AwkwardSD’s best of 2024
The most correct opinions on the best albums, songs, films, books of this year
Albums
1. Alkaline Trio - Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs
I was going to make a joke about being a 40-year-old who still listens to Alkaline Trio, but I think that’s probably the age of most fans. Being an AK3-head is for life. I can’t think of another band that I’ve held close to my heart since the age of fifteen.
And this year, my boys brought it. They haven’t made a record this good since I was in high school. You don’t have to know the members’ histories to know that Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a triumph of self-loathing, sobriety and survival. And as dark and emotionally raw as that can be, it’s the first time in a long while that Alkaline Trio sound like they’re actually having fun playing music. It’s that kind of joy that kept me coming back.
2. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
The most beautiful and abrasive album I heard all year. “Loud Bark” is, hands-down, my favorite song of the year. Singer Marisa Dabice’s building refrain of “I’ve got a loud bark, deep bite. Loud! Bark! Deep! Bite!” always gives me chills, and to see them do it live... jesus. I’ve never seen a crowd so eager to scream.
3. Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
Every song on this album is just goddamned perfect. It makes me want to buy a pickup truck and cry in it.
4. Pissed Jeans - Half Divorced
I always considered Pissed Jeans to be the OG Idles: they both play abrasive punk with thoughtful, socially-conscious lyrics. But as Idles become more worldly, popular, and smoothed over, Pissed Jeans are still rampaging. Half Divorced is fierce, smart, and funny as hell.
5. Touché Amoré - Spiral in a Straight Line
After a string of albums that dealt with grief and sadness Touché Amoré blasted out the gate with a return-to-roots hardcore masterpiece. I can already imagine the pit for songs like “Disasters” and, buddy, I don’t want to be in it!
Songs
1. Mannequin Pussy, “Loud Bark” - See above description. That build feels like all your guts climbing into your throat, and all you can do to keep them from escaping is to scream along.
2. Pissed Jeans, “Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt”
“So I pay it down Every day I pay it down I pay it down every day I pay it down Every day I pay it down So someday, I'll be sixty-one thousand dollars in debt"
A two minute rager against capitalism shouldn’t be this funny, but it’s either laugh or despair. God bless you, Pissed Jeans.
3. Alkaline Trio, “Teenage Heart” - “All I want for Christmas is an AR-14, my stocking stuffed with fentanyl. Dropped like a fly at the age of 16, wishing I had a friend to call.” Alkaline Trio at the top of their game. “Teenage Heart” is simultaneously silly, absurd, yet profound; political and personal. Slow clap, my dudes.
4. Jack White, “Archbishop Harold Holmes” - Loved Jack White’s new album, and this song is the most unhinged, wild thing he’s written.
5. Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us” - When a dis track becomes a cultural phenomenon, that’s pretty special. Like, there were Muslim girls in burkas singing “A minorrrrrrrrr” in my class this school year. This song might as well be the epitaph on Drake’s tombstone.
6. Waxahatchee, “Right Back to It” - The week I had to put my cat down, a friend gave me tickets to Waxahatchee’s show in San Diego, and that act of kindness was everything (thank you so much, Sooz). Now, this song about unromantic love and companionship makes me tear up nearly every time I listen to it.
7. Charli xcx (featuring Lorde), “Girl, So Confusing” - Nary a moment as emotional as when Lorde sings “I ride for you, Charli.”
8. The Cure, “Alone” - A few days before the election, I thought to myself: whatever happens, at least we got a gorgeous Cure album this year. “Alone” is the new “Plainsong” and it’s the perfect anthem for a sundowning society.
9. Adrianne Lenker “Sadness As a Gift”- Timeless. How was this song written in 2024 and not the 1960s? Between this and “Right Back To It” this year was when I became a sad country boi.
10. Japandroids, “Chicago” - Traditionally, it’s always been a celebration when Japandroids put out new music. Alas, their final album was more whimper than bang. That said, it’s better than most people gave it credit for, and “Chicago” is an excellent final destination for these troubadours.
Films
Man, what a bad year for movies. So many stinkers, so much mid. But you know what killed it this year? Horror. Yet again. As big event movies and regurgitated IPs continue to underwhelm, horror is the only genre left that succeeds by bringing new ideas to the table. Apart from a few exceptions (Rebel Ridge, Civil War, Love Lies Bleeding), horror movies were the only films I liked this year.
1. The Substance
Before seeing The Substance, I kept hearing about how gross and outrageous it was. Just normies curious about the latest “it” movie, I thought, probably not even horror fans. Then I watched, and it was everything people said. I can’t remember a movie so confident in its lurid vision, so brazen in its execution. I won’t ever forget the image of that creature wearing a paper cutout of Margaret Qualley’s face as a mask, and then applying lipstick to it.
