Turn It Up - Everything But Country, 2024

David and Charles with some non-country favorites from the year

It’s that time of year again. This month at No Fences Review, we’ll be sharing some of our favorite music of 2024, spotlighting songs and albums that are staying in our rotation and making our listening lives better. Today, we’re turning up some of our favorite non-country tracks - some of these are re-ups from previous weeks, and some are brand new, some were singles and others album cuts, but all of them are things we hope you like as much as we do. (And check out some new reading recommendations at the bottom!) Stay tuned all month for more of the best of 2024.

Kendrick Lamar – “Not Like Us” (single, 2024)

The genius kill-shot of the big beef, “Not Like Us” succeeded not because it wipes the floor with the more problematic corners of Drake’s private and public lives. It succeeds because it’s a brilliant pop song, constructed with the fizzing energies of the dance floor and the joyous turns of phrase that too often get lost in both Drake’s navel-gazing and Kendrick’s pontifications. Over a strutting beat from Mustard (oh wait, pardon me…from “MUSTAAAAARD!”), Lamar’s syllables spill out across lines that find perfect climaxes, whether the held note of “A minorrrrrrrr” or the hopefully deathless “You ain’t a colleague, you a fuckin’ colonizer.” And then the hook, a boil-down so definitive that it rivals Lamar’s earlier “Alright” as a flexible thesis statement. “Not Like Us” is a club banger, an anthem for public celebrations, and (ahem) a better pop-rap track than anything Mr. Graham’s come up with in several years. It’s been a great year for hip-hop, especially by the Black women who are this era’s creative center, so I’m limiting my intake of this whole thing. But “Not Like Us” remains undeniable. – CH

Lizz Wright – “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” (from Shadow, 2024)

I was playing Lizz Wright’s new album for the first time without the track list in front of me. As usual, I was transfixed by Wright’s performances and how they anchored arrangements covering the stylistic waterfront from jazz to R&B to folk and beyond. And then a familiar melody emerged from a cradle of electric and acoustic guitars. Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” has become something of a standard since it appeared via Judy Collins in 1968 and Denny’s own 1969 version with Fairport Convention. The fact that great singers from Collins to Nina Simone to Nana Moskouri (not to mention Denny herself) have explored its aching melancholy bespeaks the power of its spare lyric and swelling melody. Wright doesn’t change much about the source material – why would she? – but delivers a moving reading that fits perfectly with the album’s longer meditation on love and loss. Nestled between versions of Toshi Reagon’s “No More Will I Run” and Gillian Welch/David Rawlings’ “I Made A Lover’s Prayer,” “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” is the centerpiece of one of the year’s most remarkable sequences. – CH

The Hypos – “Heartbroke Town” (from The Hypos, 2024)

A collaboration between Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken and rock ‘n’ roll stalwart Greg Cartwright, The Hypos bring together a crack crew of musicians from Asheville and Memphis for a splendid collection of loose-limbed grooves and fluid melodies. “Heartbroke Town,” led by Cartwright, is a minor-key standout. Propelled by moaning violin from Krista Wroten, skanking rhythm, and brooding vocals from Cartwright and Wroten (who co-wrote the song with Cartwright), this striking song sounds like what might’ve happened if Rolling Thunder-era Bob Dylan was backed by The Specials. Cartwright often soars and shouts to memorable effect, but here he stays muted as he discusses the pain of what’s happening to his home in a world of empty shells and loaded guns. He may well be talking about his hometown of Memphis (the invocation of “river towns” suggests as much), but he could be talking about so many other places in our troubled time. Even though he’s “got a heart [that] weighs two tons,” he still makes room for both prayers and curses. As we all should. - CH (originally posted 1/22/2024)

Linda Thompson feat. Teddy Thompson – “Those Damn Roches” (from Proxy Music, 2024)

Proxy Music is such a great idea. Thompson, not able to sing due to spasmodic dysphonia, gathers friends and family around her to sing songs she’s composed. It’s a warm and generous affair (and funny – check out the doubled pun of the album cover), serving as testament to Thompson’s talents and tribute to the intersecting communities she’s nurtured. (It’s also a pretty great demonstration of how artists adapt to disability and illness, but that’s another story.) Fittingly, it ends with a tribute to these families that reminds us how – even at their best – things stay messy. “Those Damn Roches,” sung and co-written by Linda’s son Teddy, considers the Roches, the McGarrigle-Wainwrights, the Waterson-Carthys, and the Coppers, all great musical clans and all connected to Thompson through marriage, friendship, and collaboration. Her assessments both laudatory and knowing are delivered with loving familiarity. Last of all, and most moving, are of course “the faraway Thompsons,” all of whom “tug at my heart” even if they can’t get along when they’re together. And then Teddy, Linda’s ex Richard, and Rufus Wainwright join together on the chorus to affirm Linda’s conclusion that they are “bound together in blood and song” for better and worse. “Who can break us?” they ask. Hopefully nobody ever will. – CH

Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Sam Smith – “Ever New” (from TRA​И​Ƨ​A, 2024)

