The closing chapter of the 2024 digests turned out to be the most representative. Beyond the usual dominance of the US and UK, we’ve got strong representation from almost every corner of Western Europe, a couple of gems from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and South America. Africa came tantalizingly close too - a little-known jazz singer from South Africa narrowly missed the top 20, landing instead in the bonus section at №25. In total, 1818 albums were sifted through over the past two months (the full list, as always, is attached on Boosty and Patreon).
Emoji showcases popularity, from total unknowns to superstars: [🌌🌑🌙☄️✨🌟]
20. Mina - Gassa d'amante
🇮🇹 Italy / November 22 / 0,824 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music
pop / soft rock / blues / smooth jazz
The November top-20 opens with an album by the legendary Mina, whom many Italians consider the greatest singer of the 20th century. If you have no idea who she is, I completely understand - for today’s listeners, her era of popularity isn’t just the music of their parents’ time, but more like that of their grandparents. My own great love in Italian music is the albums of Matia Bazar with Antonella Ruggiero - and even that period came after Mina’s retirement, as she gave her last concert in 1978 and has never appeared again: not on TV shows, not in films, not at public events. Her career began by chance in 1958, while on vacation at a Tuscan seaside resort: she stumbled into what we would now call an open-mic night and shocked the casual audience, much like when someone at karaoke suddenly sings extraordinarily well. In those days, albums were not the focus; the main career ladder for singers was releasing a catchy title song for a film (romantic comedies or melodramas) and Mina was in high demand.
But greater fame also brought greater scandals. Mina didn’t fit the image of a respectable woman in strictly Catholic Italy: she behaved too independently, smoked, swore, shocked audiences with unexpected stage personas, and had affairs with married men. The latter led to her biggest scandal: excommunication from the Church and a complete ban from television networks. However, her popularity in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany was so immense that the ban didn’t last long, and Mina was soon reinstated. Before long, her status grew so much that nearly every Italian composer considered it an honor to offer her their most refined unsold songs. For example, you may not know this, Ennio Morricone, before becoming the GOAT of cinematic soundtracks, had a short career as a pop songwriter, and he wrote Mina’s signature song “Se telefonando”, already displaying his stylistic trademarks. The song was hugely successful and became part of Italy’s cultural code.
After 1978, weary of the spotlight, Mina retreated into studio life, surfacing only through her recordings. Her discography now rivals that of Adriano Celentano - indeed, the two even made a duet album together in 1998. And here we are, in 2024: Mina is 84 years old, yet her voice is as commanding, resonant, and luminous as ever - utterly free of age’s tremor. It defies belief. And in a poetic twist, her son from the scandalous affair with actor Corrado Pani (the very scandal that nearly ended her career), now plays a central role in her music. He even composed the sweeping “Dispersa”, a track that already sounds like an instant classic.
19. Linkin Park - From Zero
🇺🇸 US, California / November 15 / 0,831 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music
nu metal / alternative rock / rap rock / pop rock / electronic
The complex and controversial return of Linkin Park with a new album and a new vocalist caused a wave of irritation among people offended by what they saw as disrespect for the band’s symbolic value system. Yet the critics of the new vocalist - those dissecting every note of her live performances for fidelity to the “standard”, all while pretending impartiality and leaving room for “unexpected conclusions” - unfortunately haven’t actually listened to the album From Zero. It is steeped in the band’s own reflections on precisely the ethical issues for which the most fastidious audience would later accuse them. In The Emptiness Machine, Mike sings about the exhaustion that comes from pouring all your strength into a project that is then devalued by one person’s life choices. Two Faced explores substitution and betrayal. Good Things Go touches on fragility and transience: before you know it, even this album will be just distant history, and the online scandals it once sparked will be remembered only as yet another missed era. Stylistically, many of the songs connect directly to the aesthetics of Hybrid Theory and Meteora. Emily’s solo track, Over Each Other, recalls Chester’s solo material on Minutes to Midnight. And then there’s Overflow - a charming, underrated indie-rock experiment in a distinctly 2010s style, unlike anything LP had ever recorded before. Chester Bennington had been pouring his psychological traumas into lyrics, and From Zero does the same. The necessary sense of continuity is preserved. This new album is the best Linkin Park have released since Minutes to Midnight, and most importantly, it feels free of the identity crisis that haunted the band throughout their later period.
