14 Great Albums You Might Have Missed from Winter/Spring 2024
As we approach the midpoint of the year, it grows all the more apparent how much music is coming at us and how much of it sometimes doesn’t garner as much attention as some of the biggest releases with the largest promotional budgets. And we’ll admit just how challenging it can be to, as Neil Finn might put it, catch a deluge in a paper cup. But we’re always doing our best to make up for what we missed. Today we offer our picks for some of the best under-the-radar albums of winter and spring, ranging from eclectic collectives to spiritual jazz, jangle pop to high-energy hip-hop. Get caught up on 14 great albums you might have missed from winter and spring.
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
Avalanche Kaito – Talitakum
The sophomore album from Avalanche Kaito, the tense, noisy Belgian group fronted by Burkinabe vocalist Kaito Winse, is a wild ride of intense textures and frenetic rhythms. The group’s follow-up to their 2022 debut album intertwines disparate threads of various sounds, including noise rock, post-punk, industrial hip-hop and West African popular music, all of which come together in abrasive, amazing fashion. Yet while Talitakum is undoubtedly even more ferocious than its predecessor, there’s more nuance to be untangled as well, as on dark ambient standouts like “Donle.” – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Church Chords – Elvis, He Was Schlager
The debut album by Church Chords is as much a work of expert curation as stylistic invention. Helmed by Los Angeles musician and composer Stephen Buono, Church Chords bring together artists from worlds of both jazz and rock—including Jeff Parker, Nels Cline, John Herndon and Takako Minekawa—in a strange and fascinating swirl of sounds that nods to dub and psychedelia, funk and avant garde, Don Cherry and Blonde Redhead. It’s an album that feels more like an exquisite mixtape, bringing together seemingly disparate sounds in a vibrantly eclectic whole that’s thrillingly, joyfully unpredictable. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Ducks Ltd – Harm’s Way
Some bands just make it sound so effortless, and on their latest album, Harm’s Way, Ducks Ltd make writing super catchy jangle pop bangers sound easy. Toronto duo Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis have a knack for writing breezy, shimmering, and propulsive power pop gems, like on album highlights “Deleted Scenes,” “Hollowed Out,” and “The Main Thing.” Clocking in at a brisk 27 minutes, the album never drags. Instead, as McGreevy and Lewis work their way through urban decay and life around them falling apart, the songs on Harm’s Way soar above the rubble. – Jeff Yerger
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
foamboy – Eating Me Alive
Deep in the throes of the pandemic, Katy Ohsiek and Wil Bakula—the “post-disco pop-duo” boost juice that makes foamboy, a groove-centric ensemble, run—decided to write an album. They worked mostly through email. Connected from a previous project, they pared down what worked: Just the two of them. Fast forward to right about now, foamboy have graduated to a seven-piece lineup, just released a banger of a sophomore album called Eating Me Alive, and are about to start a mini-tour of the West Coast. foamboy does the thing that so many attempt, but just don’t get down right. Pulling inspiration from R&B, contemporary Robert Glasper-type jazz, smelted with unconventional narratives: Breakups, rejecting heteronormative narratives, discovering your own queer identity. Steadfastly documenting the human condition, 21st Century style, with sublime, undeniable indie pop. The insertion of themselves and their freakouts is what makes foamboy trailblazing in sound and lyrical structure. No tired-ass dusty blue-eyed soul band speaking in a different tongue over here. Ya, feel me? Between Bakula’s R&B-centric earworm (dude’s on some Rod Temperton-bump arrangement type trajectory) production line acuity and Ohsiek’s ever-telling lyrics, that hyper-emotive voice, pouring out steadfast humanity. foamboy’s Eating Me Alive is a 2024 breakthrough that’ll keep you moving forward no matter what. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Glitterer – Rationale
Are you tired of waiting for Title Fight to come back? Guess what? They ain’t coming back any time soon… if at all. And that’s okay! So long as we have Glitterer around. Former(?) Title Fight bassist Ned Russin started Glitterer in 2017, but only now does it feel like a fully formed project that wants to make you forget everything about his former band. Rationale is as strong as anything he did in Title Fight. It is gripping and forceful, as Russin navigates the inner turmoil of where his life is headed, and if songs like “I Want To Be Invisible,” “The Same Ordinary,” or “Can’t Feel Anything” are any indication, I’d say he’s headed in the right direction. – Jeff Yerger
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Joy Guidry – Amen
The phrase “bassoon-based gospel-jazz album” might confuse most people upon first reading it. Even the most avant-garde contemporary jazz artists don’t typically feature the bassoon in their work, and that’s before you account for the idea of gospel injecting itself into the mix, much less the ambient soundscapes undergirding large swathes of Amen. Yet, throughout her second album for Whited Sepulchre, Joy Guidry absolutely delivers on all those concepts. Her compositional acumen reigns supreme, as she weaves together classical bassoon techniques, preaching snippets, spoken word callouts, and ‘70s jazz fusion. Fans of Alice Coltrane, Kamasi Washington, and Loraine James will be captivated by standout tunes such as “It’s OK to Let Me Go,” “Members Don’t Get Weary,” and “Angels.” This album is wide, deep, and subversive. – Adam P. Newton
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Heavee – Unleash
