Hello,
We’re excited to reveal the second half of our albums of the year list. Our ‘top twenty for twenty twenty four.’ Or, Overlaps 2024, if you will. If you missed the first half, you can read that here.
We’ve got a mix CD which features tracks from these releases, plus an end of year zine which you can pick up in the shop. All online orders come with both whilst stocks last, too. Designed by our lovely friend Musho Fernandez at Good Press just down the road.
In alphabetical order, these are the new albums that we’ve agreed should represent us this year. It’s not exhaustive and it doesn’t take anything away from all the other incredible music released in 2024. We’ve got some exclusive editions and extras to go with these records, including car air fresheners and play along scores...
Thank you for all your support as always.
MONORAIL’S ALBUMS OF THE YEAR, PART TWO
The Hardy Tree | All the Hours (Clay Pipe)
Monorail exclusive mini CDs housed in a handmade box
On reflection this was the most beautiful piece of new music I heard all year. All The Hours by The Hardy Tree was composed on Elektron Syntakt and Elektron Digitakt by Clay Pipe’s Frances Castle for a live performance. It’s quietly amazing, enveloping and surprising, simple and complicated - somehow it makes you feel like you’re inside it. With The Hardy Tree I always hear traces of Virginia Astley but this is maybe closer to one of those odd, gorgeous Aphex Twin tunes that he casually drops from time to time. All The Hours is exactly that; a soundtrack to the day, to all days - permanent, melodic, perfect. SP
J Mascis | What Do We Do Now (Sub Pop)
Black vinyl with monorail exclusive signed print, CD with signed print
The image of J Mascis will forever be the guitar gonzoid whizz living some kind of Dazed & Confused afterlife in a massive rock band. The reality is of course more complicated. Without the stampede noise of Dinosaur Jr kicking off all around him, solo J has presented a more vulnerable side with a sweet voice and an unabashed love for 1960s pop melody mixed with an appreciation of everything that American rock music is - cf. Neil Young, John Fogarty, Fred Cole. What Do We Do Now is pretty graceful, almost impossible to dislike, it’s heavier on the guitar solos than previous solo records, it’s got that feeling of saying, “well this is me, is that ok?”. More than. One of our highlights of 2024. SP
The Jesus & Mary Chain | Glasgow Eyes (Fuzz Club)
Transparent blue vinyl, signed copies
It was a big year for William and Jim Reid - they squared off their past on their brilliant book, Never Understood, while presenting a new instalment of Reidism on Glasgow Eyes. Glasgow Eyes is still the sound of two outsiders trying to find their place in the world, even as odd lyric snatches show they inhabit a warmer place these days. As ever it’s in the contrasts - in places they arc back to the digital sound of Automatic while their melodies forever ride into the winter sun on a bashed together chariot. In other words, majestic but in a pretty fucked up way. SP
Jill Lorean | Peace Cult (Monohands Records)
Monorail exclusive blue vinyl, signed copies
I have Russell to thank for bringing the music of Jill Lorean into my world, really. He’d play Peace Cult in the shop before 11am, when it was just the two of us unpacking boxes and opening the shutters. The title track in particular always stuck out to me, a silent builder that starts off pretty stripped down and slowly builds into lead guitar that’ll stop you right in your track (or mid record de-sleeving, in my case). Who is this? I’d ask. It was Jill Lorean, of course. Peace Cult, JL’s second full length output, finds the trio of Jill, Andy Monaghan and Pete Kelly working together once again with far more space and control. There are moments that remind me of the new King Hannah record, of Sharon Van Etten, PJ Harvey; but mostly it’s all so Jill Lorean that it soars beyond any comparison. 10/10. LT
Kriegshög | Love & Revenge (La Vida Es Un Mus)
PLAY LOUD OR DIE. Kriegshog boil down a long history of extreme Japanese punk into something razor sharp, pummelling and absolutely, mind-blowingly thrilling. Listening to Kriegshog I fizz with so much energy it feels like every molecule in my body is battering around its soft fleshy shell, moshing and thrashing into eachother until my brain feels like it's going to explode with excitement. Imagine being able to experience that whenever you want? That's the power of music, of owning a record. Like, guitars, bass, drums, this is what they're meant to do. The band's first album in 5 years slows the tempo down a touch but it's still the same band that bring a ferocity and sense of purpose that feels unmatched in the current punkscape. Listening to this record you feel angry again, you feel young again, you FEEL again. PLAY LOUD AND LIVE. MK
L | Marilyn Monroe - All Of Us (Radical Document)
Black vinyl with customised sleeve by Jack AKA L. Each is totally unique, and the best thing ever.