18. Beware of Darkness - Lose Your Mind, Gain Your Soul
🇺🇸 US, California / December 13 / 0,832 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music
hard rock / alternative rock
If we went back in time to 2012-2013, the press was calling the newly formed band Beware of Darkness the next big breakthrough, and larger, more successful acts took them under their wing as an ideal opening act - because the guys had great drive, and it’s always nice to later be associated with a successful name. But more than a decade has passed, and Beware of Darkness has effectively disbanded as a group, with success never arriving. They chose the wrong label, one oriented more toward sustaining modest indie acts, and quickly fell apart when their second album failed to produce a breakout hit capable of moving them into the big league. In 2020, all the members left the unsuccessful project, and the vocalist/guitarist announced that he would continue releasing music under the same name, despite now being on his own. And despite obscurity and extreme niche status, his second “solo” album after the split turned out to be a strong piece of work.
17. Vylet Pony - Monarch of Monsters
🇺🇸 US, Oregon / November 15 / 0,833 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music
electronic / pop rock / noise rock / post punk / progressive rock / experimental / hyperpop
I’ve always believed that no double album wouldn’t benefit from being trimmed down to a single record - just the best songs, no filler spread thin across four sides of vinyl. But on very rare occasions, double albums come close to the point where even side C remains interesting, and only on side D does the composer’s inspiration finally run dry, leaving weaker tracks just to fill the last side. One such rare case of a worthy side C is Physical Graffiti, where it’s always hard to push through the final quarter of the record - saved only by the presence of “The Wanton Song”. Another example is Monarch of Monsters by Vylet Pony, an American MLP-devotee with an endless stream of releases, churning out albums faster than you can listen to them. Monarch of Monsters is an engaging and inventive record, and Vylet Pony isn’t afraid to write ultra-long tracks like the 12-minute “The Wallflower Equation” and the 22-minute “Sludge”. Still, the final four songs tend to tire rather than entertain.
16. Jo Hill - Girlhood
🇬🇧 UK, England / November 22 / 0,833 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
indie rock / britpop
A small album of ten short 2-3 minute songs, devoted to themes of growing up, set to steady acoustic guitar strumming: as if Oasis and Blur were still alternating on the radio. On her way to a debut album, Jo Hill managed to get funding from the giant label Parlophone, which paid for the recording of her demo material. However, she included a clause in the contract stating that if she left, she would retain all of the unfinished material - a move that allowed her to jump ship to the small label UROK, alongside Tom Odell. In later interviews, she explained that her motivation for leaving was the burdensome quality control of the major label, which cared only about how “broadcastable” each song was. Tom Odell had the same experience, he left Columbia to do what he liked, and in some cases the informal sound benefited his music, though he no longer records cohesive or hit-driven albums.
15. Нуки - Терапия
🇷🇺 Russia / November 22 / 0,834 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
alternative metal / nu metal / metalcore
The fifth studio album by Nookie (Daria Stavrovich), now elevated from side project to main focus. "Therapia" sounds fairly heavy (heavier than her previous releases), and as always, Nookie moves comfortably between a wide range of vocal techniques, including extreme ones - she is truly a grandiose vocalist. The heavier sound and sharp riffs are likely the result of her collaboration with Viktor Kucher, guitarist of the (post)-hardcore band Grizzly Knows No Remorse, who unfortunately haven’t released new music since 2018. Lyrically, the album is somewhat varied - from fairly superficial songs like “Sabotage” or “Zombie-Zombie”, to more complex ones, such as “Planeta”, with its charming polysemic wordplay and a touch of reclamation, or the metaphor-rich “I Want to Be Sound”.
14. Seera - Al Mojallad al awal
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia / December 4 / 0,835 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
psychedelic rock
A psychedelic quartet from Saudi Arabia, with an all-female lineup - you’ve now seen everything. Not assembled in exile in distant Canada or Germany, but straight out of Riyadh. The road to forming the band wasn’t easy, member found her own path: one started with Guitar Hero before trading the plastic controller for a real guitar; another quietly worshipped Primus, Tool, and Nirvana, never expecting to meet anyone who shared her tastes; a third spent a decade drumming away in her bedroom. When fate brought them together, the bassist pulled in her older sister Nora as keyboardist and vocalist - and from their very first jam session in 2022, the chemistry was undeniable and they felt like a unified whole, began meeting regularly, and started writing material for their debut Al Mojallad al awal. The shift in Saudi Arabia’s cultural climate - striving to become more open to tourists and even hosting large-scale festivals like MDLBEAST Soundstorm - also played a role in making their band possible. Seera hasn’t yet reached those massive stages, but it would be amazing to see them there one day.
