My 40 Favorite Albums of 2024, part 2

Next installment of the list, randomly ordered

Here’s another fifteen of my favorite albums from 2024. The final batch will arrive tomorrow, followed by some archival picks and honorable mentions. You can find part one here.

Darius Jones (photo: Dawid Laskowski)

Darius Jones, Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity)

It wasn’t until late 2023 and into 2024 that I got my head around the heady depths of fluXkit Vancouver (it’s suite but sacred) (We Jazz/Northern Spy) by alto saxophonist and composer Darius Jones. I got the chance to hear the work twice this past year, and its visceral power, multipartite density, and ingenious wedding of strings and sax trio floored me each time. Jones didn’t waste time with a follow-up, and this searing trio date—with bassist Chris Lightcap and fluXkit drummer Gerald Cleaver—achieves similar heights in a much leaner, more direct context. The leader’s improvisational prowess is no secret, but he’s playing at the highest level in his career, unleashing a steady flow of ideas, fiery energy, and pure passion. At age 46 he’s casting spells with a dynamic profundity that seems increasingly boundless. I don’t think an old-school post-bop excursion—albeit one of intense turbulence and febrile searching—has hit me this hard in several years. More, please.

Tarbaby, You Think This America (Giant Steps)

Tarbaby, the trio of pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits has been around for almost twenty years, but the group has never exhibited any careerist impulses. It’s always been about community. All three musicians are busy in numerous contexts outside of Tarbaby, so they seem to convene when the time is right. Over the years they’ve released a handful of recordings, always with guest horn players; You Think This America is the first time they’ve stuck to themselves. Basking in the trio’s easy but deep rapport and shared history is a pure delight. The recording captures improvisers who maintain a broad continuum and curiosity, bringing a holistic ethos not only to the full history of jazz, but music-making in general. Last year I saw a jazz writer go on a tedious rant about standards, insisting that they be abolished. What a bore. Tarbaby’s repertoire here actually steers clear of standards—unless you situate Ornette’s “Dee Dee” or the Stylistics jam “Betcha By Golly Wow” in that category—but this is tradition, inhabiting beloved themes and working deeply within them to communicate and create in an impossibly profound and satisfying way. Although some of the original stuff, especially the Evans tune “Red Door,” are marvels, the compositions ultimately feel secondary to what Tarbaby does with them. This is a masterclass in a particular strain of improvised music. When I was younger I would’ve probably brushed this record aside because the group wasn’t pushing the envelope, whatever that may have meant to me back then, but now I hear this as a genuine paragon.

Quartabê, Repescagem (Sel Risco/Fun in the Church)

This Brazilian quartet has organized its performances and recordings around the music of Moacir Santos, and, in recent years, Dorival Caymmi. The essence of the source material is always present, albeit in shifting ways, but the joy and brilliance of Quartabê is derived from the way it endlessly reinvents old songs with a stylistic cornucopia guided by experimentation and what simply sounds good. This mini-album features some guest vocals by Ná Ozzetti and raspy-voiced Mart’nália—who dazzles on a reggae-fied take on “Eu Cheguei Lá” the works better than it has any right to. While the quartet’s live shows can’t be touched, they keep getting more assured and inventive in the studio. Here’s to many more future lessons.

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem)

Jeff Parker found a new way to translate his profound connection to the beat science of J Dilla through the lens of improvisation with his ETA IVet, his first steady Los Angeles band, which took advantage of a weekly engagement in the titular venue to forge a hypnotic sound that privileged slow-moving group interaction atop imperturbable grooves. Bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose are a remarkable rhythm section, content to hunker down over head-nodding patterns that would seem looped if not for the incremental, often microscopic shifts and accents that ultimately give the music its juice. On the opening track , Parker’s “Freakadelic,” the only one of the four tracks that isn’t a collective improvisation, Bellerose finally alters his pattern nearly eight minutes in, generating a release that hits like a bomb. On top and inextricably linked to those grooves are the floating lines of Parker and Josh Johnson, who feeds his sweet-toned alto saxophone through an electronic set-up that smears, aerates, and liquifies his lines, sometimes even after he’s stopped blowing. His sound sculpting flicks at the rhythmic section and offers Parker fresh input, while the guitarist tinkers and toys with phrases and riffs with the same subtle invention of Bellerose, although it feels maximalist in comparison. There’s an improvisatory vibe here that transcends genre, and I don’t mean that to explain how “Chrome Dome” naturally veers into dub terrain. Instead, the quartet filters entire universes of music into their stripped-down attack, their spontaneous responses and interactions always dictating what comes next.

Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future (4AD)

I’ve admittedly become far pickier about singer-songwriters in my advanced age. Too often songwriting feels like a hollow activity, with little rigor or thought. I think that’s why Adrianne Lenker has knocked me out this year. I was initially underwhelmed by Big Chief and her earlier solo albums, but the raw tenderness of the opening piano memoir “Real House” hit (and continues to hit) like a ton of bricks. The spare chords and conversational delivery belie Lenker’s sense of economy and poetry, a catalog of memories that feels universal despite the very specific details of the images shared. I hear a recurring Bob Dylan influence in her phrasing, but Lenker translates that influence through her own aesthetic, and even if the front porch intimacy of the arrangements feel familiar if not deeply traditional, their marriage with her quirky singing, warming melodies, and ensemble playing feels vastly superior to just about every pop-rock-folk thing I heard in 2024.

Mary Halvorson, Cloudward (Nonesuch)

Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis Sextet continues to reap serious dividends. It’s an endlessly inventive, agile ensemble that’s a simpatico match for the leader’s dense, contrapuntal writing. The guitarist summons the melodic brilliance that distinguished the music of reedists like Henry Threadgill and David Murray back in the 1980s, but her arrangements are denser, with a biting contemporary tang that could threaten to eclipse the power of the improvisations if the cast wasn’t so strong. Trombonist Jacob Garchik, bassist Nick Dunston, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara are among the best in the game, and their total ensemble commitment to bringing the lapidary beauty of Halvorson’s compositions to technicolor reality is on par with the endlessly satisfying improvisation, all of it inextricably linked to the rich arrangements. Amaryllis is quietly becoming one of the most reliable, heady bands of our time.

Paolo Griffin, Supports & Surfaces (Sawyer Editions)

It’s forever heartening to encounter the work of a figure I’d never heard of only to be knocked on my ass by the rigor, clarity, and vision of the music. Such was the case with this potent portrait album from Canadian composer Paolo Griffin, who flatly shares his embrace of Martin Arnold’s notion of slack in music. As he writes, “When music is slack it does not thoroughly enforce completion. It stays open to be explored, co-created by the listener.” That’s a beautiful notion and one that seems to guide many of my preferences in recent years. But don’t let that idea suggest that Griffin’s music and the stellar performances from his collaborators aren’t thorough or half-finished. In two solo works players with nuanced listening skills shape layers of long tones that are transformed and re-explored through electronics. “On the Purpose of an Empty Room” alto saxophonist David Zucchi activates a kaleidoscopic churn of harmonic wonder as tones collide and meld, while countertenor David Hackston subjects his voice to a hall of exponentially refracting mirrors. On “Alone, Together,” the sole duo piece, violinist Aysel Taghi-Zada and percussionist Michael Murphy engage in a dialogue that almost feels too real to be notated, and although it’s more prescribed than the pieces bookmarking it, there remains a thrilling tension and sense of surprise.

Kris Davis Trio, with Robert Hurst and Johnathan Blake (photo: Ssirus Pakzad)

Kris Davis Trio, Run the Gauntlet (Pyroclastic)

There’s little doubt that Kris Davis has developed into one of the greatest pianists of our time, a musician of deep curiosity and range that seems intent on regularly pushing herself into new contexts. In some ways this new trio with veteran bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake is more old-school than what she’s been putting down in recent years, but as usual she has clear impetus behind the project that lends its extra depth and meaning. The music was created to pay homage to some fellow pianists who greatly influenced her own work: Geri Allen, Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Renee Rosnes. Davis doesn’t fashion facile tributes that imitate or reuse trademark language from any of these musicians, but instead she tries to embody a larger sense of their creative energies and spirits through a bracing program of original material. Despite the conventional trappings, the music is electrifying, especially the epic title track, which is exhilarating and fleet as the title indicates.

