Unmissable Records - 2024

Not all the best music of 2024 made it into the spotlight. With our "Unmissable Records" feature, the OndaRock editorial team tries to shine a light on some of 2024's gems, both hidden and less hidden, offering a selection of twenty titles that deserve a careful listen. This is not an exhaustive list or a ranking: just a way of flagging some albums that struck us and that, perhaps, could prove valuable to you too.

We each picked one or two titles, drawing from albums we hadn't personally reviewed. The result is an eclectic overview that spans different genres and, while grouped by the site's sections, resists the rigid conventions of categories. From rock to electronic drift, from the most refined pop to the boldest experimentation, "Unmissable Records" shows that there's still room for surprise. And that, with as many as seven titles representing the "Rock and Beyond\" section, alongside the narratives about rock's creative crisis, another story can be told: that of a scene very much alive and in ferment, populated too by artists able to break free of the formulas already codified by old glories and rehashed by more or less nostalgic revivalists.

Accompanying the list is a playlist featuring one track from each chosen album. After all, to get hooked on something different, all it takes is a chance to grow curious, discover, and let yourself be carried away.

Rock and Beyond:

Mk.gee – Two Star & The Dream Police

What if Bon Iver had started out from r'n'b? What if, instead of moving from guitar to experimentation with the OP-1, he had taken roughly the opposite path? Twenty-seven-year-old Michael Todd Gordon began with digitally assembled bedroom pop and arrives, with his album "Two Star & The Dream Police", at a sound as spiritual and liquefied as that of "22, A Million", but built around the guitar. And what a guitar! Among his key influences are Eric Clapton and Prince, Jimi Hendrix and Taj Mahal, here filtered through an unbridled passion for sophisti-pop in the style of Blue Nile and the distorting lens of hypnagogic pop (plus an old 4-track recorder used as a preamp). The result is a highly personal, dazzling take on soft rock, a meeting of digital psychedelia and timeless songwriting in which expressive virtuosity stays in the background and never steals the show. Dreamy undertows and melodies that leave their mark make this the progressive soul record of the year. (Marco Sgrignoli)

King Hannah – Big Swimmer

The long-awaited second album from King Hannah proves that the Liverpool duo is no one-hit wonder. "Big Swimmer" reaches the same level of quality as "I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me" (OndaRock's Album of the Year for 2022), shifting the focus toward a sound and songwriting with a decidedly more "American" cut, the result of weeks spent touring the United States. Songs that almost always start out soft and intimate, tending to ripple as they unfold, gathering dust from endless American routes and opening up into the explosive, effective guitar solos courtesy of Craig Whittle. Hannah Merrick's voice balances between a spoken delivery reminiscent of Dry Cleaning and a magnetic singing style that tries to break free from comparisons with PJ Harvey. The ever-elegant Sharon Van Etten lends her voice as a guest on two tracks. (Claudio Lancia)

Munimuni – Alegorya

On the cover of "Alegorya" by the Filipino group Munimuni, a wall of crystals and shimmering minerals looms large, with a big crack at its center, a significant fracture. Behind it lies darkness, mystery. An invitation to step inside. Only for the bravest — at least at our latitudes, given the language and a certain melodic inclination that's distinctly Southeast Asian.

If you did venture in, though, you'd find one of the finest albums of the year — one that, incidentally, isn't without coordinates closer to home. Inner turmoil and aversion to Duterte's repressive policies take shape across twelve bittersweet tracks that can be as much a quick, catchy indie-pop tune, with instantly gripping choruses and crystalline melodies, as an experiment, a ride rippled with post-rock and dissonance, if not the odd metal snarl. And then there's the flute, that damned, magical flute that makes everything feel more ancestral, pure, miraculous.

Must listen: "Paraiso", "Alpas", "Sikat ng Araw", "Alat". (Michele Corrado)

MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

Whether you're doing your grocery run, trying to fix a leaky sink, or calmly watching the sunset from your porch, MJ Lenderman's "Manning Fireworks" might just be the record for you. Nine easy-listening songs drift between tales that are half serious, half tongue-in-cheek, steeped in a thoroughly American everyday life, with melodies that are gritty yet meticulously crafted. Having set aside his rougher garage-rock spirit, Lenderman finds his balance in an original take on country. Between simplicity and depth, never taking itself too seriously, it closes out a perfect year, one also enriched by his fruitful collaboration with Waxahatchee on "Tigers Blood". (Fabio Ferrara)

Wos – Descartable

The best record straddling rap and rock in 2024 comes from Argentina. Already celebrated in the pages of OndaRock, rapper Valentín Oliva, aka Wos, delivers his most ambitious album on his third attempt, with crucial support from producer and multi-instrumentalist Facundo Yalve, better known as Evlay. The instrumental backdrops move between alternative rock (at times a step away from hard rock), synthwave, traditional Latin American music, and even progressive touches (the odd time signatures of "7/8", but also the sampling of Serú Girán, a historic band of Argentine rock, featured on "Pausa").

