The 30 Best Rock Albums of 2024

Of all the genres we cover at Pitchfork, rock might be the most elusive. What qualifies it, exactly? If it rips and shreds, surely it must rock. But what if it has trap beats and AutoTune, or if it ripples with wordless, ambient electronics? Who’s to say what gets etched in the rock canon? We figured it was worth a shot, so we selected our 30 personal favorites from 2024. These records span smaller bands with thrilling debuts, elder statesmen who continue to reinvent themselves, and indie artists who are just hitting their stride. Below, find our top 30 rock and rockish albums of 2024, as chosen by Pitchfork staff writers Nina Corcoran and Madison Bloom.

Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2024 wrap-up coverage here.

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)

30.

Fake Fruit: Mucho Mistrust

Recorded in the wake of bandleader Hannah D’Amato’s breakup, Mucho Mistrust, the second album from Bay Area punk trio, is 12 thorny tracks that draw blood from creeps, narcissists, and repeat peddlers of “petty bullshit.” Snarl along with D’Amato on cuts like “Psycho” and “Más O Menos,” and get lost in the tangle of gnarled bass, shrieking guitar, and the occasional skronk of a saxophone. –Madison Bloom

29.

High Vis: Guided Tour

The latest from London five-piece High Vis might retain the class-centric subject matter of their punk pedigree, but Guided Tour is more of a Britpop record in scope and sonic ambition. Sure, there are scrappier hardcore nods like “Drop Me Out” and “Mob DLA,” but the record also features some of High Vis’ most irresistible power ballads, harking back to the towering reign of Blur and Oasis. In another hat tip to ’90s UK musical exports, High Vis laid down a trip-hop beat and sampled South London DJ and singer Ell Murphy on “Mind’s a Lie.” Murphy’s silken melodies coast under Graham Sayle’s coarse dispatches, while a skittering snare beat propels everything forward. It’s High Vis’ most innovative song to date. –Madison Bloom

28.

Pouty: Forgot About Me

Josie & the Pussycats wish they wrote an album this catchy. Former Slutever drummer-guitarist Rachel Gagliardi laces her fingers around a baseball bat and winds up to whack her target—the inevitable self-doubt that comes with aging—into a pulp on her debut full-length as Pouty. Delivered with the urgency and ardor of the teen girl aesthetic, Forgot About Me is a kiss-off written with the sparkliest gel pen available and an unmissable entry in knowing what you’re worth. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

27.

Helado Negro: Phasor

With a rotating crew of drummers and Sufjan Stevens on speed dial, Phasor is one nonstop groove with Helado Negro at the helm. On his eighth album, he reworks hallucinogenic synths into a rhythmic swirl while under the spell of the Sal-Mar, a unique 1969 synthesizer engineered to create an infinite number of sequences. The resulting songs are limitless in their imagination, shifting through billowy melodies and themes of affection, nurturing, and bliss. By the time closer “Es Una Fantasia” starts up, Phasor makes you feel like you’re living in the idyllic, rejuvenating dreamscape that antidepressant commercials promise. –Nina Corcoran

26.

Porridge Radio: Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me

So long as Dana Margolin fronts the British quartet Porridge Radio, I will love their records. Margolin’s voice is so ragged, so battleworn, so distinct…it has the power to plunge into and puncture vital organs. The band’s fourth album, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, has its fair share of gut-wrenching vocals recounting toppled relationships and creative burnout. Leaning more on ’90s alt than the post-punk of their breakout LP Every Bad, Porridge Radio are playing with a grander sense of space and scale, teasing out a riff or a melody until all the noise comes crashing in again. –Madison Bloom

25.

Personal Trainer: Still Willing

Indie rock’s high-water marks are all across Personal Trainer’s second album, Still Willing: Pavement’s slacker-rock coos (“Round”), Vampire Weekend’s chuffed storytelling (“Testing the Alarm”), and Spoon’s bass-forward simplicity (“Intangible”). Yet the Amsterdam septet never sound like they’re imitating their predecessors. From its seven-minute-long opener to the blissed-out mid-song pivot that turns “New Bad Feeling” into a jittery frenzy, Still Willing is ripe with casually confident songwriting that bursts with spirit and enthusiasm. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

24.