Let us pray. The astonishing TRA​И​Ƨ​A, the latest volume in the monumental Red Hot series, features a cross-generational, cross-genre tribute to trans and non-binary artists of past and present, with the expansive theme of transformation and transcendence at its core. It’s a big, beautiful, urgent set of music, and its best moments, like the closing “Ever New,” work simultaneously on both its chosen registers. Glenn-Copeland’s gorgeous song gets re-presented in a faithfully arranged duet with Sam Smith, whose tender tremulousness matches perfectly with Glenn-Copeland’s softly soaring baritone as strings and keyboards dance beneath them. Coming at the end of this epic album, and this very hard year, the song’s loving reminder of re-generation and change offers a blessed note of hope and reassurance. Protect trans kids. Celebrate trans lives. And may we all find the beautiful breakthroughs that “Ever New” promises and portends. – CH

Nappy Roots feat. Benji – “Home Fried” (single, 2024)

Nappy Roots are such a fantastic band. Not quite sure why they aren’t better known, why over the last twenty years they haven’t had a pop hit or even a substantial R&B one, though they’ve released a string of shoulda-coulda-beens that are among my favorite singles of the century. Nappy Roots have the hooks and the beats, the don’t-get-above-your-raisin’ themes of growing up poor and dreaming big. Plus, their brand of southern hip hop was “knee deep, head over heels in this country shit,” as they rapped on 2002’s “Po’ Folks,” long before that shit became the country thing it now blessedly is. As is nearly always the case with them, “Home Fried” presents as lowkey easy even as it impresses. Check the concluding dozen rhymes with “obstacle.” Note all the downhome epigrams: “Once you get where you’re goin’, you’re still growing up.” “Shit can go left, but what if it doesn’t?” “Life can be a damn shame… Sometimes.” Walking it like they rap it it, the groove makes do with less—a clock’s tick tock, bass and snare, a one-note choir signifying revelation—and still makes joy. – DC (originally posted 9/3/2024)

Alemeda – “I Hate Your Face” (from FK IT ep, 2024)

Ethiopian-Sudanese American songwriter Alemeda starts out with a roiling rolling beat, slow and steady behind her, her rage at a lover or a friend simmering but under control: “I’d like to speak to who the fuck raised you…” She keeps it under control too, even as the music behind becomes shriller, more power-chord noisy. “I’m not a hater but I sure hate you.” The record stops abruptly then, like a door slammed shut, but if she kept going, and if Alemeda is as strong and smart as she sounds, the next verse would likely involve packing her suitcase. – DC (originally posted 9/30/2024)

21 Savage – “redrum” (from american dream, 2024)

This 21 Savage cut goes down as including one of the year’s most effective samples. It begins with spiraling violins and a few lines of Brazilian singer Elza Laranjeira singing “Serenata Do Adeus,” back in 1962. Her last few notes are then chopped and repeated throughout, a haunting part of an eerie-as-hell rhythm track. 21’s “I’ve got big cajónes and I’m letting them hang” isn’t actually what anyone would call scary, and the kinda corny Jack Nicholson quote at the close breaks the spooky spell completely. But that sample, and the repetition of the title allusion to The Shining, is as creepy as it is catchy. –DC (originally posted 2/12/2024)

Monaleo – “Don Who Leo” (from Throwing Bows, 2024)

Sometimes it just takes a beat that makes me bounce, placed beneath rhymes that delight, and I’m good. Ostensibly, Houston rapper Monaleo is pissed-in-advance here at some guy who may or may not be planning to cheat on her. Tell me if you’ve heard that one before. What’s going to keep this one in rotation for me is the way Monaleo’s playful and surprising end-rhymes keep me laughing: For one run she lands on “album,” “Malcolm,” “talcum,” “outcome,” and “how come,” just for starters. A+. That handclap breakdown near the end makes me smile, too. –DC (originally posted 3/4/2024)

The War and Treaty – “Stealing a Kiss” (single, 2024)

This song, press reports says, is about an early moment in this married duo’s relationship when they were each too nervous to grab a kiss from the other before parting. This record, I say, comes with bigger stakes, thanks to Michael and Tanya Trotter trading their verses with old-school soul power, buffeted by pulse-pounding piano, anguished strings and, after stacking crescendo upon crescendo, squalling shredded guitar. What this stunning record conveys is not merely the regret of that long-ago missed opportunity but all the love they now realize they might’ve missed. –DC (originally posted 3/25/2024)

Recommended reading:

-Ivy Nelson on Evelyn “Champagne” King’s Get Loose, for Pitchfork

-Abigail Covington on a big year in Sapphic pop, for Rolling Stone

-David Dennis, Jr. on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, for Andscape

-David Dennis, Jr. on whether Drake will ever recover, for Andscape

-Alfred Soto on Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, for Pitchfork

-Jonathan Bernstein on profiles The War and Treaty, for Rolling Stone

Don’t miss the rest of the Best of 2024!

Friday 12/13: Charles Hughes’ favorite albums of 2024

Coming Monday 12/16: Turn It Up, Country Music, 2024

Coming Friday 12/20: David Cantwell’s favorite albums of 2024

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