The lyrics are about as far removed as possible from today's hip-hop and trap: no bragging about one's own skills or violent behavior, no flaunting of designer labels or sexual conquests. In their place, a poetic, existentialist approach, with occasional turns toward social critique, which effectively makes Wos a one-of-a-kind figure in his own scene. (Federico Romagnoli)

Porridge Radio –  Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me

An album that moves through pain to transmute it into beauty. The title evokes not only the weight of the clouds the band has faced after an exhausting tour and personal upheavals, but also an open sky that invites you to look beyond the horizon. The group sheds its layered sound and jagged rhythms for a more airy, boundless approach. The guitars, at times jittery, step back to make room for trumpets and flugelhorns that flood songs steeped in hope with light. Dana Margolin's voice is the connecting thread, able to distill fresh creative strength from personal pain. The clouds, then, are no longer ominous omens but become a symbol of imagination, of possibility, turning emotional rupture into an ascending movement toward genuine happiness. (Fabio Ferrara)

Eunuchs – Harbour Century

The Black Midi saga has come to an end, but Australia's Eunuchs are already picking up the baton, venturing into rugged territory where post-post-punk ferocity meets bold orchestral progressive. On their second album, the trio, expanded in the studio, fuses the most abrasive third-stream jazz imaginable with visionary instrumental architectures, drawing a layered panorama of tales and legends from the port of Sydney. The opener "Magic Death Sea Nemesis" is a journey through basslines in 5/4, convulsive horns and shimmering harps, while the leviathans, albatrosses and flying fish evoked in the lyrics form an enigmatic, symbolism-laden oceanic bestiary.

Amid disorienting time signatures and contortionist arrangements, the record ranges from the Balkan echoes of "Bird Angel Dynasty" to the sprawling ambition of "Heroin King". Singer Linus Hilton's vocals are at times an acquired taste, but the emotional density and compositional complexity leave a deep mark. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Popmuzik:

Holiday Sidewinder – The Last Resort

At a safe distance from all the noise and mattress-related drama, it's curious to go back and listen to the pop record of the summer that most of you probably missed: "The Last Resort", by Holiday Sidewinder. This is the kind of world-weary, melancholic rock that sits somewhere between yacht rock and soft rock, with hints of wave and melodies dipped in the most tropical strains of the Eighties. Somewhere between Blondie and Bananarama, Men At Work and Samantha Urbani, this ultra-blonde Australian leads a pulsing, catchy songbook made of gauzy melodies and sweet, finely synthetic reggae inflections. There's even Kim Wilde guesting on one track, a true godmother of this now deeply vintage genre, handled here with a freshness that still doesn't wear thin. (Damiano Pandolfini)

Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch

The new record by Jessica Pratt, "Here In The Pitch", disproves the supposed vacuity and triviality of retro pop. The American singer-songwriter fulfills every Burt Bacharach fan's dream of hearing an ideal projection of the American composer's art into the present. Baroque pop has never been so swinging and tender as on "Life Is", while the time-warp offered by the elegant bossa nova of "By Hook Or By Crock" brings back to life that American dream betrayed for a few dirty dollars. Every Jessica Pratt album is like a happy island to retreat to and rediscover beauty and harmony, and "Here In The Pitch" is the perfect soundtrack for your dreamlike escapes. (Gianfranco Marmoro)

Tyler, The Creator – Chromakopia

One, no one, and a hundred thousand. The Los Angeles composer conjures up a kaleidoscope of characters, stories and musical idioms that together define one of the freshest, most brilliant strains of neo-soul to emerge from the hip-hop world. Tyler draws on early Kanye West as much as Funkadelic and Thundercat, echoes of gospel and Nigerian vibes, without disdaining the odd nod to the sappy sound of Boyz II Men. Then he blends it all together, lets it bloom with voices and choirs, and stuffs it with plump basslines and booming beats. At the outset of this eighth album, which confirms him as one of the most intriguing pop composers of his generation, his mother tells him: "You are the light. It's not on you, it's in you". (Maria Teresa Soldani)