Chatterton: Fields of This

If you speed up slowcore, does it just become noisy indie rock? Consider Chatterton’s Fields of This, an exemplary case study, as the hazy slacker rock the Oxnard, California, duo of guitarist-keyboardist Brock Pierce and multi-instrumentalist Logan Scrivner dream up is brash yet diffident. From the lo-fi romance of “Pretty Things” to the testy ’90s emo of “Lakewood,” Chatterton are all mood and momentum. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify

23.

Blue Bendy: So Medieval

Blue Bendy often get lumped into an ever-swelling pool with Windmill-adjacent acts like Dry Cleaning, Black Midi, or Squid. But you’d be mistaken to call them post-punk, even if bandleader Arthur Nolan has the new romantic panache of early Morrissey and Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon. On the London six-piece’s striking debut, So Medieval, Nolan rambles and wails atop post-rock jams, knotty guitar riffs, and baroque pop flourishes. Their tight form and prickly string work bristle against Nolan’s yowling, absurdist sermons, but it’s all invigorating rather than exhausting. Sometimes, more is more. –Madison Bloom

22.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”

Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s records have long illustrated apocalyptic conditions in grayscale with a burgeoning orange light glowing bright in the distance. Though in name it’s frozen in devastating loss, “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” spends most of its runtime injecting lifelike colors back into their unmistakable post-rock. It’s as if the older they get, the more certain Godspeed are that horrors are inevitable, but so is our survival if we do our part to clear away the rubble. –Nina Corcoran

21.

Seefeel: Everything Squared

If you prefer rock music that has the sonic heft of a babbling brook, Seefeel’s Everything Squared might be more tuned to your decibel threshold. For their first record together in 13 years, Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock laid down six simmering tracks that layer decaying distortion, sticky drum pads, sonic boom bass, and vocal melodies pinched and pulled into taffy-soft tendrils. It’s a soothing and transportative ride. –Madison Bloom

20.

Cola: The Gloss

When former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy rounded up drummer Evan Cartwright for the first Cola record, it felt like a faint charcoal sketch compared with the vivid colorblocking of their prior work. But you might have to blame that on the pandemic lockdown recording method…swapping files back and forth on Google Drive tends to dampen the ambiance. On Cola’s second album, The Gloss, the trio found their palette, blending more approachable melodies with biting guitar, a measured rhythm section, and Darcy’s hyper-specific wit. The Gloss might feature even more songs about buildings and food, but Darcy always manages to extract new meaning from the mundane. –Madison Bloom

19.

julie: my anti-aircraft friend

“I don’t feel anything now,” singer-bassist Alexandria Elizabeth deadpans at the start of my anti-aircraft friend. julie lean so hard into the sound of detachment—howling grunge guitar, walls of fuzzy shoegaze distortion, feverish noise-rock drumming—that their nerves start to tingle from the sheer vibration alone. The trio’s debut album burrows so deep in that noise over the course of its runtime that, once the emotion starts to return, it’s almost hard to recognize it at all. –Nina Corcoran

18.

Gouge Away: Deep Sage

After several moves and pandemic uncertainties, Gouge Away almost broke up following 2018’s Burnt Sugar. That might explain why the Portland-via-Fort Lauderdale post-hardcore band performs with such extemporaneous vigor on Deep Sage, thrashing and flailing in a release of anger that trades blind rage for determined revenge. Led by vocalist Christina Michelle’s hair-raising screams, Deep Sage mangles everything in its path with thick basslines and switchblade guitars until the floor is bloodied but the air, at long last, is cleansed. –Nina Corcoran

17.