Magic Tuber Stringband—Evan Morgan and Courtney Werner (photo: Kristin Karch)

Magic Tuber Stringband, Needlefall (Thrill Jockey)

Weirs and Magic Tuber String Band, The Crozet Tunnel (Notice Recordings)

Yes, I’m cheating a little bit here by covering two albums featuring Magic Tuber Stringband (Evan Morgan and Courtney Werner) as a single entry, but the way I hear it it’s not only that the group can’t be contained by a single focus, but that intuitive yet multivalent curiosity is almost at its aesthetic heart. It would be easy enough to assign some hipster fetishism to a new generation of musicians gravitating toward old-time music or Sacred Harp singing, but I’m regularly disabused of that notion. There seems to be a genuine and friendly community that’s radiating from this nicely porous world, and the most convincing practitioners are approaching these folk-rooted and traditional sounds from a more experimental mindset—a la Henry Flynt—that can recognize weird qualities in old-school sources that have been radically recontextualized in the music of today, whether it’s unusual tunings or extended techniques. The collaboration with Weirs (Justin Morris and Oliver Child-Lanning) feels deliberately more experimental, even if it opens with a cappella harmonies that suggest Fleet Foxes ripping some shape-note shit. The album was recorded in darkness within an abandoned mile-long reverb-rich railway tunnel near Waynesboro, Virginia. The four musicians forged a strange marriage of an improvised ritualistic ceremony and Appalachian sibling harmonies unfolding over drones flickering with twangy, fluctuating accents. The b-side is a resonant frequency playback treatment a la Lucier, more interesting conceptually than in reality. Magic Tuber Stringband offers a more focused vision of its aesthetic tendencies on the wonderful Needlefall, rooted primarily in Appalachian traditions, but spiked variously by Irish accents, classic minimalism, and free improvisation. Werner and Morgan are complemented by a handful of guests who help push and pull the music toward those different poles, and while there are certainly more virtuosic practitioners of these various styles, but the group’s wide sonic embrace points to something greater.

Amalie Dahl Dafnie, Står op Med Solen (Sonic Transmissions)

In the last couple of years reedist, bandleader, and composer Amalie Dahl has enjoyed a stunning artistic ascent in which she’s thrived in a variety of contexts. She’s got a strong solo practice, plays in several excellent, stylistically disparate trios, and has been a superb sideperson. But her quintet Dafnie has been the project that casts the broadest light on her various talents. This excellent combo represents yet another wave of heady, young Norwegian talent, including drummer Veslemøy Narvesen, trumpeter Oscar Andreas Haug, trombonist Jørgen Bjelkerud, and double bassist Nicolas Leirtrø, fleshing out the leader’s intricate, beautifully nuanced arrangements and contributing an unceasing stream of inextricably rooted improvisations. There also seems to be a new tradition of Danish reedists decamping to Trondheim, Norway for studies only to blossom and take the scene by storm, with Dahl following the still-evolving paths of Mette Rasmussen and Signe Emmeluth—all of whom have their own distinctive voices as composers and improvisers and all of whom had remarkable years in 2024. Who will conduct that study?

Quatuor Bozzini, Jürg Frey: String Quartet No 4 (QB Collection)

The connection between Swiss composer Jürg Frey and the Montreal string ensemble Quatuor Bozzini keeps strengthening, as each party gains additional intimacy, introspection, and intuition for the other. There’s always the danger that such familiarity could breed laziness, and while the fourth string quartet by the composer might not feel as radical or daring as its predecessors, the rigor, beauty, and thoughtfulness have not become victims of the strengthening relationship. Bozzini have a way of articulating the composer’s most fragile passages with unerring sensitivity and lyric fragility, imbuing Frey’s darkly luminescent harmonies and sorrowful progressions with a lightness of touch that doesn’t preclude a sumptuous viscosity and grain, sound morphing with seamless ease, colors swirling and swelling.

