2024 Safe Bets: Charli XCX - Brat
What can I say about Brat? It taught me it was okay to be weird
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Tagged “safe bets”
2024 Safe Bets: Cliffdiver - Birdwatching
https://cliffdiverok.bandcamp.com/album/birdwatching
Cliffdiver's second full-length album really delivered for me. It's not surprising in hindsight that their debut album Exercise Your Demons wouldn't live up to the high expectations set by their 2020 song Gas City; it's by all means a good album but for me it lacked the sort of top-tier memorability that I'm looking for when listening to this sort of on-the-nose pop-punk "DIY" music. Birdwatching, as a counterpoint, sold me from the very start with opener "thirty, flirty, and thriving!!!" Co-lead vocalists Joey Duffy and Briana Wright are both extremely charming, the band's work continues to be my favorite use of the saxophone in recent memory, the whole album kinda breezes by and dares you to go back to the start and listen all over again like many of my favorite albums this year, and I would like one hundred more years of Cliffdiver songs to put me in a good mood and make me feel thirty years old again.
2024 Safe Bets: Armlock - Seashell Angel Lucky Charm
https://armlock.bandcamp.com/album/seashell-angel-lucky-charm
This second album by the Australian slacker-rock duo is a perfect example of why I love Run For Cover Records. It's unfortunately brief, weighing in at just 19 minutes across 7 tracks, but I had it in the rotation pretty regularly in 2024. The lofi music videos put out over the course of the year match the vibe pretty well. More of this please!
2024 Safe Bets: Vegyn - The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
https://vegyn.bandcamp.com/album/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions
I dunno what to say about this one, it just is the mood I felt in the most this year. I felt ready to put this on just about any time-- as a plane was landing, when I couldn't sleep, when I had a quiet afternoon sitting around peacefully with my parents in my new living room, when I was walking around a new part of San Francisco I had never been in before (near the Moscone Center? lol), just any time really. I guess that makes it the next in a series:
2024 - this one
2023 - overmono - good lies
2022 - sadurn - radiator
2021 - ross from friends - tread
2020 - cartalk - pass like pollen
2019 - glass beach - the first glass beach album
2024 Safe Bets: Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us
https://us.7digital.com/artist/vampire-weekend/release/only-god-was-above-us-explicit-39422357
I had very complicated feelings about Father of the Bride, though ultimately came out pretty positive about it. I do feel like this is a return to Modern Vampires success but also I feel a little bit guilty about feeling that way because of the signifiers
2024 Safe Bets: Saeph - Verdant
https://saeph.bandcamp.com/album/verdant
Listening to this album does make me feel alive-- alive because I can hear the influences from Porter Robinson and Madeon, from chiptunes to blasted out VHS copies of anime series you've never remembered the title of recovered from a friends of the library table sale. Listen to this album if you're a little goblin in the forest in an RPG Maker game