Probably the most WTF record that we dug this year was actually by a Glasgow band led, in Jack Patton, by a fevered genius vocalist who channels Ivor Cutler if he was brought up on goofball magic and noise cassettes. L, that's the band name, are already the best live band in the UK for their sheer unpredictability and inventiveness but it was always going to be difficult to translate their mangling of time and space on to a record. Marilyn Monroe - All Of Us does it, kind of, but also reinvents the concept of an album along the way. Spoken word passages, dadaist noise collage, the shit-hottest band you can imagine (Jack Mellin from Spinning Coin and Laurie Pitt from Golden Teacher) that ROCK or WEIRD on command. You might hate it, you might love it, but you will not hear anything else like this, this year or any. Each copy of the LP is hand-altered in an array of frankly ridiculous ways. MK
Limited edition pink vinyl copies with signed poster
Working in a record shop, you're surprised by what you grow to love. It's a result of everyone's taste inter-mingling and with Rosali's Bite Down, every time I caught a song coming over from the shop I had to ask what it was. Eventually it became one of my records of the year. Rosali's band performance at the Hug this year was maybe my fave rock gig of the year too. Inventive songwriting, a channeling of Americana that mixes indie rock and Crazy Horse-isms and in the titular Rosali, a figurehead powerfully vulnerable and charismatic. The sweet moments are given extra depth by the crunching guitar blow-outs, the minor chord dirges touching those places maybe only Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere reaches. In a year when this kinda music has ruled the waves I feel like Bite Down won, for me. But it's not a competition (yes it is Rosali you won it). MK
Stephen Pastel & Gavin Thomson | This Is Memorial Device (Geographic)
Black vinyl LP with Monorail exclusive riso print by Annabel Wright, signed
Memorial Device, David Keenan’s debut novel, tells the story of misfits, punk, small-town-Scotland and Airdrie’s best band that you’ve never heard…until now, I suppose. Stephen Pastel and Gavin Thomson (alongside a host of long time collaborators) bring a whole town - a whole era - shaken to its foundations by a vision of new musical possibilities, straight to life. Here’s the thing: you don’t have to know the book or the play or even Airdrie to find yourself amidst This Is Memorial Device. I think all you really need is a space in your heart for music and what it can do…how it pieces the past together, paints landscapes on the walls of murky rehearsal rooms and whisks you along the banks of the Thames or to the most beautiful house in Airdrie. This Is Memorial Device is fuzzed out tape-recorded-in-yr-teenage-bedroom one moment and then the most intricately fragmented melody the next. It just works. I Started Painting Landscapes and Footsteps In The Snow are some of my favourite tracks of the decade, let alone this year. What is a Memorial Device? I’m not really sure, but it sounds like a dream. LT
Tristwch Y Fenywod | Tristwch Y Fenywod (Night School)
black vinyl with Monorail exclusive screenprinted, wax-sealed sleeves, LTD to 20
I'm biased, but the break out record from the underground this year was Tristwch Y Fenywod's self-titled debut. You'd be forgiven for thinking this evocative, unique, Goth-witch music oozed out of an eldritch nowhere but in reality they're a trio of women with storied histories in the DIY landscape. Sung entirely in Welsh by hand-made-double-zither-player and noise stalwart Gretschen and backed by electronic drummer Layla and bass-player Sidney, their music sounds utterly alien and of the mulchiest earth. Spectral, spacious and chilling, the group feel like Cocteau Twins on the set of Alien if it was in the valleys of Wales in the 15th century, lamenting the persecution of the witch trials. It could be 1984, it could be 2184 but Tristwch Y Fenywod have the feeling of immortals singing the eternal sadness of women (which is what the band name translates to in Welsh.) Astounding. MK
The Umbrellas | Fairweather Friend (Slumberland)
Monorail exclusive hand numbered ‘trolley blue’ vinyl copies
I’m echoing MK here, but working in a record shop pretty much guarantees that you’ll be exposed to new music one way or another. One discovery I’m perhaps most grateful for is that of The Umbrellas - a group of total romantics from San Francisco who’ve (rightfully) found a home with our friends at Slumberland. At risk of sounding cliche, I literally could not stop listening to this record for a good few weeks and it’s been on every playlist since, one way or another. Just a total perfect slice of fast paced, slow paced and in-the-middle paced pop music with a couple acoustic swooners thrown in the mix before you’re back amidst the action. One of my personal favourite records this year. Play it loud, fall in love, do it all over again. LT