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THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND STARTS HERE... 
...with FAVES 2024! I occasionally hear from folks who want to know what music -- from among all of the posts I do here -- I recommend. To some degree, I recommend all of it, unless I expressly write otherwise (e.g., it's not my thing, but it might be yours). With the holiday shopping season upon us, I have tried to make a list of reasonable size. It's an unordered list. I likely will have overlooked something that I really dig. Let's get to it. 2ND GRADE: Friends of Pate will know at first listen that Scheduled Explosions could be subtitled Young Karl's Wheelhouse.This is a highly effective slab of 80s power pop, with frontman Peter Gill's vocals giving the vibes of Big Star-era Alex Chilton as filtered through his Reagan-era descendents: Chris Stamey (The dB's), Mitch Easter (Let's Active), Scott Miller (Game Theory), Tommy Keene, and so on. Gill's lyrics also call upon the era of Missile Command and the Cold War, though there's an audacious Beatles reference in the middle of this also. The other obvious influence is Guided By Voices, not only in the songs' brevity (which is fine) but also in the lo-fi production given to a number of these tracks (which does not serve this material as well). If you want to own this, you need to head to Bandcamp. If you don't have a streaming service, you can hear it on full on YouTube. JESSICA PRATT: Here In The Pitch is a magnetic collection of introspective singer-songwriter folk pop that could easily have been released in the mid-to-late Sixties, alongside Dusty Springfield or Astrud Gilberto without sounding like either of them. Carried by Pratt's vocals (which have a whiff of a very subdued Petula) and acoustic guitar and minimal bass, it's also tastefully supported with the occasional guest instrument, which almost always turns out to have been a Mellotron, a fact that may say more about the aesthetic here than I already have, though I will add that this was definitely my favorite use of reverb on an album this year. This one is also on YouTube. NICK LOWE: How many artists get a third or fourth act? But Indoor Safari, a delightful collection of material worked up with touring band Los Straitjackets, is another all-time Lowe. Here he reaches back to pre-rock pop and remakes it with all the craft of his early work and the softer classicism of his last three decades. It's Rockpile for grown-ups, maybe? And here it is on YouTube. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS: Coming out of a period of personal tragedy and artistic triumphs, Wild God is discussed as an equally triumphant album about Joy. Even Dylan noticed in Paris te other day. And it's a good thing that the tortured artist trope doesn't always have to incline us to root for people to suffer for our entertainment. That said, this is still Nick Cave, so the joy here carries a certain spiritual weight and depth. FACES never really put it all together in a way leading to mainstream success, so if you were looking for a collection that fully contextualizes the band you would seek out the Five Guys Walk Into A Bar box set. That said, the 8-disc Faces at the BBC: Complete BBC Concert & Session Recordings (1970-1973) captures their swagger quite nicely. FRIKO: I try to get Chicago bands on these lists, and Where we've been, Where we go from here also pays a little homage, I think, in the Pumpkins-eque guitars here, both in sonics and romanticism, though there may be a little J Mascis in the axes as well. Once I got past the over-vibrato on the vocals for the first two tracks, this full-length debut impressed me with the level of craft at every level, from the melodies, to the occasionally surprising arrangements, to the production (let's put the reverb on this, but not that). DEHD, another Chicago band, has made my list before, and here they are again. Poetry has a bit less of a shoegaze feel to it, opting for a minimalism that recalls bands like The Feelies only in the most oblique way. It's hard to shuffle a handful of chords into something arresting, but this may be the band's most accessible work yet -- and yet not particularly commercial (I say this as a compliment). MJ LENDERMAN: Manning Fireworks earned him a lot of buzz this year, with the emphasis on "earned." I cannot be the first to call this Slacker Country, though I hasten to add that it's nothing like Neil Young. Lenderman's wry, observational lyrics perfectly suit his loose musical approach. JOHNNY BLUE SKIES, the new alter ego of Sturgill Simpson, does not deliver the sort of Cosmic Country of A Sailor's Guide To Earth, but Passage Du Desir delivers what I suppose some will call Outlaw County and be technically right, though maybe more leaning in the direction of Jerry Jeff Walker than Kris Kristofferson. Nothing revolutionary, and maybe a bit too smooth, but a very pleasant album (again, a compliment in this context). Chris Gaines this ain't. KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD has hopped a lot of genres in its catalog. On Flight b741, they take a turn into Southern rock, with perhaps some dashes of the Dead and Little Feat. It's a really buoyant, fun LP, esp. "Le Risque." Joy without that spiritual weight and depth mentioned earlier. Worth checking out, even if you weren't a fan of their more experimental and heavy early works. BEACHWOOD