Danny Clay, No More Darkness, No More Light (Laaps)

There are quite a few trends in “experimental” music that fill me with dread, but the explosion of so-called ambient and drone music resides near the top of that list. (I’ll save my feelings for “neo-classical” music—aka post-Nils Frahm piano noodling for another day). So much of this stuff is little more than stasis, monolithic blocks of ethereal drift or thick, ominous churn. It’s all a fucking bore because beyond crafting a slab of sound almost nothing ever happens. The music of Bay Area composer Danny Clay proves the exception to the rule, delivering a gorgeous ambient quality, but unlike most of the genre, it actually contains genuine composition. This recent effort imagined a kind of musical séance for Hank Williams whose song “I Saw the Light” provided the title of this piece, blending exquisite string quartet writing with ethereal, woozy pedal steel guitar swells and melodic shards played by the composer. Clay definitely draws upon ideas first articulated by Brian Eno and Harold Budd, but he’s forged his own absorbing aesthetic, and it’s one that masterfully reconciles meditative tenderness with actual substance.

Sofia Jernberg & Alexander Hawkins, Musho (Intakt)

I was fortunate to witness the first time singer Sofia Jernberg and pianist Alexander Hawkins performed together in Amsterdam at the October Meeting organized by former Bimhuis director Huub van Riel back in 2016. Jernberg is of Ethiopian descent and had worked with Hailu Mergia, while Hawkins continues to work regularly with Mulatu Astatke, so the two tunes they performed at their auspicious debut were from that nation’s rich repertoire. In the years since, however, the duo has expanded its material to include folk themes from as far afield as England, Armenia, and Scandinavia—to say nothing of an original tune by Jernberg that turns up on this stunning album. The interpretations maintain clear connections to the source material, but as improvisers of unbounded originality and wide-eared aesthetics Jernberg and Hawkins liberate the songs from any single location or tradition. The pair are vividly attuned to one another, generously ceding space, offering complementary accents, and locking in on elusive lyrical shapes with the lightest touch, translating global traditions into a singular chamber sound, whether the soaring beauty of “Gigi’s Lament,” a traditional Ethiopian song Jernberg learned from the overlooked Ejigayehu Shibabaw, or the devastating, otherworldly “Groung,” an Armenian ballad learned through the version waxed by Zabelle Pasosian. Within the melodic invocations are loads of expressive extended techniques which always feel part of the broader fabric of the performances.

Morgonrode, Det Som Blir (Ta:lik)

Digging around to get a fuller picture of the wonderful Norwegian Hardanger fiddle player Helga Myhr earlier this year I discovered her membership in the folk-rock band Morgonrode. The group doesn’t get too fancy and its first two albums were solid if a bit predictable. Maybe Det Som Blir is predictable, too, but the sound they conjure together has held me its spell for much of the year. Myhr, Selma French Bolstad, and Rasmus Kjorstad shape gorgeous string arrangements that float above the ambling rhythms and gorgeous melodies, although the latter two both add additional colors with guitar and langeleik, respectively. There’s also the lovely singing of Bolstand and Myhr, their harmonies complementing the warming thickets of stacked tones, while the rhythm section of drummer Andreas Winther and double bassist Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson bring an easygoing propulsion that toggles between folk dances and rustic rock grooves. There’s innate musicality dripping from every tune, as colors that sparkle and contrapuntal lines that consistently elevate each performance seep from the arrangements. Some of the songs in the middle wilt a bit, but the first three tracks are so good I don’t care.

Saviet/Houston Duo, a clearing (Marginal Frequency)

One of the most rewarding and exciting trends in new music in recent years is that more and more instrumentalists are trying their hand at composition. It’s only natural that instrumental masters possess rarefied knowledge that can be tapped for compositional pursuits, not merely as areas of exploration and experimentation, but as inextricably linked threads that can open up written material well beyond schematics. Violinist Sarah Saviet and pianist Joseph Houston began working together to interpret the music of others, but over time they’ve realized ideas of their own, and on a clearing we can hear those specialized languages in stark contrast. A number of the pieces here deal with the leanest of material, but which also allow for a kind of incremental movement too often skipped by composers intent on projecting their grander schemes. But Saviet and Houston dig deep into small gestures with a generosity and ardor that’s sublime. It’s so great to hear two musicians settle in and truly work out some shit. The material peaks with the closing piece “unfoldings,” a mesmerizing cluster of vibrating tones with Houston using precisely intoned e-bows to create a shimmering sine-wave-ish presence for Saviet’s exquisite slow dance around the fixed pitch.