Best Little Moments 2024

the best little moments i want to remember from songs i enjoyed in 2024 lyrics, production, riffs .. feel, themes.. vibe etc...

Spotify // Apple

anna butterss - bishop

oblique strategy of three-bar phrases throughout

another taste - don't touch it

off-beat full band hits, insanely raw and funky feel

antenna - lost

shogun back, song revolves around his vocal run that he repeats a bunch

astrid sonne - do you wanna

backmasked / gated (?) bass drum in opening riff is sort of like what if def leppard were scandinavian herbalists

ava mendoza - dust from the mines

backmasked guitars that are like what if the whole intro to metallica's blackened was the whole song and it's the bed of a total shredfest

basic - versatile switch

so much wah pedal / bass and drums sounds like an 808 who wants to be real boy

benjamin booker - lwa in the trailer park

wildly overdriven kick and untreated snare // overlapping vox sound reversed by it's just weird vowels

body meπa - scout

drums go from black & white to technicolor @ 2:10 / tuning of the snare which sounds like lead vox in a way to me

callahan & witscher - boiler room

the concept of writing a song about being disillusioned with your music and its ecosystem / taco bell gong / if you're reading this release the boomkat diss track

cassandra jenkins - betelgeuse

"did we see it?" "somebody did"

ccl - plot twist

big beat snare roll/fill into new phrase

chanel beads - embarrassed dog

trip hop beat with casio slap bass

chappel roan - good luck, babe

alternating between head and chest voice in chorus

charli xcx - von dutch

drop is on & of 4 // synth sounds like tron bikes revving in the distance

church chords - warriors of playtime

jeff parker messing with the tremolo knob like he's aphex twin messing with the loop function

chief keef - 1,2,3

incorporating wilson pickett sample into lyrics

cindy - the bell

"set a quarter for scale if you can't make it go away"

cindy lee - all i want is you

"all i got is the truth/all i want is you"

cindy lee - if you hear me crying

sudden feedback-y guitar solo

contrahouse - big time sensuality 2

björk hat tip // different note for every syllable of "sensuality" // big synth wash into the bridge

the cure - alone

the one true feeling of a long cure intro and the sound of robert's voice when it finally comes in after three minutes an twenty seconds and he goes "this is the end of every song we sing"

dave harrington - acid western

title of song describes mood of song // kind of roger waters guitar solo over chord changes

der opium queen - extra wet

microtonal pitch adjustments in synth line over italo balearic beat

whole song transforms from post dnb to this orchestral balearic outro // dub echo synth flute arpeggio that takes over halfway through // constant live ride cymbal that lasts longer than the techno hi-hat

drakeo the ruler - diss me again

"oh lord, here go this shit again"

dummy - blue dada

wurlitzer-led psych rave-up in second half

ebk bckdoe - can't fwm

"don't sweat the technique" bassline goes so hard just need some 808s, don't need to add claps

father john misty - mahashmashana

opening a song with "his body is a gelson's/her soul, the fallen star"

father john misty - josh tillman and the accidental dose

opening a song with "she put on astral weeks/said, 'i love jazz,' and winked at me"

faye webster - wanna quit all the time

writing a song about self-consciousness and wanting to quit writing songs // tasteful nels cline solo at the end

fievel is glauque - love weapon

whole track breaks up for a second right at the end

fine - big muzzy

scandinavian cocteau twins vibe

fka twigs - eusexua

demonic vocal harmony right before drop / minor-to-major shift in chord change

fontaines d.c. - starbuster

"i wanna strike with the SAG, i need the friends from it" // inhale sample // they might be the irish red hot chili peppers

four tet - loved

lead synth line played on a “highly conceptual” microtonal polyphonic synthesizer

geordie greep - blues

truly mad guitar arpeggio riff played under verse, unplayable live // "but the jury's out to lunch"

gi gi - far-flung

bliss chimes

grandaddy - jukebox app

conceit of song: watching his ex on a date inside a bar while controlling the jukebox app from his car in the parking lot: "don't let this go on, or i'll play all our sad ones...i'll play them all night long"

hovvdy - heartstring

backmasked vocal echo before "that's why i run my mouth around like that"

the innocence mission - cloud to cloud

downpicked arpeggio on nylon acoustic / horns that come in

james k - blinkmoth (july mix)

secret downtempo guitar solo in the middle

jennifer castle - some friends

mosaic rhymes throughout ("verses" "curse is" "worse is" etc)

joy orbison - flight fm

you can mash this up with anything, but especially stupid is mashing it up with deftones "my own summer (shove it)"

julia holter - spinning

the concept of "becoming fish"

kassie krut - reckless

starting a new band and spelling your band name as the hook to your first song

kendrick lamar - not like us

breathlessness going into and out of "it's all eyes on me and i'ma send it up to pac" line

kim gordon - bye bye

the concept of making a list before you travel anywhere // distorted guitars against trap hi hats at end

klara lewis - thankful

ambient drone song that takes twenty minutes to burn through the atmosphere // sudden end

larussell - yankin!

