Best of 2024 - Chris Lammiman & Ava Glendinning
For 2024, the Cups N Cakes Network is approaching our year-end lists a little differently: we’ve asked some of our volunteers to tell us a bit about their favourite releases this year. Today, we hear first from Chris Lammiman, and then from Ava Glendinning.
As I dig through the crates of what stood out for me in 2024, what emerges is the special companionship I felt to some of the records that came out this year. Socially, globally, personally, there was a lot of dread and uncertainty in 2024, a lot to feel anxious and fearful about - I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. Yes, there was also a lot of beauty, joy, and reasons to smile, it’s sometimes hard to remember those things in the midst of it all. And while music isn’t a magic bullet for the feelings or the root causes, it sure is nice to have that special song/album/show along for the ride. With that in mind, here are six of my companion albums from 2024, the ones that carried me along and just hit right when I needed them to (in chronological order of when they found me):
Loving - Any Light
Loving’s second full-length album was the perfect counterbalance to the bleary early 2024 winter months. With its breezy and warm folk psychedelia, and standout track “No Mast” on repeat, Any Light is a “loving” reminder of what it means to love in this life.
Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee
With more than two hours of unbroken play, there’s a lot of time to get lost in the sprawling, enigmatic, shapeshifting odyssey of Diamond Jubilee. Luckily, the record is iconoclastic, special, and inspiring, so getting lost here is quite a delight.
Aladean Kheroufi - Studies In A Dying Love
Perhaps it was the good fortune of getting to see Aladean Kheroufi perform his charming soul revue three times this year, or maybe it’s just that the tones are so luscious and alluring, but either way, Studies In A Dying Love was the magic I needed.
Jennifer Castle - Camelot
With unparalleled poeticism, I do believe that Jennifer Castle should be considered in the same echelon as the greats, like a 21st century Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. She’s the real deal, and Camelot shows that artistry off in full force of tenderness, yearning, and paradox.
OMBIIGIZI - Shame
OMBIIGIZI delivers some of the most authentic and beautiful songwriting to be found anywhere. On their second full-length Shame, Daniel Monkman and Adam Sturgeon create an alt-indy healing circle where the tender and broken places can emerge and find the light.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead
As is fitting given the album’s titular reminder of the genocide that continues to unfold in Gaza, GY!BE’s latest record is full of apocalyptic post-rock mourning and desolation. But it is also exultant, soaring, and cathartic - an album full of invocation, invitation, and reckoning.
- Chris Lammiman
I’m in love with the Winnipeg scene and tend to find many of my musical favourites close to home. This year, I was captivated by Warming’s clever and synth-heavy Toil Boy, singer-songwriter Theresa Thor’s shimmering, literary-themed reverie, and Slow Spirit’s That’s the Gods Talking, an enchanting folk- and jazz-inflected offering that transports listeners to snowy, woodsy, firelit nights in isolation.
On the poppier side of things, Winnipeg’s beloved Begonia released a 3-song EP, Open Swim, featuring the moving—and, like the EP, too short—single “Stay Forever.” Diaphanie’s EP Solid Gold boasts the powerful folky queer anthem “Maggie,” and Madeleine Roger’s Nerve was a full album’s worth of strong songwriting.
I loved guitarist Jocelyn Gould’s Portrait of Right Now, a pristine straight-ahead jazz recording featuring a quartet of longtime Winnipeg players. In the country world, Lady Boots by Mitchell Makoons—who won the Manitoba Country Music Award for Emerging Artist—was a heart-wrenching highlight.
Gems from further afield included Jour 1596 by Hildegard—a collaboration between Montreal’s Helena Deland and Ouri—and prolific Torontonian artist JEEN’s alt-rocky album Gold Control.
- Ava Glendinning