Sourhouse Tunes of the Year 2024

Yes, that is Amy pissing on the cover art, and quite right too. Punk may well be about making a statement, but ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ is firmly about being vulnerable. Whichever c*** has been dropping petty comments about her antics has certainly got some nerve in reducing her to her body parts, and you’d have to ask if it’s worth stooping to their level. Nothing about this band, however, has ever been about taking a moral high road. Their usual spit and gravel is retuned to suit a slower, stompier beat, ensuring no word could be misheard from Amy’s catalogic rant. As righteous as it ought to be in laying out the experience of sexual assault and violence against women, as their past work has covered, there is just as much to be said about those who pin people against antiquated and conservative social standards, and the pain it causes is just as worthy of criticism.

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On some corners of the internet, Addison Rae is being treated as Pop’s second coming of Da Vinci. I saw a post comparing seeing the unedited version of the cover art as ‘like seeing the Mona Lisa’, and alas, the link to it has long since slipped me. Believe the hype folks; whether or not she becomes as big as some of her contemporaries, it’s plain to see that she has the nerve and the charisma to match them. ‘Diet Pepsi’ is so outwardly sexy and commanding, steamy without being sleazy, confident and dirty. An amalgamation of queer pop sensibilities draped over an early Lana chassis, Rae presents feminine lust unfettered, without any societal baggage. Wicked lyricism is made all the better by their sultry delivery and dynamism of that instrumentation.

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I’m mindful with singles that come to me via Instagram adverts. Some of them have turned out to be really good. Others have offered little more than surface-level catchiness. Chloe Qisha, however, man, I do hope you know how much I’ve hummed this groovy number of yours. ‘Sexy Goodbye’s supremely catchy chorus and elegant synth underbelly are more than enough to get you hooked, much as the fling she sings about is falling apart rapidly. No tears here, folks, Qisha wants you to dance out the heartbreak and make the ending of things just as exciting as the beginning. Whip-sharp wittiness comes in on those spoken-segments too, complementing the graceful highs her voice reaches elsewhere. You’d be fooled for thinking a much bigger artist made this song.

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Post-breakup, the numbness of the conversations you have in your head with your ex have a unique flavour of dull tragedy. Unresolvable and of little use other than to tidy away some more debris. Honeyglaze achieve a resounding lucidity in capturing the melancholia, the words of reassurance you say to yourself that you must surely still be in their mind in some form. There’s no triumphant ‘gotcha!’ moment to such imaginings, however, and ‘Ghost’ doesn’t try to make any either. What better a soundtrack then for the small victories of pulling yourself away one step at a time, as hollow and permanent as it can be. There’s no outright sadness here, just a thoughtfully allocated space to share in such feelings.

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You Won’t Go Before Your Supposed To isn’t lacking for jaw-dropping moments, but Poppy’s arrival on ‘Suffocate’ tops the lot. Even though you’ll know she’s coming if you’ve checked the track listing, the manner with which she swings back the hammer of Garris’s indescribable vocal style shifts the Earth every time it’s played. What a bombastic collaboration, doubling down on a rage against backstabbers and two-faced shitbags. Even more astounding is that the band somehow find room for a Reggaeton beat on that breakdown, arriving so confidently that there is no choice but to be convinced by it. ‘Suffocate’ is the closest Knocked Loose have got thus far to making something catchy, and with the remarkable amount of attention they’ve had from outside the world of Metal and Hardcore, what an apt gateway drug this is for a new generation of fans.

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Coldwave enthusiasts may be disappointed to see such a mainstream take on the genre on this list. Worse too, one that TikTok went feral for this year. ‘I Like The Way You Kiss Me’ is far from clever, but those 1 billion listens on Spotify don’t lie – it’s laced with something dirty and severely addictive. Hearing this twice at U Sudu in Prague back in September changed my brain chemistry forever, especially seeing just how hard it got the bartenders dancing. Props to them for being able to still serve drinks with it on. Maybe it was being inebriated, but everyone was singing along to it, I swear. In that moment, it all made sense. Artemas is a fuckboy, yes, and the lyrics are pure fuckboy smutty nonsense. But the beat goes like a freight train and the melodies are electric. Pity the snobs who will never let themselves get loose to this.

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Employing the same soft acoustics as the bedrooms it’s designed to be played in, ‘Nasty’ was born to soundtrack dirty dancing in the mirror and daydreaming of getting it on. Tinashe hardly raises her voice in demanding some action, cool and sweet and affirmative in every respect, creating a particularly laidback flavour of lip-biting horniness. All the legwork is done by that immutable hook, which if you weren’t humming all summer, you will be after hearing it. So soft is the whole execution that it almost be seen as warm, but don’t think that there’s any getting away from the sharpness of that beat, metallic cool against the padding of those synths. The attitude of sex-driven RnB classics make their presence known here, but it’s undeniable that Tinashe is carving out what such sounds look like in the 2020s, something she’s been deserving of more attention for a while now.

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I’ve grown something of a soft spot for Little Mix in the years since it all fell apart, and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t realise who the ‘Jade’ of JADE was at first. But here she is with a solo single at last, a track that manages to be sprawling even within its 3 minute runtime, thundering up and down in pace and scale like a rollercoaster. Massive synthetic orchestration makes it cheesily dramatic, whilst the deep thumping bass of those verses make it danceable. Yet, the chaos is tamed by how well read its writing is. JADE dips her nib into many inkpots – K-Pop, Indie Sleaze, out-and-out gay club music to name a few – and picks out a selection of elements that react together with cacophony. It’s far from sonorous, and frankly, all the better for it, bordering on the raw in how it carries its emotions. A thoroughly loud and outward track that doesn’t so much announce her solo career as it does pummel you with what to expect. Get on board while you can, this shit is going to be out there.

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Not one sunny day went by this summer without me hearing this, whether through my own volition or someone else’s. That whistle is everything; a triumphant finishing flourish on a track bursting with colour, groove and brightness. As if it could get any cheesier, this came on whilst a bunch of my mates were on the way to the beach back in June, sunroof down and temperature at a perfect 20-something degrees. In many ways, ‘Cinderella’ works for much the same reasons: familiar elements that always bring joy done to terrific effect. Why try to be cutting edge when your strengths lie in catch-all positivity? Wolf is a towering figure on her material without requiring any ego to be shoved in your face, running on a real sense of bringing fun and lightheartedness. Where it matters, however, her song writing is serious: her sense of rhythm is pure magic, emulating the warmth of 70s Soul to create something deeply youthful and affectatious. 

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History could never have told them that they’d be the greatest to ever do white boy rap back at their peak, but the Beastie Boys set a mold that no one since has managed to break. Does that make Joey Valance & Brae worthy successors? Give them a few years first. But they have nailed the element that so many others have failed to mimic: hype that has personality. It’s there right from the second they open their mouths. It’s there in them chanting “I’m the baddest bitch in this club”. It’s the only way to explain that phenomenal cover art. Drawn from the same well as their Beastie predecessors, but taken on tour via the Miami Bass scene, ‘The Baddest’ is a 21 Jump Street x Superbad movie single for a new generation. The music supervisor for the  next film even remotely comparable to Bottoms needs to get the rights to this immediately.

Except of course, this is the ‘Badder’ version. In comes Ayesha Erotica, snatching the track from the hands of any latent dude bro masculinity and making this defiantly bromosexual. She’s autotuned over a wicked breakdown, and surely the only artist who could match the rampant energy of the rest of the song. The trio’s chemistry is abundant, only adding to the urge to fling your body at the nearest wall the song gives you. Smack your homies arses. And make sure they know they’re loved.

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