What Were the Greatest Records of 2024?

Good music in several genres was released last year. Here’s a glance back at 2024.

by

Local Music

If you pay even a little attention to Milwaukee’s healthy, free-range scene you realize it is almost impossible to keep up with local releases. Here is a sampling of the welcome avalanche that caught my ear in 2024, plus some acts beyond city limits.

There were always rumors that Plasticland’s unfinished album Spree would see the light of day. (shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/spree-by-plasticland). Dave Luhrssen wrote, “The first new Plasticland album in many years, Spree, was recorded in 2006 and 2013, with the earlier session featuring [John] Frankovic and original drummer Victor Demichei and the latter with Andy Kaiser on bass and Mike Koch on drums. The music departs from Plasticland’s ground-setting ‘80s recordings, following the direction they likely would have pursued—had they not gone dormant in the ‘90s—toward the Detroit proto-metal of the MC5 and the Stooges.” The band even surprised everyone and played a set in July at the GBUFO Invasion Fest, splashing Titletown with a tsunami of psychedelia.

A year ago Mighty Deerlick founding member Dan Franke passed away (shepherdexpress.com/music/local-music/mighty-deer-licks-dan-franke-passes-away) but he’d already set the wheels motion for the release of the debut album Happy Hour Ever After. Describing the Deerlick as a well-oiled machine, guitarist Bob Eickhoff said the result “would either be really good or great” when recording began with Bobby Friedman. “We pretty much tracked that whole record in one day and probably not more than two takes per song.” While they recorded additional overdubs and a few fixes, Eickhoff credits John Wythes drumming in particular and says Dave Reinholdt “worked his tail off with his vocals.”

Franke also set up a Bandcamp page to corral the vast collection of music he and his acquaintances barely released over the years. 3000 Hits (3000hits.bandcamp.com) is a sly reference to both music and baseball. In typical low-key fashion, the site had already made available nearly 30 demo tapes, cassette-only releases and other hard-to-find pieces of rock and roll history.

Multi-instrumentalist Sean Williamson describes his new project Pigeoto (abetted by Matt Turner and Dae Schoepke) as an “evolutionary cousin” to his slide-centric Velocihamster aka “the world's only lap steel metal band.” Pigeoto is a display in technical virtuosity, yet the payoff maybe the final cut “Go,” which cools things down to the raga-droning hallucination of The Stooges. (pigeoto.com)

On Sun Will Follow (daveschoepke.bandcamp.com/album/sun-will-follow) drummer-composer Dave Schoepke (Lovanova, The Cocksmiths, The Dark Horse Project) time stands still and shifts slowly with ambient patterns. On his third solo album Schoepke’s glacial menace often serves as a wordless narrator.

Tintoretto (Expert Work Records) “So long, fuck off, farewell,” goes the blast furnace goodbye of “Negatory.” It’s not often a band takes a breath and gets a second chance. So, the lyric is doubly ironic on this do-over two decades down the line. Heavy yet melodic; pummeling with room to breath, and righteously mixed and recorded by drummer Shane Hochstetler. This is not a reissue but re-recordings of Tintoretto’s EP and compilation cuts which were originally released in 1999 and 2000. The digital version includes the original releases. Truth be told, there is a charged charm to these recordings. At times sounding like a not-so-distant cousin to Die Kreuzen, the liner notes cop to the influence of Fugazi among others.

Sheboygan’s Darbs pulled no punches with She's A Dungeon Master Now. The album is an unassuming brick of firecrackers; the kind of punk rock that never ages: thedarbs.bandcamp.com/album/shes-a-dungeon-master-now.

The Real Truth by Maximiano (aka Maximiano Janairo) (maximianomusic.com/new-album-the-real-truth) finds its center in the soaring “You Have a Heart in Me,” with Ellie Jackson’s vocals urging the song even higher. Will Hansen’s pedal and lap steel guitars enrichens the atmosphere of Janairo’s journal-like songs throughout the album. Technically a 2023 release, Superfriend’s EP Aurora is the recording project of JM Townsend.  The hook-filled collection ranges from relaxed introspection to the hooky confection of “Oh, Nicole” which namechecks Fuel Café and Lenny Kaye.

The Shivvers, Combustor and Madison’s Ghost Particles gathered no moss as these veteran artists continued to evolve. It only took an Austrian label (Bachelor Records) for The Shivvers to reanimate with the single “My Love Calling/Reckless.” Larry Widen spoke with songwriter Jill Kossoris: shepherdexpress.com/music/local-music/the-shivvers-milwaukees-power-pop-sensation-return.