13. Kaśka Sochacka - Ta druga
🇵🇱 Poland / November 15 / 0,838 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music
dream pop / indie pop
Poland’s dream pop scene has a new rising voice: Kaśka Sochacka. Despite minimal events in her songs, Kaśka creates deep and expansive atmospheres as backdrops, often through granular synthesis of samples with long exposure, and sometimes with patterns of harp or xylophone; all this accompanies melancholic lyrics from the perspective of a truly mature person, about how every feeling becomes dulled, and life itself takes on the inertia of apathy and detachment. In the video for the song Szum, Kaśka shows off a rare musical artifact: the OP-1, highlighting her level of financial stability (although it’s not the OP-1 Field - even with 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, the newer version is out of reach).
12. Cane Hill - A Piece Of Me I Never Let You Find
🇺🇸 US, Louisiana / November 1 / 0,840 / 🌙
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
metalcore / nu metal / industrial metal / alternative metal / post-hardcore
Cane Hill find themselves caught between two fires: on the one hand, they’re criticized for sounding too similar to Bad Omens, Sleep Token, and Silent Planet; on the other hand, their fans clearly weren’t expecting their third full-length album, A Piece Of Me I Never Let You Find. Not long ago, Cane Hill released two small EPs, Krewe, each with 3 tracks and a total runtime of 21 minutes. What fans probably wanted most was for them to write 4 more songs in the same style and release it all as a proper album. That didn’t happen, although it was probably on Krewe that Cane Hill sounded the most individual and least derivative. Still, A Piece Of Me I Never Let You Find is not a wrong turn, but rather a search for the right balance - combining the melodic richness of modern metalcore with the inventive progressiveness of the Krewe era.
11. Julia Logan - Faraway Nearby
🇸🇪 Sweden / November 1 / 0,843 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
alternative folk / pop rock / indie pop
A melancholic and moderately old-fashioned album, inspired by the style of the contemporary Swedish duo First Aid Kit and, in part, by the music of the Fleetwood Mac era. But Logan didn’t stop at imitation. She brought in Daniel Bengtson, First Aid Kit’s producer, who not only engineered the sessions but also co-wrote material, giving the project both polish and authenticity. Detached, sorrowful compositions with melancholic lyrics are where Julia shines most, oscillating in contrast with lighter, mixed-key songs like Moodswings or Hold It on the Line. Another interesting trend in modern European music is the fascination with the sound of Midwestern Americana, which Europeans have managed surprisingly well in recent years. Julia’s subtle American inflections are woven into her music with taste and precision.
10. So Soon - Whether You Like It Or Not
🇩🇪 Germany / November 22 / 0,847 / 🌑
Spotify / Apple Music
alternative pop / indie folk / post rock
So Soon are masters of the slow build. Every track they write unfolds like a journey - starting hushed, shifting through metamorphoses, and swelling into a radiant climax. The project is the work of two childhood friends, both multi-instrumentalists, who in 2022 landed on the radar of Hamburg’s Clouds Hill, a label devoted to art rock and experimental sounds, and its greatest achievement so far has been bringing The Mars Volta out of hibernation and even luring them across the Atlantic under its banner. For smaller artists, Clouds Hill has been a lifeline, and in So Soon’s case, it gave them resources most debuts only dream of. And it’s incredibly cool that the label managed to attract and fund the work of such titans of sound engineering as Barny Barnicott and Matt Colton, who have previously worked with Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Muse, Depeche Mode, Thom Yorke, and many others. Their contribution made the debut album Whether You Like It Or Not sound so stunning.
09. Carlos Álvarez - Big Bang
🇪🇸 Spain / December 13 / 0,854 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
hard rock / classic progressive rock
Carlos Álvarez cut his teeth in the obscure Valencian prog outfit Dry River, but eventually decided even a few thousand listeners was more fame than he wanted. He left the band, moved from Castellón de la Plana to a home studio in the suburbs of Barcelona, and started writing music for an audience of barely a hundred and fifty people. Stylistically, it’s very old-school prog - like if the supergroup Arena (does anyone still remember them?) had been assembled from former members of Queen and The Who, with Elton John as a guest star. However, the Spanish-language lyrics save it from direct parallels, giving it more creative freedom and shifting the music into a more playful, even comical register.