Chicago producer Heavee came up in the footwork collective Teklife, which has also included members such as DJ Spinn, RP Boo, and its late co-founder, DJ Rashad. With his new album Unleash, Heavee juxtaposes the frantic rhythms of footwork against an eclectic backdrop of sounds that range from buzzing bass and ethereal synths to more intricate jazz-influenced arrangements. And yet the beats themselves, while clocked at escalating BPMs, often feel as featherlight as the gauzy textures he wraps around them, crafting a record engineered for zero-gravity dancefloors. It’s heavenly. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Infinite River – Tabula Rasa
The third album in two years by psychedelic rock group Infinite River—featuring members of His Name Is Alive, Detroit Cobras and Universal Indians—is the product of a group of musicians all riding the same wonderfully weird wavelength. A series of cosmic desert-trip instrumentals that range from beautiful shades of melancholy to schizoid King Crimson-isms, the album is built on the group’s undeniable musical chemistry, a vibey and vibrant listen that sounds as if it were meant for live stage. Its raucous and energized play-at-home version is far from a consolation prize, however, driven by a ceaseless momentum and an electrifying sense of fun. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, Marta Sofia Honer – The Closest Thing to Silence
Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer’s previous collaboration, Recordings from the Åland Islands, found the two electronic musicians crafting ambient pieces around field recordings from an autonomous archipelago off the coast of Finland. Their follow-up to that collection finds them working with French artist Ariel Kalma, a new age veteran with a body of work that dates back to the mid-’70s, in creating a set of progressive electronic pieces that swirl woodwinds around synth arpeggios in a harmonious fusion between electronic and organic sounds. Though it’s often soothing, this isn’t ambient music—it’s interesting but never ignorable, each piece radiating energy and riding a vibration that connects Terry Riley to Klaus Schulze to Emeralds. Gorgeous, animated yet understated, and a wonderful set of compositions all around. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Jasmine Myra – Rising
Two years after making her debut with Horizons, British saxophonist Jasmine Myra continues her explorations into serene jazz landscapes with Rising. Gorgeously understated, often carrying the atmospheric abstractions of ECM-style jazz, Myra swirls within heavenly ambient jazz spaces on Rising, with titles such as “Glimmers” and “Still Waters” offering some degree of description of the meditative and hypnotic quality of the music therein. These pieces are melody forward and with a light-footed groove, rhythmically taut but never bombastically so—each piece feeling weightless, as if they’re slowly levitating away from the earth’s gravitational pull. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Prisoner – Putrid | Obsolete
Back in February I caught Prisoner live as part of a three-band DIY show in an art gallery in Richmond—an admittedly precarious place to hold a metal show, and I spent much of the show in a defensive position, trying not to be clobbered in the face by the headlining band Terror Cell’s guitarist’s headstock (mission accomplished, phew). During Prisoner’s set, however, I was far more mesmerized by their layered, crushing, intricately harrowing sound, which intertwines sludge, crust punk, black metal and industrial for something that winds up feeling viscerally evil in a way that devil horns and pentagrams never could. It’s fitting that the group hails from Richmond, a city with a long history of great metal—from Gwar’s high-entertainment shock-rock to Windhand’s thick clouds of doom. Prisoner’s on an entirely different trip, however, channeling noise, dissonance and a shot of pure punk adrenaline into one of the most thrilling explosions of sound I’ve heard in some time. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Restorations – Restorations
Six years after the release of their last album LP5000, Philadelphia’s Restorations keep their blend of post-hardcore and heartland rock intact. But beyond that, Restorations reinforce what some of us have known all this time: They’re simply a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll band. Rife with big guitars, undeniable hooks and sing-along choruses, Restorations’ self-titled fifth album still hits with a furious impact on moments like standout “Cured,” while leaning into stadium-sized crunch on the perhaps-ironically-but-suitably-titled “Big, Dumb.” The best rock bands today don’t play it straight, and Restorations aren’t exactly traditionalists, but this album shows that they still hold anthems in the highest regard, and for good reason. Few bands today are as good at writing their own as Restorations. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Revival Season – Golden Age of Self Snitching
Revival Season hails from Atlanta, a city known for both its legendary rap scene and a fertile indie/garage rock scene, and though the duo is certainly more the former than the latter, member Jonah Swilley has paid his dues playing in a rockin’ band, previously having been groups such as Mattiel and the Gartrells. The duo’s debut Golden Age of Self Snitching exists in its own rich sonic realm, however, pairing layered headphone-worthy production with emcee Brandon “Bez” Evans’ ferocious rapid-fire rhymes. Each song here seems to move at a frantic pace, loops of guitar and synths wrapping around Evans’ mesmerizing verses, each brief but potent banger made for live performances and nights of debauchery. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus
Prolific psychedelic collective Sunburned Hand of the Man have never wanted for ideas—their more than 100 releases (many of them extremely limited CD-Rs) rife with boundless freakouts and fiery instrumental chemistry. Their latest is no exception, but they’ve embraced more melody driven accessibility in fascinating ways, building on 2021’s Pick A Day to Die with inspired moments of rock, folk and spoken word surrealism (“Fuck it, man, fuck it“”You don’t have to stay here but you can’t go home“). Nowhere near the galaxy of their weirdest material, Nimbus nonetheless never plays it straight, a heat-induced desert hallucination that’s welcoming and unsettling all at once. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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