The Jesus Lizard: Rack

Ultimate rock’n’roll motherfuckers the Jesus Lizard returned this year with Rack, their first studio album since 1998. But fear not: you won’t whiff the geriatric musk that chokes so many long-awaited comeback efforts. Rack rips, with no shortage of dick-swinging guitar or bashed-in snares. It’s as if the Jesus Lizard were cryogenically frozen in their filthy jeans and torn tees, and then resuscitated with a shot of adrenaline straight to the jugular. Frontman David Yow sounds as menacing and deranged as ever—though these days, he might be less inclined to stage dive naked. Might. –Madison Bloom

16.

Robber Robber: Wild Guess

Way up north in Burlington, Vermont, Robber Robber recreate the disorienting conditions of a whiteout with their soft-punk meets krautrock sound. Wild Guess, their first full-length conjures images of drunken adventures turned alarming mysteries. Prickly in tone but delivered in a comforting perpetual motion, Robber Robber’s hypnotic indie rock could make even the most proficient jam bands envious. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

15.

Font: Strange Burden

Austin quintet Font played local gigs for three years before committing any songs to tape. The constant tweaking and sharpening of live material paid off; their debut album, Strange Burden, is taut and exhilarating. Prodded by the frenzied no wave of his bandmates, frontman Thom Waddill spouts off abstract yet highly articulate passages that have a sharp comic edge. Picture David Byrne doing Mad Libs. And then a funny little dance to express what words cannot. –Madison Bloom

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

14.

Amen Dunes: Death Jokes

Of course Damon McMahon followed Freedom—his sprawling, silvery slice of Americana—with an Amen Dunes album that rattles to warped lines of dialogue and clattering hip-hop beats. Death Jokes is no less cinematic than McMahon’s 2018 breakthrough, and it’s certainly not lacking in his vibrato. But his use of samples lends an intriguing discomfort. Where Freedom found McMahon straying from his noisier roots, Death Jokes plunges back into the murk; he pairs a fist-pumping, wind-through-the-hair chorus with a delayed guitar loop and footwork hi-hats. He’ll compress and warble his voice beyond recognition, toss in J Dilla keys, crank the distortion, and purée it in the blender. The rippling, soft-hued melodies that emerge from the discord feel all the more vital. –Madison Bloom

13.

Sumac: The Healer

Imagine waking up in a sensory deprivation tank and calmly trying to break out, piece by piece, before the air runs out. Over four songs that span the length of a feature film, Sumac turn The Healer into a beguiling feat of experimental metal that’s at once cleansing and terrifying. A decade into their career together, singer-guitarist Aaron Turner, bassist Brian Cook, and drummer Nick Yacyshyn fuse their playing into an astounding beast hell-bent on escaping. Each hollow note and rattling string feels like you’re one step closer to getting out, even if you don’t know where “out” is. –Nina Corcoran

12.

Arab Strap: I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍

Pop a Kolonopin and sink between the couch cushions for the duration of Arab Strap’s brilliantly titled album, I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍. Sad bastard Scotsmen Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton are back with 45 minutes of dour rock, subdued electronics, and deadpan poetry recounting the bleary-eyed desperation of a life squandered online. “When will I be cured of this crippling fucking fomo?” Moffat asks on the wryly titled “Sociometer Blues.” You might as well stay on the sofa while you wait for the answer. –Madison Bloom

11.

Shellac: To All Trains

The only comforting part of To All Trains being Shellac’s last album is that it sounds exactly like Shellac always does. Released mere days after the irreplaceable Steve Albini died, To All Trains takes pride in the band’s surliness, the abrasive tone of its guitar, the sheer volume with which the drums are hit, yet none of these songs are concerned with legacy or impressions. The trio’s sixth record is charmingly irritable in both of its moods: hopped up on fluffy coffee while cracking baseball jokes, or dragging out downbeats and lamenting power structures to goad listeners with mounting anticipation. Shellac tear through these songs like three lifelong friends—this time it ends with Albini confirming in his gruff bellow, “I don’t fear hell.” –Nina Corcoran

