NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #72

The 3rd Annual NMFO Holiday Listacular!

Dec 20, 2024

Happy happies, dear reader. I trust you’re enjoying/enduring the holiday season? I’ve been sick as a dog with RSV (aka Hipster Covid), but I can see light at the end of the phlegm-filled tunnel.

Side note: I’m a bit distracted by some rather persistent carolers. What has convinced these folks that I’m hoarding a private stash of figgy pudding?

With that bit of graphic design mastery out of the way, let’s get to the reason you chose not to delete this email unread:

THE 3rd ANNUAL NMFO HOLIDAY LISTACULAR!

First, a reminder that a Paid Subscription to NMFO is the perfect way to tell a friend, family member or co-worker that you toootally didn’t forget about them until the last minute.

With that out of the way…

My Favorite Songs of 2024

With all due respect to what was a darn good year for music, my personal song of 2024 was released in March 1973. But you knew that already.

But let’s not labor on the past, shall we? Here are the best new songs from the past 12 months, with links to my associated blatherings.

Magdalena Bay, “Death & Romance” — “Magdalena Bay combine that elusive “vision thing” with a cheerful what-does-this-button-do approach...”
The Lemon Twigs, “My Golden Years” — “It’s a real magic trick to make something this sophisticated sound so simple.”
Jack White, “It’s Rough On Rats (If You’re Asking)” — “Compositionally, White has torn things down to the studs.”
The Hard Quartet, “Our Hometown Boy” — “The term “supergroup” is too grandiose for a project this laidback”
Dawn Spencer, Spencer Zahn, “Quiet in a World Full fo Noise” — “I love it when “virtuosic” singers hold back—it’s like musical edging!”
Hello Mary, “Three” — “This is like the JV point guard growing eight inches over the summer and dunking on everyone’s head.”
Field Music, “The Limits of Language” — “Upper-middlebrow art rock, delivered with a power pop breeziness.”
The Smile, “Zero Sum” — “As a white Gen X-er with a BFA, my Radiohead fandom is legally enforceable.”
Lip Critic, “In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)” — “It takes a lot to get me “hyped” these days..”
Jane Weaver, “Perfect Storm” — “Imagine if an English folk singer was abducted by aliens and returned to Earth, seemingly unharmed but…off.”
St. Lenox, “Quasi-Nichomachean Ethics (Drunk Uncle Advice)” — “There are plenty of artists out there making original work, but few true originals.”
Babehoven, “Dizzy Spin” — “As endless scrolling reduces life to a flavorless mush, I’ll take emotionality anywhere I can get it.”
Varijashree Venugopal, “Liquid Light” — “…an invitation to appreciate Eastern rhythms and tonalities without the benefit of an ethnomusicology degree.”
THUS LOVE, “On The Floor” — “I thus love it.”
Beth Gibbons, “Burden of Life” — “Gibbons voice, always on the verge of failing, is like a skeletal hand reaching out of the grave to gently pull you under.”
Arooj Aftab, “Raat Ki Rani” — “…in the 90s, when everyone suddenly had Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan fever.”
Gojira, Marina Viotti, Victor Le Masne, “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)” — “Libertė, egalité, etc.”
Christian Lee Hutson, “Carousel Horses” — “Whenever I encounter a musician who shares my name, I think “This guy is probably a douche”. Pehaps something to discuss with a therapist.”
The Softies, “23rd Birthday” — “…this charmingly slight batch of songs, all of which sound like they were written at 3am on the Lilith Fair tour bus.”
Tyler Ramsey, “These Ghosts” — “Adult music for adult ears”
Friko, “Where We’ve Been” — “That masturbatory feeling you had in college, when every song felt like a shortcut to self-actualization.”
Horse Jumper of Love, “Gates of Heaven” — “More songs should quit on themselves.”
Mall Girl, “Emo Shred” — “But honey, can you make a living from 2nd Wave Emo…?”
Ibibio Sound Machine, “Pull the Rope” — “Class solidarity rarely grooves this hard.”
Declan McKenna, “Nothing Works” — “Until recently, I mistakenly lumped Declan McKenna in with the “Great Value Ed Sheerans.”

This playlist on Apple Music // This playlist on Amazon Music

I’m compiling a playlist of all the good 2024 shit that slipped by me. Help a guy out!

My Favorite Albums of 2024

The longer I write this newsletter, the harder it is to obsess over individual albums. There’s always the (self-imposed) pressure to continue plowing through the new releases, Pac Man style. That’s not a complaint—with age, and an increasingly predictable day-to-day life, I’ve come to prioritize the tiny dopamine hit of a new fascination. But the trade off is that I don’t chew my food quite like I used to.

The upside is, there’s still a ton of meat on these bones and I look forward to spending the holidays gnawing away. Given the eclipse-like overlap between my favorite songs and albums, the playlist below is comprised of songs not previously featured in NMFO.