Since Combustor hit the ground running a few years ago, the trio of Milwaukee veterans (Clancy Caroll, Marc Graves and Bobby Mitchell) https://shepherdexpress.com/music/local-music/combustors-combustible-rock/ grab image at link have released an album and contributed a song to a Kevn Kinney tribute. The most intriguing project came when the band got hip to the remix situation. Produced by Tron Jovi, that project, Bent & Snapped: Tron Jovi Remixes, was a natural given the historic connection Tron (Martin Defatte) has for local music history with the archive MKE Punk and Combustor’s deep roots in the local alternative scene.(combustor.bandcamp.com/album/bent-snapped-tron-jovi-remixes)

The Ghost Particles’ use of musical space and lingering journeys of redemption seems apt for this Madison group’s recent album north central. “Time is a moving train,” Phil Davis sings on “What Remains” as the tune rides out on Dave Benton’s guitar riff that recalls a lost episode of a forgotten Western. https://theghostparticles.bandcamp.com/album/north-central

“This is the quietest album I ever made,” pat mAcdonald writes in the liner notes to LOL (Light O' Love). Listeners hoping for mAcdonald’s Nick Drake album will find an analog with this gem recorded at home. “A World Without Me” is as a clear-eyed meditation on mortality as you will find. Likewise, “Alcohol” is a gentle warning, reflected in the album’s cover art itself a riff on an image from the 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune. “I can’t make the bridge stand up and dance across the bay” continues the lunar subtest on “Moon There’ a Better Way.” There are nuggets of wisdom hiding in the grooves: “God is not dead, only retired. Still motivated, just a little less inspired” in God’s Confession. The succinct baker’s dozen songs telegraph neatly as haiku.

Unlocal Music

In the mid-‘80s Souled American crawled out of Nowheresville in central Illinois and released four albums on Rough Trade. Determined to prove vague theories of sonic entropy, the quartet’s music became sparser, slowed down and the band shrunk to a duo by the time they (barely) released another pair of albums for a German label, and then receded if not vanished. So, what to make of the recent stealth mini-tour? Who knows? But back in October they released two songs that span their career—their newest recording paired with their oldest recording “Sorry State/Phoenix”: souledamerican.bandcamp.com/album/sorry-state. Back in 1989 Souled American opened a UW-Milwaukee show by Camper Van Beethoven that frightened the headliner’s audience of thriftstore hippies with its dub-molasses intensity. Here’s hoping for a return engagement.

Bill Orcutt released a five LP set The Consolation of Records on vinyl in May. One of the records, recorded live at Big Ears Festival with drummer Chris Corsano nearly jumps off the turntable. The improvised set recalls the improvisation and sonic squall of vintage Television. The other albums are challenging as they are rewarding. Of note is the lone album that does not include Orcutt; Zoh Amba Solo in Italy is an intense saxophone set.

Reissues/Archival

The Silos Live at The Toad Café 1988 documents the Silos' Milwaukee stop on the band’s first national tour. In the nearly four decades since, Walter Salas-Humara has played here dozens of times in various lineups of The Silos and solo, but this blazing set at the great, long-gone downtown club is a shot of adrenalin https://thesilosofficial.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-toad-cafe-1988image at link

Early Daze by Neil Young and Crazy Horse Neil Young’s solo career ignited when he began collaborating with a trio he dubbed Crazy Horse. https://shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/early-daze-by-neil-young-and-crazy-horse/ With Early Daze we get a clear-eyed snapshot, a what-might-have-been from that original, near-stillborn lineup of Crazy Horse. While there have been songs leaked on bootlegs and Young’s Live at the Fillmore East album, Early Daze offers another argument just how crucial guitarist-vocalist Danny Whitten was to the band. Image at link

Like Young, Lou Reed’s early recordings have been excavated. Milwaukee writer Jim Higgins also got into the act. Over the pandemic he began blogging about Reed’s records, which he later turned into a book.  Last spring he did a book release event at Boswell Books and in August we did a deep dive on our Sonic Rendezvous podcast https://shepherdexpress.com/podcasts/sonicrendezvous/jim-higgins/

Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65 (loureed.bandcamp.com/album/why-dont-you-smile-now-lou-reed-at-pickwick-records-1964-65) Before forming The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed cut his teeth at teensploitation record label Pickwick Records. The budget label flung the latest craze at the wall to see what stuck. As a writer, musician and singer at Pickwick, Reed would try his hand at a variety of genres: soul, garage, surf, girl group and Wall of Sound-on-a-budget. With the advantage of hindsight, it is no surprise to hear Reed kicking at the stalls of convention at times. 

On the few songs Reed takes lead vocal the listener can hear the Velvets DNA already in place; the raucous “You’re Driving Me Insane” by The Roughnecks and “The Ostrich”—which failed to cause a new dance craze for The Primitives. “Why Don’t You Smile” by The All Night Workers spotlights singer Otis Smith on a soul-narcotic arrangement of a tune Reed would later rearrange for the Velvets.

Record hounds have long been on the search for the budget compilations that include these Reed crumbs. Light in the Attic’s collection, decades later, is something of a public service. And if Reed’s actual involvement with some of these songs is questionable, what better way to illuminate an artist who never stopped reinventing himself and redefining rock and roll.