10.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Wild God

Is Wild God really a rock album? Only when kissed with some modifier: rock-opera, gospel rock, or even “symphonic space rock,” as Stuart Berman’s Pitchfork review posited. Whatever you want to call it, Wild God finds Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds wriggling free from the stranglehold of grief and floating up to rest on pastel, pearly clouds. They’re not dead, just taking in the breadth of humanity beneath them—the sorrow and the joy. Cave’s earthy groan is a bellowing contrast to the cosmic orchestral swells that swirl around him. He sounds weary but lifted. Like a preacher piecing together his once-shattered faith. –Madison Bloom

Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Thirdface: Ministerial Cafeteria

Don’t bother trying to keep up with Thirdface. The Nashville four-piece is so blitzed on their own concoction of grindcore, punk, death metal, and math rock that trying to follow the mutilated beats of Ministerial Cafeteria will only make you dizzy. Instead, marvel at the chaos as it splinters: vocalist Kathryn Edwards’ sneering reinterpretation of horror film allegories, guitarist David Reichley’s adroit layering of techniques on “Beneviolent,” or how bassist Maddy Madeira and drummer Shibby Poole navigate the near-constant change-ups of “Mantras” together. Ministerial Cafeteria is meant to overwhelm. –Nina Corcoran

Friko: Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here

Back when Bright Eyes signed to Saddle Creek, Friko singer-guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger weren’t even born yet. Though the Chicago duo’s heart-on-sleeve take on indie rock owes a great deal to that band’s baroque pop and piano balladry—plus, intentionally or not, Kapetan sings with the same affected warble as Conor Oberst—they forge onward with a distinct romanticism that verges on optimism. Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here is a bold full-length from a band that knows exactly who it wants to be and what they’re capable of. –Nina Corcoran

MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

Thank god for MJ Lenderman’s twanged-out, hangdog drawl. Without it, his faded snapshots of Americana and pathetic machismo might just make you cry. “We sat/Under a half-mast McDonald’s Flag,” he sings on Manning Fireworks breakup ballad “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In,” one of the saddest, yet instantly recognizable scenes in Lenderman’s growing stack of SadSack trading cards. His deck is full of drunk fucks, depressed service workers, and pitiful bachelors. A worthy torchbearer of Southern rock, Lenderman’s songs possess the wry wisdom of great country music: That a man’s “manliest” exploits can raze him to nothing over time. –Madison Bloom

Dancer: 10 Songs I Hate About You

Few bands have come closer to sounding like cult favorites Life Without Buildings than Dancer, but the Glasgow art-rock band wasn’t even trying to do so when they wrote 10 Songs I Hate About You; Dancer singer Gemma Fleet just happens to hail from the same Bedfordshire county of England as Sue Tompkins. With her punchy vocal delivery, Fleet lights up her bandmates’ mathy post-punk and charmingly imperfect synths with stories about costume contests, downtrodden characters, and clinging to perseverance. It culminates in a record that epitomizes DIY: wrangling together friends for fun, encouraging each other to bring their weirdest ideas to the table, and seeing how you can pull it off with spunk. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Kim Gordon: The Collective

If only we all had Kim Gordon’s alchemical touch, the one that can turn the lamest of subjects into solid gold. Making a to-do list, scrolling dead-eyed through your feed, even checking emails would suddenly feel oh-so-cool. But forget it: We’ll never be as fucking cool as Kim Gordon. Fortunately, The Collective functions as a temporary Badass Filter we can all hide behind for at least 40 minutes. With the aid of avant-pop producer Justin Raisen, Gordon’s unsettling speech fragments—that vamp on the relentless nature of technology and consumerism—float just above a froth of trap beats and industrial clamor. On a record that flirts with both no wave dissonance and SoundCloud rap production, Gordon has once again reshaped the rock landscape. Ugh. She can even pull off AutoTune. –Madison Bloom

