Albums of the Year 2024: Mercury Rev - Born Horses

Born Horses remains as inscrutable as it was when it was issued in the summer. While it is about the search for enlightenment through journeying into inner space, much of what’s described – the album’s words are largely spoken – is allegorical, coming across as beatnik-style reportage documenting a form of psychedelic experience.

This seeming exploration of inner space resulted in the album’s narrator discovering that they were born a horse, one which developed wings. Spiritual bonds are also found. A bird is discovered within. Musically, the album is similarly audacious: jazz-psychedelia, or psychedelic jazz, with touches of early New York minimalism and a light dusting of post-rock dynamics. It sounds like nothing else.

Mercury Rev’s follow-up to 2019’s Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited – a just-about track-by-track revisitation of a Bobbie Gentry album – demands to be listened to again and again. When doing so, it continues to be mysterious and compelling. Born Horses became the new album which dominated 2024.

There were other highlights of course. The bossa nova-via-motorik sensibility of Feu De Garde by Québéc’s Bibi Club was irresistible. Meditations On Love by Norway’s Susanna Wallumrød was disquieting and gripping. Also from Norway, Barefoot in Bryophyte – credited to Mari Kvien Brunvoll & Stein Urheim with Moskus – was an art-music compendium touching on shoegazing territory despite its creators roots in jazz. A further Norwegian grouping, art-poppers Pom Poko, sparkled like a Roman candle on their third album Champion. Over in Estonia, Ajukaja & Mart Avi’s plaintive duo album Death of Music was freeze-dried electronica which appeared to lament the isolation wrought by the digital-focussed world.

From the UK, Whitelands’ forceful Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day became an instant shoegazing milestone. Less obviously immediate, on À Feu Doux the Ireland-based Kevin Fowley reinterpreted a series of French nursery rhymes with roots in the 15th to 18th centuries. An emotive, enthralling and wonderful album.

Add in Chris Cohen’s glistening, jazzy Paint A Room, Alan Sparhawk’s first post-Low album, the electronica-leaning White Roses, My God and Father John Misty’s dramatic, stunning Mahashmashana, and there’s been no shortage of landmark albums this year. Music, though, is not a contest. This is not a best-of. Looking back over a year and reflecting on it is about what prompted empathy, what chimed with a personal outlook.

Two More Essential Albums from 2024

Susanna – Meditations On Love

Father John Misty – Mahashmashana

Musical Experience of the Year

Sumie, St John the Baptist, Leytonstone, 16 November 2024

Track of the Year

Sumie – “The Poet”

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