Jonathan Shaw: Another year of pissed-off, not-quite-entirely-hopeless music (but seriously, world, you’re pushing your luck…)
On the morning of November 6th, after the already creaky Blue Wall collapsed and the MAGA people danced and despair beckoned, I put on Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee. Given my listening proclivities over the previous six months, since the record had been unceremoniously released to YouTube and as a free download, that wasn’t an unusual choice. I have played Diamond Jubilee more often than any other record over those months, in a wide variety of moods: excitement, frustration, ardent desire, utter psychological exhaustion, the mildly benign float of a gorgeous autumn morning — you name it, Cindy Lee’s record has soundtracked it. So why not put it on when the morning toggles between hopeless, pelagic sadness and nihilistic cynicism? The record did not disappoint.
It's hard to explain what Lee’s songs did for me. “Baby Blue” made me ache; it always does. “Demon Bitch” made me look over my shoulder a few times; it always summons something just at the periphery of vision, which flits away before I can focus. “Government Cheque” swooned and exhaled acrid smoke; it always invites me toward languid dissipation. The exact character of the ache, paranoia and abandon I felt that morning — when fascism had become more real to me than ever, not just an idea but an emergent social condition I will have to learn to live with — was a very specific thing, with a very particular set of intensities. Cindy Lee’s songs did not reduce the intensities or render them more navigable. But I was less lonely, sitting with the feelings and committing to feeling them because escaping them was not an option. The music was there. Right there. I could just about lean on it.
Different records have suited other days since then. Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s No Title As of 13 February 2024… is possessed of a surpassingly effective maximalist austerity (if that makes any sense) and its sadness is grand. Peace de Résistance’s Lullabies for the Debris has a dissolute smartassery that picks me up off the floor when the sadness is too much. And Love & Compassion’s …Or Else, crunching crust full of rage and something akin to hope, works when nothing else seems to.
I have also spent a lot of time in the weeks since 11/5 listening to Fear’s The Record and feeling nostalgic for previous (and by contrast sort of quaint) forms of institutional American evil. Some stuff never gets old.
In any case, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee is the record I listened to most this year, and for that reason it will always represent 2024 to me. It’s first on the list; other records appear alpha by artist.
Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)
A work of art. See above.
Black Curse — Burning in Celestial Poison (Sepulchral Voice)
One of the year’s most sustained displays of ugly, corrosive music. Black Curse makes a variety of black/death that exceeds the subgenre’s frequent and irritating relations to so-called “war metal.” It’s violent, but not in a flip, casual way. Listen too loudly and you’ll release something.
The Cure — Songs of a Lost World (Fiction)
Sometimes even an angry, grizzled old punk needs to bum out, beautifully.
Fan Club — Demonstration 2024 and Another Demonstration 2024 (Self-released)
There’s so much unadulterated rock’n’roll joy in these demo tapes that listening makes it seem like it may be possible to have fun again. But not yet. Maybe by the next time this Seattle band (which used to make hardcore records as Lysol) puts out a tape.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor — No Title As of 13 February 2024, 28,340 Dead (Constellation)
“Broken Spires at Dead Kapital” sounds aspirational at best. “Raindrops Cast in Lead” sounds much more like a reasonable representation of contemporary life. Where I sit, it’s a metaphor. In Gaza, it’s not.
Leathers — Ultraviolet (Artoffact)
Sexy, synthy post-punk that mixes darkwave with dance music in a heady, icy mode. It’s body music, but the lyrics are pretty good, too.
Love & Compassion — …Or Else (Self-released)
This cassette gets close to capturing the freight train of fury that crashes toward you if you’re lucky enough to see this NYC crust act live. Close, but not quite. Go see them. Or else….
Peace de Resistance — Lullabies for the Debris (La Vida Es un Mus)
Sort of glammy, sort of gritty, Moses Brown’s second LP under this project title is a more refined version of the musical vision he articulated on Bits and Pieces. The tunes are political, even though their sheen of too-cool-for-school New Yawk punk indifference might suggest otherwise.
SUMAC — The Healer (Thrill Jockey)
A massive record with a massive sound. SUMAC somehow gets musically tighter and performatively looser here, an ideal set of conditions in which their improvisationally oriented metal can unfold. Glorious stuff.
Thou — Umbilical (Sacred Bones)
Lots of folks have called this Thou’s “hardcore record”—but if you have been tuned into the band for some time, you’d be right to ask, “As opposed to what?” It’s a Thou record. It destroys everything in its path. That’s how we like it.
Also:
The world lost Gary Floyd this year. Amid all the forms of loss I am feeling, Floyd leaves behind an especially soul-destroying void. He was all the things I admire in a punk: fearlessly smart, politically savvy, mordantly funny and possessed of a taste for rock’n’roll that powered his cultural sensibility. This pretty much sums it up:
The wrong people die all the time.
Marx said, “History always progresses on its bad side.” Let’s hope so.