Dark corner:

Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She

A tongue-twisting, never-ending title for a long-awaited and thoroughly convincing comeback. The dark muse of Sacramento condenses her endless shades of noir into a bleak, spellbinding liturgy, blending the metallic harshness of her sound with a new trip-hop vein inherited from the darkest chapters of Portishead and Massive Attack. One after another come the electronics of "Everything Turns Blue", with its disorienting string of infinitive verbs (“To smoke, to dance, to fly/ To breathe into the night… To fuck, to feel the same in the end/ To hurt, to steal”), the pulsing electro-rock-noise of "House Of Self-Undoing" and the ethereal, smoky jazz-club romanticism of "Tunnel Lights", with vocals recalling Elizabeth Fraser. An immersion into the mind's ravines, swinging from the trip-hop sensuality of "Salt" to the heavy tread of "Unseen World", from the jagged industrial-tinged beats of "Eyes Like Nightshade" to the almost dancefloor-ready "Place In The Sun", from the hazy textures of "Liminal" (here in an acoustic version) to the swirling keyboard play of the vampiric single "Dusk".

Amid dense layers of fog, electronic flashes of brilliance, romantic surges and powerful rhythms, this is the perfect gothic rock handbook updated for the new millennium. (Claudio Fabretti)

Electronic:

Total Blue – Total Blue

Nicky Benedek crafts glittering productions straddling house and old-school boogie. Alex Talan, better known as Coolwater, moves with shrewd assurance between ambient, chillout and the dustiest vapor electronics around. Together with Anthony Calonico, they make a mockery of their own musical roots, and under the name Total Blue they've coined the most potent escape route of 2024. What are the ingredients of such an escape? The fourth-world lesson of Jon Hassell, the synthetic Eden of Midori Takada and Hiroshi Yoshimura, the edges of the most subversive, stretched-out fusion, blended into a primal, rain-soaked amalgam meant to recreate a past so unreal it ends up feeling utterly true. Shedding the trappings of the contemporary self and losing yourself in the forests conjured by this trio takes just a few minutes. (Vassilios Karagiannis)

Turquoisedeath – Kaleidoscope

A producer of predominantly electronic music, though his past releases have often been hybridized with forays into alternative rock, Turquoisedeath is one of the many mysterious figures populating today's "do-it-yourself" underground, existing exclusively online. All that's known about him is that he's based in London. On this new album the guitars have all but vanished, giving way to layered electronic arrangements where streams of sampled sounds collide with atmospheric synths, flashes of echoing melodies, filtered vocal snippets, indistinguishable tangles of digital manipulation, broken rhythms and melancholy drones.

"Kaleidoscope" is without doubt one of the best drum and bass albums of recent years: to find anything at this level you have to go back to the epoch-making "Draining Love Story" by Sewerslvt. Turquoisedeath's work shares with that album both its aesthetic and its atmospheres, both shaped by the vaporwave universe. (Federico Romagnoli)

Songwriter:

Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

The most divisive album released this year. On one side, the disappointed devotees of the physical and spiritual purity of Portishead and the admirers of Beth Gibbons' sole solo outing; on the other, the defenders of a work that seems to belong to a musical-geological era far removed from the din of the present. Beth Gibbons' second solo album is a project that, in celebrating the passing of time, crystallizes its physical and emotional identity. The album is a distillate of words and sounds that digs deep, a piece of pure craftsmanship whose cold, impassive beauty inspires both unease and admiration. A record where imperfection becomes purity, while restless melodies and unruly lyrics grant moments of profound spirituality and peace. Behind the sometimes prickly perfection of Beth Gibbons' music lies a celebration of the oxymoron of contemporary life: "Lives Outgrown" is one of the most elaborate and complex records in contemporary pop music. (Gianfranco Marmoro)

