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The 50 best albums of 2024: 50-6
Adrianne Lenker makes a record in the woods, Jack White returns with ripping riffs and Mach-Hommy gives a lyrical masterclass as we start counting down our critics’ picks of the year
On Connelly’s unique second record, there are the confrontationally drawn-out notes and complicated intonations of traditional folk songs; the off-kilter depths of Les Mystères des Voix Bulgares; in the spartan piano and dappled acoustic guitar, the gripping structural abstractions of one-offs such as Holter and Joanna Newsom. Those tactics matched the music, which is the absolute opposite to careful strategy – it’s a first-thought-best-thought ripper full of riffs that could kick a saloon door off its hinges, the production values of an amphetamine-charged 1960s teenage garage rock band and White doing a series of outrageously fun takes on the frontman: hellfire preacher, punk oik, classic rocker. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images “Vagabond, nose in the bolognese, moi / Triceratops hoping I’ma stay calm …” From the opening lyrics onwards, the Haitian-American MC sets off on riveting stream-of-consciousness flows somewhere between Ghostface Killah or RZA’s delivery for Wu-Tang Clan, and fellow new-school sages such as Billy Woods and Earl Sweatshirt.
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