08. Melike Şahin - AKKOR
🇹🇷 Turkey / November 8 / 0,857 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
middle eastern pop / world / oriental
Melike Şahin is best known for her role in the legendary Turkish experimental band Baba Zula, which, over its 30-year existence, blended countless genres while always grounding its sound in oriental motifs. Melike left the group in 2017 to pursue a solo career, and in a curious coincidence, she released her second solo album AKKOR on the very same day that her former band dropped their 12th record. Perhaps the most interesting tracks on the album are “Durma Yürüsene” and “Beni Ancak”, both written in similar meters - 10/4 and 10/8, but with very different internal compounds, they feel completely distinct. The first is cold, detached, and slightly haughty, while the second is chaotic and restless. Both have excellent music videos that visually complement the songs: the wide avenues of New York for the former, and the narrow streets of Istanbul for the latter (with a cute Easter egg for the 10/8 meter of “Beni Ancak”, shown through a hopscotch game of 10 squares in 8 steps). Traditional Turkish music, with its use of complex rhythms (called usul aksak), can outdo many progressive bands in this respect. Yet the influence of European pop has often nudged Middle Eastern music toward straightforward 4/4 beats. That makes Şahin’s skillful use of complex meters all the more remarkable. And of course, AKKOR doesn’t stop there: it’s filled with fascinating tracks, like the groove-heavy “İfşa” or “Korkmasam Ölürdüm”, whose string motif I fell in love with instantly. AKKOR is one of the most refined and exemplary Middle Eastern albums of the 2020s.
07. Cyber Band - Through the Passages of Time
🇵🇭 Philippines / November 23 / 0,865 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
progressive rock / avant-garde
Finds like this are exactly why I dig so deep. Picture three young musicians, total unknowns, head over heels for the “out-of-date” music as Jethro Tull, Yes, Rush, ELP, and King Crimson of the Lake-Wetton era. They don’t hide it either: their YouTube channel is full of covers of the greats. And crucially, they have excellent instrumental skills and a great vocalist with strong English. The album opens with the title track, Through the Passages of Time, a massive 23-minute piece where prog imagination roams through a multitude of riffs and themes. Drop the date stamp, and you’d swear this was pressed in the mid-’70s, not 2024. For anyone daunted by that opener, the rest of the album offers a softer landing: shorter tracks in the 3-6 minute range, where the angular riffing gives way to more elegiac, atmospheric songs, closer in spirit to King Crimson’s In the Wake of Poseidon.
06. Flower Face - Girl Prometheus
🇨🇦 Canada / November 1 / 0,881 / ☄️
Spotify / Apple Music
indie folk / dream pop / chamber pop
A few years ago, I had the thought of how much modern pop lyrics differ from pop music of the 1930s-40s: in jazz, the most common trope in love songs was “I’m worthless, but you’re perfect”, while modern music heavily emphasizes hurt feelings, wounded pride, and retraumatization from love. In old jazz songs about failed love, singers would stress that it was their own fault for not winning her heart; in modern songs, it’s “I loved you so much, I gave you everything, but you just betrayed me”. Both are about unsuccessful love, but across eras, self-sacrifice has been replaced by resentment, subjectivity by objectification, and responsibility has shifted. Against this backdrop, Flower Face stands out in the way anything against the current does. She is unafraid to appear pitiful and insignificant, and as the album’s narrative develops, Ruby McKinnon seems almost more monstrous than the men she sings about. Lyrically, this album is a true rarity, and a fascinating listen - the compositions allow for expressive twists. However, as a vocalist, Flower Face is not particularly striking, though that very approach feels most fitting for the themes of her songs.
05. Sarah Blasko - I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain
🇦🇺 Australia / November 1 / 0,903 / ☄️
Spotify / Apple Music
baroque pop / alternative pop / indie rock
A recent Rick Beato video about the eras of mainstream genres sparked conversations in my circle about our favorite and richest decade in music history, and I realized that I most often miss the ’90s. Back then, guys were recording exalted, nervous grunge, while girls were making exemplary singer-songwriter albums of a hard-to-define genre: centered on phlegmatic piano and guitar parts, with intimate, confessional themes (there’s a wonderful and concise term for this: Lilith Fair Generation, though it hasn’t yet become common usage). If the former seems gone for good - modern grunge lacks both depth and bite, the latter still appears now and then. Such albums may be rarer today, but when they do surface, they’re a gift for anyone nostalgic for that era. Into this collection falls the wonderful album I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain, fully continuing the tradition. Sarah Blasko may not have been part of the ’90s as a songwriter - her debut arrived in 2004, but none of her seven albums has ever felt like a step back.
