If you can bring yourself to believe it, we are already eight months into 2024 – yep, Barbenheimer kicked off over a year ago, folks. It is, however, easier to comprehend when you consider how many great albums have landed on your chosen streaming service and/or in your Amazon basket since you last sang into a champagne bottle. We reviewers at all have our go-to playlists of familiar test tracks for putting new kit through its paces, which span as many decades as they do genres – but that doesn’t mean we aren’t constantly looking for new tracks to add to them.
We’re hi-fi fans and therefore music fans, after all. So it sparked great debate when it came to collectively compiling this list of 2024 releases that we believe aren’t just solid songs but also solid test tracks. Want to throw your hat into the ring? Please do, because the year and the list ain't over till it's over.
.. Adrianne Lenker – Sadness As A Gift Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief (in my opinion, the best band to have come out of Brooklyn since LCD Soundsystem) is six albums into her solo career, and the title of her latest, , could just as credibly describe her career path as it does, intentionally and somewhat ironically, her view of the world.
The second single from it, , feels like the perfect embodiment of her style and talent – poetic storytelling, line after line, alongside heart-shattering melodies via Appalachian instrumentation. Describing it as a ‘song for around the bonfire’ perhaps u.