Bloodstains Across Wisconsin - Punk Rock Rarities 1977-85 Who? A collection of hard-to-find Wisconsin singles—or maybe not. The Police (who predated the peroxided trio), Bart Starr’s son, pre-Flambeau’d Potatoes, pre-Cryin’ Kinney, Black Dog Shurilla. What? Lo-fi crud, live documents, demos, privately held artifacts. When? From the era when modern music was taking shape, often problematically so, ala Einstein’s Riceboys “Black Fag,” Ozone’s “Disco Sucks” and The Bombs “Let’s Go to Guyana.” If you detect a whiff of an affectation of British accent at times, it will pass. Where? Green Bay’s The Minors and Depo-Provera, Waukesha’s The Shemps, Kenosha’s Muscle Beach and a whole lotta Milwaukee from The Haskels, Those X-Cleavers, The Lubricants and The Blackholes. (shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/bloodstains-across-wisconsin-punk-rock-rarities-1977-85)

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Live in the USA by Patti Smith The 10 CDs collection gathers live radio broadcasts from 1975-79. The box set points to the world wide web of grey markets and fuzzy intellectual property laws across continents. So, if you don’t feel weird that Smith ain’t getting royalties you are probably already a fan who has exhausted the legitimate releases. Some of these were the Holy Grail of vinyl bootlegs in the past century. Horses producer John Cale guests on encore of “My Generation.” 

“I don’t care. You only paid two dollars to get in,” Smith addresses a heckler at one point. “That’s what you get for coming to a bar.” The 1978 version of “Radio Ethiopia” from Eugene, Ore. provides a glimpse at the flights the band would take, moving from Smith’s vocal glossolalia coupled with a band trying to make sense of dub reggae to muscular psychedelia: rock and roll as speaking in tongues. 

Part of Smith’s charm was how she connected with her audience. A great snapshot is the 1979 homecoming show in 1979 in Upper Darby, Pa. where Smith requests listeners to write a letter to then-president Jimmy Carter to grant citizenship to band member Ivan Kral, the Czech emigrant “who has been paying taxes here since 1968.” And she tells the audience, “I want all you young girls to stay away from my father,” before requesting a rubber band to fix her hair and “I don’t know what it is about Philly. I lived in about four different places here—they all been torn down. That means I don’t get a plaque on any house in Philadelphia like Beethoven did.”

Another highlight, CBGB 1979’s “Glass Factory,” a variation on “Land,” finds a hoarse Smith channeling Jim Morrison in the monologue section as the band vamps before galloping, stoned, into one dance in the land of 1000.

If you are lucky enough to dig into Ray Charles' Tangerine Masters series of reissues it is easy to see why he was called a genius. When jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker was asked why he plugged nickels into the jukebox and played country songs he replied, “listen to the stories.” Like Parker, Charles knew that genres were mostly imaginary boundaries and a good song is a good song. “You’ve Got a Problem” from Crying Timeis an earworm that is as much church music as riveting gutbucket stomp. “Together Again” from Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues turns the Buck Owens tune into a blues that makes the listener wonder why Owens never reversed Charles’ formula and reinvented modern sounds in R&B music. Charles also reinterprets a pair of other Owens tunes on this album. The titanic album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music combines lithe (some might argue syrupy—it’s a fine line) orchestration and a choir of backing vocals. 

However you slice it, Charles’ stunning take on Don Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You” remains the bedrock of country soul. The playful, laconic horn chart on “It Makes No Difference Now” sets a contrast to the lyrics that’s kinda … well, genius. Likewise, he sends Hank Williams’ “Hey, Good Lookin’” into Count Basie territory. The album’s second volume again dips into the Gibson songbook. This 1962 take of “Oh, Lonesome Me” fairly jumps off the Victrola; Neil Young’s version eight years later slowed it to a 16rpm crawl. Sprinkled among the albums are Charles takes on the great American songwriter Percy Mayfield.

Bad Brains – Omega Sessions and I Against I (Org Music) The reissue of Bad Brains first ever multitrack session recorded in 1980 still sounds ahead of its time. Listeners who wrote off the group as hardcore missed the point. Sure, they could thrash, but they’d veer into speed metal then slow down to heavy reggae ala “I Luv Jah” and “Stay Close to Me” even leans into pop reggae. “Attitude” and “I Against I” are pure adrenalin. By the time the band’s third album I Against I came out on SST they were even more streamlined and lethal.

Marquee Moons 1974-2009 (youtube.com/watch?v=XC9CyoMJq94) isn’t a reissue because it never was released. Ty Burr writes about film for the Washington Post. If your boss was Jeff Bezos you might need to blow off some steam, so Burr collected the guitar solos from 50 love recordings of Television’s landmark composition “Marquee Moon” and created a playlist that spans 45 years in a sonic cathedral—where the song’s outro often took a life of its own. If you find yourself lost in the musical genius of Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, Billy Ficca and Fred Smith, you are not alone. Is this where the soul of man never dies? If you find better evidence, clue me in.