2. Maxxxine
Mia Goth and Ti West are the new Noah Baumbach/Greta Gerwig: creative collaborators who are just working on another level. All the X movies are homages to the cinema era in which they’re set, and it’d have been easy for Maxxxine to tackle the ‘80s with familiar tropes, but that it went full-on de Palma sleaze instead was a breath of fresh and ghastly air. The perfect ending to the trilogy.
3. MadS
I was initially put off by the “one-shot” gimmick of this movie, but the skepticism quickly disappeared once I sat down with it. The film follows a group of rich, unpleasant teens as they do drugs and party-hop around the French suburbs. The drugs, however, are turning people into violent zombies. But the best part is that, for most of the movie, the zombie stuff only exists in the periphery and only comes into focus near the end. It perfectly captures what it’s like to have one of those dreams that becomes a nightmare. If you’re into Gaspar Noe films, you’ll dig this.
4. In a Violent Nature
I was not expecting this to be so funny with its meta Cabin in the Woods-like commentary on horror films. I wish I had come up with this idea: what does the supernatural, Jason-like killer do when he’s not on screen? Turns out, his life is pretty boring. Shot from the killer’s POV, there are long takes of him just trudging through forests, as if his quest to murder hysterical teens is more out of obligation than bloodlust. Even his kills take on a banal quality: an extended scene where he dismembers a victim with a log splitter feels more menial than shocking. All in a day’s work, right? (But the yoga death is by far the best kill of the year, and I’m not even a gorehound).
5. Oddity
An Irish movie about a blind, clairvoyant woman investigating the death of her twin sister is the scariest movie this year. There’s nothing subversive, gimmicky or winky about it, just a confident, back-to-basics piece of gothic horror filmmaking that fills every scene with dread.
Favorite books I read that came out this year
We Were The Universe by Kimberly King Parsons
The funniest book I read this year. The story’s protagonist, Kit is going through some quiet midlife crisis—balancing love and aversion for her 4-year-old daughter while trying not to confront the untimely death of her sister. Let’s not forget her porn addiction and wanting to have sex with every person she meets (seriously, Kit’s of the horniest characters I’ve read). But at the end, We Were The Universe is one of those dark, life-affirming reads about reconciling the messes of who we were and who we are.
Molly by Blake Butler
A brutal and largely unsentimental memoir about Butler’s relationship and marriage to poet Molly Brodack, who died by suicide at the beginning of 2020. In the aftermath, Butler discovered Brodack’s affairs, which he also lays out in the book. But rather than some sort of revenge porn (as he was accused of when excerpts of the book first started coming out), Molly is a lineation of sorrow, grief, and attempt to understand a stranger he shared a life with. It’s ultimately a testament to forgiveness and empathy. Never has a tribute felt more honest. I was floored.
Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
I need to stop looking at the r/horrorlit subreddit, because all the books people were freaking out about this year (We Used To Live Here, Incidents Around the House) left me underwhelmed. I don’t need gimmicks or extended r/nosleep stories or “THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR TRAUMA!” narratives. I just want to be scared by well-written stories, and that’s what Boys in the Valley is. Set in the early 1900s, an epidemic of demonic possession is unleashed in an all-boys orphanage. It’s like Lord of the Flies meets The Evil Dead—a mean-spirited book that pulls no punches, and creeped me the fuck out. And given the largely all-male cast, it’s also an exploration on what boys/men succumb to when they’re abandoned by women, compassion and love.
Girl On Girl - Emily Costa
A story collection that’s both creepy and sad, but with a viciousness running beneath. Many of these stories are set in the 2000s, and perfectly detail what it was like to be a weird teen that skirted around social circles and viewed everything through an anxious lens of horror. The stories aren’t quite nostalgic, but there’s a yearning for times when the world seemed unknowable and more dangerous. I often felt like I was reading a cursed object with this one.
Special category: Mariana Enriquez
I read three Mariana Enriquez books this year, and I’m officially obsessed. Her novel, Our Share of Night, is an epic on the scale of Moby Dick that not only delivered some of the strangest and most frightening imagery I’ve ever read in a book, but also provides an intimate, contextual and seedy portrait of the author’s home country, Argentina. Enriquez’s experience as a journalist is clearly evident in her fiction, and her Argentina feels like character in and of itself. Her books are a reminder of the reasons why we read fiction: for the opportunity to travel beyond our own experiences, and to scare the shit out of ourselves (okay, maybe that second part is just for me).
Best book I read not from this year
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Finally got around to reading this, and it’s as great as everybody says. The ambition of this novel is through the roof. I was not expecting how fucking weird, funny and profound it is, but I was especially not prepared for how strangely sweet the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, the “savage” cannibal, is. For a book about bloodlust, revenge, hubris and obsession, Moby Dick bristles with compassion and love for humanity.
My reading list for 2024
Incorrect.
Of the impressive 30+ authors you read this year, I’ve heard of 5 of them. Not sure what to make of this. Who in the heck are those other people?