hyphy style

lifted - all right

free-form trad style drums throughout

loidis - tell me

low-slung 00s minimalist dub techno is back, baby

magdalena bay - death & romance

honestly the live band sounds like some level 42 brit funk // tom fill in the the hook // small glissando in main electric bass riff

maria davidson - y.a.a.m. (soulwax version)

electro peak-time floor-filler about a shitty music industry

maxo kream - bang the bus

frou frou turned into teklife cloud rap sample

mdou moctar - sousoume tamacheq

outro solo tearing a hole in the sky

meatbodies - move

outro solo tearing a hole in the sky

mello buckzz - move

that feeling of "oh man this third verse is going to be the best one" and then it is

merope - rana

sudden 90s trance synth arpeggios

milan w. - face to face

rainy simple slide guitar solo in the middle

mj lenderman - on my knees

"burdened by those wet dreams/of people having fun"

mj lenderman - rip torn

the subtle cutting specificity of "you need to learn how to behave in groups"

mj lenderman - wristwatch

"i got a houseboat docked at the himbo dome/and a wristwatch that's a compass and a megaphone"

mk.gee - rockman

essentially a police song / quiet triple harmonies d'angelo style

moin - lift you (ft. sophia al-maria)

seemingly-busy-but-not-really syncopated drum part

molina - organs (ft. ml buch)

guitars that move from pitch to pitch like synths

mount eerie - writing poems

"and if masterpiece arises made of all this that the sky includes/a poem only barely says the thing halfway"

nala sinephro - continuum 6

arpeggio's shift away from the beat into zero-g treble zone

nap eyes - the passageway

conceit of song: listening to goo goo dolls in the morning and going on a some psychedelic medieval revery

nick cave & the bad seeds - o wow o wow (how wonderful she is)

"we tried to write a contract of love/but only got so far as doing the border/there was never any words in it/which i thought said a lot more than anything else"

nídia & valentina - rapido

sex sigh detaches from semantic meaning pretty quickly and starts to sound like a mizmar // 808 placement reminds me of "pass that dutch"

nle choppa - slut me out 2

conceit of song: if i was bad bitch, i'd want to fuck me too

nubya garcia - fortify

tremolo + phaser effect washing over grand piano at various intervals throughout // the way the snare is tuned no idea what goes into making it sound like that at the end kinda sounds like carter beauford you know?

nuevo testamento - in my dreams (powerhouse mix)

90s italo-house revival?? goes so hard

pcf man man - no one to vent 2

blade runner 2049 baseline test sample // harold budd/eno piano line

puli - ramona

song exists in this liminal tonal modality // boards of canada-y guitar + sub bass

rosali - on tonight

bendy guitar lead at end

sabrina carpenter - espresso

"walked in and dream-came-true'd it for ya" // little guitar turnaround throughout // 80s kashif feel

sabrina carpenter - please please please

bizzarro structure and composition -- there's like a quarter second of silence in the hook? song ends on the bridge?

sam wilkes (et al.) - i wanna be loved

dylan day's astonishing slide-guitar solo // when he hits the artificial harmonic at 1:20

self.same - selfsame 02

extremely delicate low hz bass dub groove

shabaka - i'll do whatever you want (ft. floating points & laraaji)

palm muted heavily delay guitar like the edge just showed up / laraaji as vincent price

sheer mag - mechanical garden

the concept / execution of mdou moctar soloing over like funky boogie groove

sml - feed the birds

constellation of sound spread super wide in beginning, then tightens, then loosens, then tightens again

still house plants - m m m

panned delay on guitar chords / hard drum groove in three then cuts to half time / whatever crazy chord he plays at the end

tamtam - doors

humming melody throughout // when the harmony comes in on the escalating vocal line

tatyana - i do care (& that's ok)

rolling bulbous synthline at the the end // the claps that come in, first half time, then half of that

th blisks - umbrah

shadowy indie vox over skeletal augustus pablo dub

this is lorelai - song that sings about you

baba o'riley guitar quote // meta conceit of song: a song that sings about you

tiacorine - yung joc (ft. luh tyler)

"if i had a dick it'd be soft"

tierra whack - burning brains

the formant shift thing that makes it seem like she's mumbling nonsense into the back of a fan

tommy richman - million dollar baby

the idea that this could have came out on underground d.c. synth-funk label ppu

total blue - corsair

fretless bass miami vice art of noise tangerine dream vibe

trystero - suburra

big beat ecstatic crystal methodic "trip like i do" synths at the end

two shell - round (ft. sugababes)

low-pass filter slowly coming in on "round" as chord shifts underneath it as the main bass beat comes back in

vampire weekend - ice cream piano

it took the cars five albums to write a song about a car and it took vampire weekend five albums to write a song about vampires

wand - high time

conceit of song: what if the horrors' "still life" was a crazy horse song?

waxahatchee - right back to it (ft. mj lenderman)

hitch before "in and out" "at a loss" "like a moth" etc..

waxahatchee - tigers blood

harmonies on "it fills me with dread..." that whole part and then when the full choir comes in on final chorus

xavi - la diabla

best acoustic bass song since the violent femmes

y'know - so close

heavily treated lo-fi house hi-hat that comes in over terrific spare 80s dub

yu ching - love

taiwanese tons-o-harmonies dream pop young marble giants vibe // adding a little more and more each measure

1010benja - voudon

en vogue sample replicated in piano line // sudden drum solo

070 shake - song to the siren (ft. courtney love)

going off the this mortal coil version // lol prismizer on courtney love's vox but love her vowels always