04. Dead Chic - Serenades & Damnation
🇫🇷 France / 🇬🇧 UK, England / November 8 / 0,915 / 🌌
Spotify / Apple Music
alternative rock / post-punk revival / garage rock / indie rock
Supergroups of “losers” are a perfect setup for recording a brilliant underground album. Dead Chic was assembled precisely from such musicians: vocalist Andy Balcon of Heymoonshaker (an experimental duo of blues guitar and beatboxing), guitarist Damien Félix and keyboardist Mathis Bouveret-Akengin from the little-known French band Catfish, and drummer Rémi Ferbus, who previously worked with Kimberose. Fueled by hysterical energy, driven by a raspy, distorted false-cord vocal, they dart between dozens of stylistic frameworks: from desert rock to Latin American rhythms - almost as quickly as they switch languages, occasionally drifting away from English into French or Spanish. Another promising detail that gives Dead Chic a huge chance for a strong future discography is that they’re overflowing with ideas. Before releasing Serenades & Damnation, they had already put out enough singles for another (unpublished) album, which they toured live, but instead of recycling that material, they chose to record an entirely new, standalone album with a cinematic atmosphere.
03. Rosalie Cunningham - To Shoot Another Day
🇬🇧 UK, England / November 1 / 0,916 / 🌑
Spotify / Apple Music
progressive rock / crossover prog / glam rock / psychedelic rock / cabaret / art-rock / baroque rock
Rosalie Cunningham began her career back in the 2000s, performing in little-known psychedelic rock bands Ipso Facto and Purson, and touring as a session musician during The Last Shadow Puppets’ first tour. It wasn’t until 2017, after ten years of band experience, that she switched to a solo career. To date, she has released three albums, all focused on vintage sounds from sixty years ago. The main problem with modern retro music is that stylization almost always takes precedence over genuinely inhabiting the role of adopting the mindset of a 1960s-70s composer. But the real psych and prog of that era thrived on chaos: abrupt left turns, fractured structures, jarring key changes meant to knock listeners sideways. Rosalie is one of the few modern composers who truly has that expansive mindset, as if she had been born not in a small coastal town in Essex, but right on Haight-Ashbury itself. That said, there is one questionable choice on the album - the track “Timothy Martin's Conditioning School”, a postmodern pastiche borrowing fragments from the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and “Taxman”, the traditional “Happy Birthday to You”, and a few other melodies you can almost place but can’t quite name. It’s playful, but divisive. You’ll either grin at its cleverness or skip it entirely.
02. Anavitória - Esquinas
🇧🇷 Brazil / December 12 / 0,924 / 🌟
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
indie pop / folk / mpb / bossa nova / smooth jazz
Just like last time in 2021, Anavitória have arrived in the winter with another brilliant album. By their fourth release, it’s already clear that they are the most sought-after indie act in contemporary Brazil. With Anavitória, you never wonder what they’ve been doing all those years between Cor and Esquinas: every song overflows with detail: trills, ornaments, flourishes, and an instrumental palette that stretches from delicate vocals to bright brass. Vocally, Ana Caetano and Vitória Falcão sound so alike that telling them apart takes serious ear training. But that near-twin quality creates a natural counterpoint. Where most artists would use studio tricks - plugins to shift backing vocals just slightly from the lead - Anavitória achieved it organically. The result is stunning in both directions, whether Ana leads and Vitória supports, or the other way around.
01. Opeth - The Last Will and Testament
🇸🇪 Sweden / November 22 / 0,932 / ✨
Spotify / Apple Music / Yandex Music
progressive death metal
The Last Will and Testament is a rare case of an album where the promise of “returning to the old sound” is not just empty talk - Opeth truly came close to the style of the legendary Blackwater Park and the much-underrated Still Life. The very concept of the album was a bold step into the abyss. The tracklist, consisting of numbers and paragraphs, looks like something from an obscure instrumental band, and the storyline... well, in film, most viewers would probably call such a plot too shallow and clichéd. But music runs on different logic, and because narrative albums are so rare, this one hits hard. So the story of a 50-minute reading of the will of a deceased paterfamilias, set in the interwar period and presented before three heirs of varying degrees of illegitimacy - works beautifully. The highlight of the album is the participation of Ian Anderson, the voice and flute of Jethro Tull, and a longtime friend of Opeth. He plays the role of the notary in The Last Will and Testament and, here and there, contributes magnificent flute passages.
