on repeat since it dropped earlier [this year]. Aptly titled 4 THE BANGGERZ, the album delivers hit after hit along with a star-studded cast of featured performers, including City Fidelia, Asuquomo, and Jahmeema. 4 THE BANGGERZ sees Banggz ambitiously craft a ‘sonic escape,’ fusing West African rhythms, futuristic soundscapes and energetic anthems of resilience, identity and camaraderie.”
- Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter - Also Cool’s Playlist Refresh, August 20th, 2024
Bladee - Cold Visions (Trash Island)
Evil music is so back. Ice king Bladee is leading the way with his confessionary crash-out album Cold Visions. The 30-track album rips into feelings of paranoia, feeling too old to be in the room, and self-isolation, featuring long-time collaborators including Yung Sherman, Yung Lean, Whitearmor, Thaiboy Digital, and Ecco2k. Lyrically, the album ranges from spiralling mantras (“One second in my bag”) to the kinds of things you tell yourself when you’re too high (“I’m normal / In the club dressed formal”). Overall, it’s an icy dive into Bladee’s mind, leaving drainers everywhere rejoicing.
Cecile Believe - Tender the Spark (ambient tweets / Supernature)
Cecile Believe is your favourite artist’s favourite artist, point blank. Tender the Spark is introspective and indulgent all at once, and has ushered in the recognition she deserves after years of innovation in the pop sphere. “The world didn’t even, but it feels like it’s gone now / Late stage self-portrait, last ride let’s kill it.” If “Blink Twice” is the invitation, “Ponytail” is a free fall dive into Cecile’s world.
Chanel Beads - Your Day Will Come (Jagjaguwar)
Lush, hopeful, and gorgeous, Chanel Beads offered Your Day Will Come into the world this year, and was met with mass appreciation for their mystic optimism. “You owe it to yourself, gotta believe in something else / Good people out of view / Soul to bear.” Everything from the reverb of their guitars to angelic vocal treatments feels like it came from another realm – reaching its hand out to try and touch the future.
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)
Modestly released unto the masses in early spring, the staggering beauty of Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee has incited a near-universal cotton candy trance. The creative aptitude of the artist otherwise known as Patrick Flegel has reverberated at different frequencies for the past two decades, but their vision for Diamond Jubilee falls perfectly into place. The record boasts a cinematic romanticism that is concurrently enlightened and instinctual. Flegel’s narrative unfurls with rigour (122 minutes, to be exact) – a psychedelic deer-legged odyssey through satin sheets and bleary dreams.
cumgirl8 - the 8th cumming (4AD)
With their anticipated debut record the 8th cumming, cumgirl8 channels their avant-garde spark into a satisfying collection. The group unabashedly delivers a searing industrial sound with the likes of “uti,” while flirting with softer territory through the dream-pop weightlessness of “girls don’t try.” Inspired by Siouxsie, Ladytron, et plus, cumgirl8 have penned the next chapter on feminist punk.
The Dare - What’s Wrong With New York? (Republic Records)
From dropping his gig as a substitute teacher to producing for Charli XCX, it's safe to say The Dare made an explosive entrance in 2024 with his debut long-player What’s Wrong With New York? While some thought the Dimes Square trickster on a mission to resuscitate indie sleaze wouldn’t stay relevant post-TikTok virality, the fresh-faced Harrison Patrick Smith remains plastered across tour posters and fashion outlets in his signature black suit and tie. Pumping out certified club hits for the sake of raunchy, hedonistic entertainment, The Dare makes music for those of us who came of age reblogging doe-eyed American Apparel ads with the weight of Web 3.0 looming on the horizon.
Fontaines D.C. - Romance (XL Recordings)
This album first entered the Also Cool consciousness in Paris this summer, when every bar we went to somehow played Romance all night long. While we’ve been big fans of the band for quite some time and were happy to hear they were getting recognition, but we had no idea how successful the album had become. The innovative, surging yet punchy composition, paired with vulnerable and gritty lyricism, grabs you by the throat and leaves you wanting more. Fontaines D.C. has set a new bar for indie rock (although you can hardly call hundreds of millions of streams indie), and has given the industry a hard shove in the right direction.