SPARKS return after a hiatus with Across The River Of Stars, a continuation of their Laurel Canyon-by-way-of- Silver Lake brand of Country Rock. By which I mean one more inspired by Michael Nesmith and latter-period Byrds than the Eagles, esp. on "Gentle Samauri." THE DECEMBERISTS are also back after a hiatus, with As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, an hour-long double-LP that effectively surveys the landscape of their musical landscape, from British folk-inspired pop to a fairly heavy prog finale. As such, I tend to prefer Sides One and Three, but it's all very solid stuff (even if I'd still slip Picaresque to a newbie). RICHARD AND LINDA THOMPSON: No, not together again (except for a brief cameo).The Decemberists may have adapted British folk-rock, but Richard Thompson and his ex-wife Linda were born in it. This year, Richard put out Ship to Shore, a typically consitent entry in his oeuvre, favoring the Brit-folk influences at the front, and rocking out more on the back side, though it seems as though he's not trying to capture his legendary guitar solos in the studio.As good as that is, I may prefer Linda's Proxy Music, the title presumably alluding that she is medically unable to sing now. Instead, she collaborates with her kids, her friends' kids (including Rufus and Martha Wainwright)and even John Grant on the album's most idiosyncratic trak... "John Grant." YARD ACT: Their debut made my Faves in 2022, and Where's My Utopia? is not remotely a sophomore slump. It is as if frontman James Smith reacted to critical acclaim with, "Oh, you liked that? Let me tell you what I really think." While there are politics here, it's all more personal than didactic. The band's postpunk grooves still go hard, though I might dig the really audacious tracks thay stacked at the top of the running order, esp. "We make Hits." THE LEMON TWIGS: Regular visitors know I've championed them for a while. On last year's Everything Harmony, they took inspiration from 70s cringe rock; on A Dream Is All We Know, they wind the clock back further to mine a lot from the Beach Boys and the Hollies, so how could this not make my list? They may still need someone in management or a label to pester them for a big dumb single, but that run from "Sweet Vibration" through "How Can I Love Her More?" is really something. JALEN NGONDA: Come Around And Love Me was technically a 2023 release, but I did not find it until after last year's list was published and regular readers know I love to put some retro-Soul on. This LP is very late-60s/early-70s Mowtownish R & B - not psychedelic soul so much as the sort of stuff Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were up to. Ngonda is not on that level yet, particularly lyrically. But this album is just full of good vibes. CHRISTOPHER OWENS, best known for his first band, Girls, has been through it, to put it mildly. But like Nick Cave, he has come through it without losing his creative spark. I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair gets off to a strong start, gets a little mushy in center but maintaining a mood, and finishes strong from "This Is My Guitar" onward. RICHARD HAWLEY is another artist I have long championed (since 2005's Cole's Corner at a minimum). His LPs are usually what I would call "3 a.m. with coffee" albums. In This City They Call You Love is a bit more uptempo; you could get away with playing this one a 1 a.m. Suffused with pre-Rock classicism, this pairs nicely with the Nick Lowe album, which might be the 7 p.m. version. THE dB's remastered Repercussion this year. Having already mentioned the band up top, I would be foolish to not recommend this minor masterpiece of arty power pop to anyone who has not heard it. Honorable Mentions: WAXAHATCHEE: Tigers Blood will wind up on a lot of "Best Of" lists this year, and probably rightly so. But for some inexplicable reason, the first chunk of this album does nothing for me. Which is all the more strange because "Bored" and everything after is pretty golden.It's probably a "me" problem. LOS CAMPESINOS! All Hell also should wind up on "Best Of" lists, and here I appreciate how well-crafted and coherent the album is as a statement. But the statement is probaby just a bit to Gen Z for a geezer like me. CINDY LEE: Diamond Jubilee really ought to be in my wheelhouse, with all of its girl group injluences and "MIckey & Sylvia Take Quaaludes" production aesthetic. But it checks in at over two hours and falls within that class of double-album that would have benefitted from a trim down to a single. Much too muchness, as the King of Austria might have said. GUIDED BY VOICES: Robert Pollard's voluminous output tends to beg critics to take the band for granted, when we'll all be the poorer if he ever retires. Strut Of Kings, the band's sole album this year, is not a great GBV album, and I can't list it as a Fave, as it leans into their lumbering, prog-adjacent side a bit too often for my personal taste. But it is a perfectly cromulent effort, with the wistful pop of "Fictional Environment Dream" as a highlight, and a strong closing stretch from "Timing Voice" onward. FATHER JOHN MISTY: Mahshmashana just released last Friday, so it would be foolish for me to judge it as an immediate Fave, but as a Misty fan, I note it here to remind me to think of it for the 2025 list because so far, hot damn.
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