Melt-Banana: 3+5

Over 30 years into their career, Melt-Banana still love pushing Japanese noise rock off a cliff. On 3+5, their ninth album and first in more than a decade, Yasuko Onuki and Ichiro Agata inject pure adrenaline into their shrill guitar slides, maniacal drumming, and pitch-shifted vocals so piercing that they verge on inhuman. It’s hard to fathom that just two people fire out this many notes at the speed they do, but Melt-Banana thrive on this type of hyperactive flurry. From the cheeky anticipation bubbling over in “Code” to the headbang-worthy punk of “Hex,” 3+5 is a testament to the duo’s infectious creativity and refusal to cede to time as they enter middle age. –Nina Corcoran

Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven

Following the unhinged heartbreak of their 2019 album Patience, Mannequin Pussy came back this year with a primal, downright horny record that mimics the rapture and anguish of desire. The range of emotions on I Got Heaven emerge as alternating blows of punishing hardcore, dream-pop hooks, and scuzzed-out stadium guitar riffs—but their style never sounds incongruous. The richness of this album is partially indebted to producer John Congleton, who encouraged the quartet to record several parts live, while capturing studio banter and sticking it around the perimeter of cuts like “Sometimes” and the title track. Rattling with energy, I Got Heaven finds Mannequin Pussy mastering modern punk and penning sticky pop licks with equal fluency. It’s also the sound of a band reaching into their guts and laying it all on the mixing table. —Madison Bloom

Dame Area: Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area

Dame Area, the synth-punk duo of vocalist Silvia Konstance and producer Viktor Lux Crux, have been smashing and rebuilding their sound since they formed in Barcelona’s underground scene over seven years ago. After experimenting with EBM beats and glossy electro-pop, the pair took a sharp turn, burning rubber on their way to the junk yard. Their latest album, Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area, sounds welded together from sharp remnants of the scrap heap; it hints at the industrial hellscapes of Throbbing Gristle, and the punk nihilism of Suicide. But among the gnawing synths and blast-beats, Dame Area splice in a digitized string swell here, a bracing Flamenco rhythm there. For Konstance and Lux Crux, any genre or motif can be retooled into a jagged new shape. –Madison Bloom

Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

Ekko Astral: pink balloons

With their debut full-length, Ekko Astral carry on the legacy of D.C. punk bands past like Fugazi and Black Eyes like a torch flickering with the collective struggles of those around them. Written with intent and momentum, both musical and liberatory, pink balloons rips through snarling punk and eerie experimentalism to forge a better world. While Ekko Astral are deadly serious about the life-threatening realities that trans people experience and how capitalism still manipulates those very people railing against it, they’re also really funny, whether quoting School of Rock and Kreayshawn or blasting people who raise hell to get their seven dollar coffee drinks refunded. It’s a radically fun combination. From start to end, Pink Balloons is so textured, audacious, and fully realized that you’d be forgiven for forgetting it’s their first album. –Nina Corcoran

Luxury House

The 30 Best Rock Albums of 2024

Fake Fruit: Mucho Mistrust

High Vis: Guided Tour

Pouty: Forgot About Me

Helado Negro: Phasor

Porridge Radio: Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me

Personal Trainer: Still Willing

Chatterton: Fields of This

Blue Bendy: So Medieval

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”

Seefeel: Everything Squared

Cola: The Gloss

julie: my anti-aircraft friend

Gouge Away: Deep Sage

The Jesus Lizard: Rack

Robber Robber: Wild Guess

Font: Strange Burden

Amen Dunes: Death Jokes

Sumac: The Healer

Arab Strap: I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍

Shellac: To All Trains

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Wild God

Thirdface: Ministerial Cafeteria

Friko: Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here

MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

Dancer: 10 Songs I Hate About You

Kim Gordon: The Collective

Melt-Banana: 3+5

Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven

Dame Area: Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area

Ekko Astral: pink balloons

Leave a Reply Cancel reply