Tomer Yeshayahu – Ba’sof ze anashim

On "Ba'sof ze anashim", alongside the bouzouki – a long-necked lute of Greek origin, related to the Turkish bağlama, which Tomer Yeshayahu has played since he was a boy – comes strings arranged by Noam Haimovitz Weinschel, plus drummer Shahar Haziza, bassist Adi Gigi, pianist Gadi Stern and percussionist Maayan Doari. A formidable lineup for one of the best muzika mizrahit albums to have emerged from the Israeli scene in the new millennium, as the review rightly points out. Not a single dip in quality. Eleven gems that tie together various Middle Eastern scenes into a mosaic of captivating sounds, gracefully reworking distant traditions and fascinations. All delivered with a melodic sensibility that's decidedly out of step with the crowd, and a narrative born of deep, lived experience. (Giuliano Delli Paoli)

Other Sounds:

Julia Holter – Something In The Room She Moves

A blinding sun and a mysterious floral night surround the new gem in the catalogue of Julia Holter. The American singer-songwriter's voice floats over an enchanting sonic world caught between art-pop, experimentation and imaginative songwriting, marking the alternation of sudden, synesthetic visions: the senses blur, the eardrums hear flowers and the lips brush the colours of notes, while the matter surrounding us fuses, dissolves and clumps back together into new amorphous bodies, with no beginning and no end. Amid the dark veils, only the womb of the cosmos can be glimpsed, beating secretly in an immeasurable ocean towards which everything moves and to which everything returns. (Daniel Moor)

Italy:

Cesare Basile – Saracena

A full five years have passed since “Cummeddia” (2019), but in some ways it feels like yesterday, such is the emotional impact of Cesare Basile's records. Years of countless concerts, with two years of Covid thrown in the middle, and it's hard to imagine how Basile's music could possibly change again. “Saracena” (2024) pulls off a small miracle, coming out different from every previous work while never losing the connecting threads that make it unmistakably a Cesare Basile album. While the record keeps a link to the Tuareg music already present on “Cummeddia”, the style here is decidedly stripped down, desert-like, pared right to the bone, leaning on sounds that are now firmly avant-garde. A masterpiece like “Prisenti assenti”, folk songs turned into ancestral shamanic journeys (“U iornu du signuri”) or the Niger-inspired sounds revisited on “Kafr Qasim” clearly show that after a full twelve albums, Basile's adventure is far from over. (Valerio D'Onofrio)

Maria Chiara Argirò – Closer

Two years ago on “Forest City” Maria Chiara Argirò married her established jazz ambitions with an unprecedented electro-ambient attitude for the first time. In 2024, “Closer”, the fourth album released by the Italian artist now based in London, confirms everything good that's been said about her so far. The Radiohead fascination remains (clear on the title track), as does her evident love for club culture (especially evident on “Light” and “Grow”), skilfully alternating between beat-driven study and attempts to probe the dreamlike core of her music. So the danceable “Time” slots in between ambient drift and the downbeat pace of “September” and “Koala”, and the swelling spirals of “Air” lead into the moving intensity of “Floating”, which in its closing moments brings Argirò back toward more typically jazzy territory. Thanks to the work she's done so far, Maria Chiara can now be counted among the standout Italian women artists to have emerged in recent years, alongside – and I'm sure I'll forget someone – Daniela Pes, Any Other, Marta Salogni, Caterina Barbieri, Valentina Magaletti and Marta Del Grandi. (Claudio Lancia)

Jazz:

SML – Small Medium Large

To anyone who says nothing interesting comes out anymore, here's a question: which platforms are you following? Because I have the opposite problem: between Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and various mailing lists alone, I get flagged so many records every single Friday that by the end of the year I can't make sense of anything anymore. So it happens that something like “Small Medium Large”, by the quintet SML, only gets a listen at the last minute: a brew of minimal-concrete electronic jazz, in which you can practically picture Herbie Hancock dancing barefoot to afrobeat on the stage of the Royal Opera House. Part collective hallucination, part harmonic fault lines, part tentacular rhythms too, “Small Medium Large” is that kind of strange, slightly hipster listen that, for all its loss of seriousness and gravitas, gains a very particular charm of its own. (Damiano Pandolfini)

Arooj Aftab – Night Reign

The enchantment of night, the scents of an unfathomable mystery that still manages to captivate humanity. In these blurred yet perfectly clear landscapes, giving themselves over to darkness without reservation, Arooj Aftab moves with unmatched assurance, carving out songs of extraordinary beauty. The jazz and ghazals of her native Pakistan are the starting point, the essential cues from which she carves out an expressive niche in which the performative element is pared right down, yet the songs are still allowed to display all their astonishing expressiveness. Magnetic. (Vassilios Karagiannis)

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09/02/2026