Magdalena Bay, Imaginal Disk — A perfect mix of the digital and analog, at once retro, contemporary and futuristic.
Jack White, No Name — I can’t believe I’m ranking a Jack White album this high. Strange times.
The Lemon Twigs, A Dream is All We Know — Curious to see if Big-Star-meets-The-Byrds is their final form, or another stage in their evolution.
The Hard Quartet, s/t — Just a really fucking good rock record. Organic, loose, fun.
Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown — A thoroughly bracing experience that’s almost too effective for its own good. The Children of Men of albums.
Jane Weaver, Love in Constant Spectacle — Call it cross-stitch psychedelia.
Dawn Richard, Spencer Zahn, Quiet in a World Full of Noise — The “Calgon, take me away” album of 2024. Ideal snow day music.
Varijashree Venugopal, Vari — A feast for the ears.
John Davis, JINX — More great music by one of the world’s great power pop songwriters.
St. Lenox, Ten Modern American Work Songs — Literate and insightful, welcoming but defiantly non-commercial.
Arooj Aftab, Night Reign — An eclectic combination of smoky, delicate sounds that hint at a mysterious world.
The Smile, Cutouts — People who want Radiohead to go back to writing “rock songs”, take notice.
Lip Critic, Hex Dealer — A milk crate full of molotov cocktails.
The Softies, The Bed We Made — The perfect album to bring you back to earth after a long day of lobbing molotov cocktails.
Horse Jumper of Love, Disaster Trick — Dissonance, barely held at bay.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Woodland — More beautiful Americana by two legends. The dream partnership.
Tyler Ramsey, New Lost Ages — Songs that feel lived-in and hard won.
SLIFT, Ilion — Majestic french prog metal that takes your brain places.
Elbow, Audio Vertigo — What if Coldplay didn’t suck?
Friko, Where we’ve been, where we go from here — There’s wearing your heart on your sleeve, and then there’s this.
Babehoven, Water’s Here in You — Will make you break the spine on a fresh Moleskine.
Field Music, The Limits of Language — The only thing keeping this from being higher is its similarity to the rest of Field Music’s (excellent) catalogue.
Apifera, Keep the Outside Open — A musical lava lamp.
Yoo Doo Right, From the Heights of Our Pastureland — Ominous and unsettling to the core.
Plantoid, Terrapath — Adventurous sci-fi grooviness.

This playlist on Apple Music // This playlist on Amazon Music

Same deal: tell me what I was too dumb to appreciate. And yes, I’m well aware of MJ Lenderman1!

My Favorite Films of 2024

Is it possible that I saw only four movies in the theater? Considering that there are few things I enjoy more than reclining in a cushy seat with a too-large bag of popcorn in my lap, I’d say this a rather ominous sign for the state of American moviegoing. Or maybe I’m just old, lazy and no longer live fifty yards from the multiplex.

Por que no los dos?

That said, here are best movies I saw in 2024, on screens of varying size.

Thelma
Dune 2
Hit Man
I Saw the TV Glow
Furiosa
Conclave
Monkey Man
Alien: Romulus
The Killer
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

HAVEN’T GOTTEN AROUND TO YET: Longlegs, Megalopolis, Nickel Boys, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Anora, The Substance, Gladiator II, Heretic

SPECIAL MENTION: Poor Things came out in December 2023, but I didn’t see it until January and, if eligible, would have been in my top three.

EVEN SPECIALER MENTION: Hundreds of Beavers — Also technically a 2023 release, but it’s getting a theatrical re-release this month. I watched it on Prime Video last week and I AM DEMANDING YOU WATCH IT TOO.

My Favorite TV Shows of 2024

Hey Finnegan, have you watched entirely too much television this year?

The fact that I saw so few movies this year is not disconnected from the fact that so much of the “thoughtful adult fare” that used to draw our parents to the cinema has morphed into so-called Prestige TV. By my estimate, at least half of my favorite 2024 shows would have been films 25 years ago.

“Ripley” (Netflix)
“Shogun” (Hulu)
“Fallout” (Max)
“The Penguin” (Max)
“Girls5Eva”, season 3 (Netflix)
“The Regime” (Max)
“The Gentlemen” (Max)
“House of the Dragon”, season 2 (Max)
“The Diplomat”, season 2 (Netflix)
“Vikings: Valhalla”, season 3 (Netflix)
“Silo”, season 2 (Apple TV)
“Slow Horses”, season 4 (Apple TV)
“Sunny” (Apple TV)
“Disclaimer” (Apple TV)
“The Rings of Power”, season 2 (Prime)
“Clipped” (Hulu)
“True Detective: Night Country” (Max)
“Constellation” (Apple TV)
“Dune Prophecy” (Max)
“The Boys”, season 4 (Prime)

ADDENDUM: My biggest internal debate was about where to rank “Vikings: Valhalla”, which was…not so good, I think? But I spent a good portion of my Summer plowing through 80-something episodes of the original “Vikings” (also not so good). Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve done any one thing in 2024 as much as I’ve watched this goofy-ass series. I may now be an honorary berserker.

Alrighty, that’s all for 2024. Here’s to a certain person or two dying on the toilet in 2025! As always, I thank you for your support. You know, comfort and joy, all that stuff.