Khruangbin - A La Sala (Dead Oceans)
Houston trio Khruangbin cast a spell of surfy grooves with their latest album A La Sala. The psych-funk record is assured in its composition, rejecting flourish for atmosphere, and it yields an uplifting result. While there are strutting basslines and loungey guitar licks aplenty, A La Sala is meant to be enjoyed in all its leisure. Every song is another petal swaying in the breeze.
Kim Gordon - The Collective (Matador Records)
Underground polymath Kim Gordon celebrated her 71st solar return touring her fearless post-rock opus The Collective. Released this past March, The Collective serves up a “blistering collage of dissonant guitar [with] an ear-splitting trap underbelly” (Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter - Also Cool’s Playlist Refresh, February 23rd, 2024). With diaristic meditations on doom scrolling, heteronormativity and the mainstream, paired with noisy, gripping and avant-garde bed tracks, Gordon’s sophomore solo venture proves that she has yet to rest on her (self-taught) musical laurels.
Mdou Moctar - Funeral For Justice (Matador Records)
Mdou Moctar continues to dominate psych rock with his 6th studio album Funeral for Justice. On Funeral for Justice, the Saharan desert blues guitarist and singer, alongside his equally impressive band, delivers a masterful denunciation of France’s colonial legacy in his homeland of Niger. Embracing rebellious tones and an accelerated pace— all while uplifting Moctar’s Indigenous mother tongue of Tamasheq from start to finish— Funeral for Justice is an impeccably produced protest album and a steadfast commitment to honouring one’s roots.
Molchat Doma - Belaya Polosa (Sacred Bones Records)
Molchat Doma have long been the reference point when it comes to dark-wave, post-punk and cold-wave. Their music is the meeting point for goths, vampires, and just about every Eastern European Brutalist video edit on the Internet. Belaya Polosa, released earlier this year via Sacred Bones, expands their universe with new techno-adjacent soundscapes, while staying true to their post-punk origins, and of course, heartbreaking lyrics. The album explores their new reality in Los Angeles and the loneliness that comes with it, having left their lives behind in Minsk, Belarus: “Everyone who I have known for a long time / Everything I haven’t lost / I put it off for years / Pain and resentment of the days – there seems to be no difference / How everyone is so used to it!” The band will continue their epic tour across North America in January.
Nick Schofield - Ambient Ensemble (Forward Music Group)
“Self-proclaimed ‘ambient raver’ Nick Schofield (Best Fern, Saxsyndrum) [dropped] his third solo sonic venture, Ambient Ensemble, via Halifax label Forward Music Group. Along with a band of masterly local collaborators (Yolande Laroche, Philippe Charbonneau, and Mika Posen), the Hull, QC-based electroacoustic composer achieves otherworldly splendour on Ambient Ensemble. Likened to works by masters Brian Eno and Philip Glass, Schofield's delicate yet profound Ambient Ensemble is a kaleidoscope of lush, instrumental bliss.”
- Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter - Also Cool Playlist Refresh, February 23rd, 2024
Trevor Sloan - A Room by the Green Sea
“On Sloan’s latest self-released album, A Room by the Green Sea, the simple beauty of summer vacations gone by unlocks so much more. Sloan teleports between country fairs and shifting waters, backed by layered acoustics, subtle drum patterns, and field recordings. From the precise memories of ‘Praying Mantis’ to the sober admissions of ‘Blade on My Face,’ A Room by the Green Sea is the embodiment of what you’d hope to hear by picking up a conch shell. It’s the creamy cable-knit jumper that you slip into as the sun kisses you goodbye.”
- Rebecca Judd, A Lost Season, A Magical Year: Trevor Sloan Releases "A Room by the Green Sea", September 6th, 2024
VICTIME - En conversation avec (Mothland)
“Deconstructing a guitar-bass-drums mold, while still embracing their unbridled exploratory approach, VICTIME have returned with a genreless sophomore manifesto that they credit as their best work to date. Hurtling at 100kph, En conversation avec is a corrosive, meter-busting rendez-vous of DIY breadboard overdubs, pixelated synth-scapes and a complete disregard for conventional musical permissibility.”
- Zoë Argiropulos-Hunter - Five Years and Three Cities: VICTIME Unveils New Album “En Conversation Avec” (Mothland), October 25th, 2024
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