Jesus, it’s that time already? It feels like only a few weeks ago I was shaking my head at my Spotify Wrapped results. I’m convinced there are unseen forces somewhere out there cranking up the passage of time. Then again, as the poets say, time flies when you’re having fun.

As I reflect on the tunes that stirred my soul this year, time starts to make more sense. There were a LOT of incredible releases. So let’s start from the top. Please excuse the self-indulgence granted to me by my dear editors while I go into raptures about Vampire Weekend. Having reached musical sentience in the early 2010s in New York, I don’t really have any choice but to love them.

After a five-year hiatus from releasing music, they returned with my favourite album of 2024, resurrecting the masterful sonics of their previous sound. Even if I don’t think it’ll sweep the end-of-year best album lists, Only God Was Above Us is undeniably the most important record of the year in the world that exists between my ears.

Now, it would be remiss of me if I didn’t plug Kneecap. 2024 was truly their year, what with (A) a massive world tour, (B) an award-winning biopic and (C) a searing debut album to boot. It’s hard to summon another act – besides perhaps Charli XCX – who tore through the popular consciousness with the same brute force as the Irish language rap gods.

With all the hype swarming around them, I had high expectations for their debut album Fine Art and, of course, they delivered. It was the kind of album you’d need to hear live, and if you were lucky enough to catch them, you might agree with me. By most Irish accounts, Kneecap were the artist of the year. Don’t agree with the word of a talking head in her twenties?

Fine, but just remember you’re also disagreeing with Elton John.

There was plenty of other wonderful homegrown music this year. The incomparable Damien Dempsey burned the fog of autumn with Hold Your Joy, while Orla Gartland gave the pop-rock girlies a run for their money on her second album. Curtisy and Ahmed, With Love. continued to carve out their own silver-tongued niches, as did Travy & Elzzz and F3mii.

Niamh Regan made ‘Waves’ with her sophomore follow-up Come As You Are. A Lazarus Soul rose again with No Flowers Grow In Cement Gardens, an utterly incredible LP. On XONGZ, meanwhile, Bricknasty confirmed themselves as one of the most potent acts around. Indeed, there were countless staggering releases; the list is endless, and is still being amended as I write this.

On the international front, Thee Sacred Souls kept the flame of soul music alive with their second album, Got A Story To Tell. Adrianne Lenker tore through the indie-folk continuum with the brilliant Bright Future, while Bon Iver unleashed a meditation on toxicity in SABLE, harkening back to the oak-aged folksiness of his earlier sound. Shabaka took top jazz honours with his meditative debut Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, driving fine flute warblings that could reduce God to tears.

Now that I have a bit of airplay here: what’s with the firmly-held belief that rock is “played out”? Personally, folks, I think it’s a matter of not searching hard enough. There was plenty of great rock to be heard this year, if you glanced at the margins. The underdogs from Down Under, Amyl And The Sniffers, delivered a blistering punk resurgence with Cartoon Darkness.

Oklahoma miserabilists Chat Pile fused nü-metal crunch with Captain Beefheart on Cool World. The worthy Mercury winners English Teacher – whom our own Stuart Clark just about canonised into rock sainthood – burst onto the mainstream with their masterful debut This Could Be Texas. Hell, even The Cure boomeranged back after 16 years with Songs Of A Lost World.

And what about Gurriers, who killed it on Come And See? Or SPRINTS? Look, we all know the Neil Young adage that’s permeated the realm of needlepoint pillow clichés: “Rock and roll can never die”. Lest we forget.

Speaking of, the Canadian giant unleashed the third installment of his Archives releases, which covered his often unhinged, yet undeniably golden, era of 1976-1987. It definitely seems to be the year of unleashing the back catalogue. Keeping up with her fellow Canadian, Joni Mitchell released the fourth volume in her own archival collection with The Asylum Years (1976-1980), which included her masterpiece Hejira.

The at-times hilarious, at-times strangely compelling Why Don’t You Smile Now, a reissue of Lou Reed’s pre-Velvet Underground recordings at Pickwick Records, unveiled a masterclass in ‘60s bubblegum pop mimicry. I’m still wrapping my head around that last one, but my current verdict is a firm “right on”.

There were many gigs of the year, too: English Teacher left me slack-jawed and awestruck in Whelan’s; myself and 1,200 fellow sardines stood shoulder-to-shoulder in 3Olympia to catch Chappell Roan for a small-scale gig that will never happen again; and after years of not really digging her music, Patti Smith turned me into a convert at Vicar Street.

Junior Brother, meanwhile, welcomed a new chapter at an intimate BelloBar launch for ‘Take Guilt’, which was so good I’ve already lined up tickets for next year. I saw CMAT twice, but if given the chance, I would have followed her tour around the world, like a Deadhead selling veggie burritos from their boot in stadium carparks.

The words “superstar” and “icon’’ are often thrown-around, but it’s hard to describe CMAT any other way.

Did I mention how unreal the festivals were this year? While the headliner announcement received a lukewarm embrace, I’ve gotta hand it to Electric Picnic for putting so many fantastic Irish acts on the bill. From moshing at Kneecap and getting head-banging whiplash at Nas, to resting my weary head on the stomped-out grass as Bricknasty and Shiv soothed my soul, the 20th edition of EP was hard to beat.

The inaugural In The Meadows Festival was, in a word, immaculate. Boasting a line-up hand-picked by organisers Lankum, I knew I was in safe hands: John Francis Flynn, Cormac Begley, Rachael Lavelle, Mogwai, Andy the Doorbum, the organisers themselves and more. ITM was unlike any other festival, offering a hard-to-beat argument for the single-day festival template, where you wished it wouldn’t end.

I’m certain I’ve forgotten to mention a few albums and bands here, for which I will be kicking myself in the next month. The year brought so much incredible music from every coordinate of the globe. The cumulative effect is like gazing up at a massive fresco, every detail so superb that I can’t decide where to rest my eyes first.

The music of 2024 I escaped into and returned to, again and again, felt like coming home. Music, that is our chosen music, allows us to come back home, even at a distance, if even for a brief moment. We locate ourselves and reaffirm our place in it – a cherished space to escape and return to.

Who knows what next year will bring, but I can promise one thing: that the next big thing will emerge, a legend who will push at the boundaries of their own ambition. And more than anything, the clock will chug on and we’ll be back next December singing ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes?’, just like every year before it.