'Gunk Pop' tops 2024 Seattle critics music poll

The Seattle Times, once again this year, invited local music writers, DJs, and playlist curators to submit their favorite local music albums of the year. The votes are tallied up, and the Times has released the results in the best Washington albums of 2024 list. Seattle Times music writer Michael Rietmulder curated the list sat down with KUOW’s Kevin Kniestedt to talk about the top three albums.

1. Black Ends, "Psychotic Spew"

Michael Rietmulder: This is maybe one of the least surprising number-one picks in that Black Ends has really established themselves as your favorite Seattle rock band’s favorite Seattle rock band. The term "gunk pop," to me at least — I hear a lot of kind of grunge-punk-fury in a lot of the songs. There's also sort of this, like tuneful malaise in Nicolle Swims' vocal delivery on some of the songs. And I would also love to highlight Swims' guitar playing as well, where I think they're one of the most distinct guitar players working in Seattle indie rock right now. And this is their debut album, "Psychotic Spew" after a few EP’s, and they really delivered.

2. somesurprises, "Perseids"

This is the second album from somesurprises, a veteran dream prop band in town, led by Natasha El-Sergany. Kind of gauzy textures and shoe-gazy guitars. This, to me, is really one of the more immersive Seattle rock records that came out this year, where it's an album that you can just sink into. And it might be a little bit of a cliche, but I often sort of process music visually and think about it in terms of the weather around me, and instead of the topography and there's, to me, just like a really beautiful kind of dark cloud soothingness at the core of this record that really helps it stand out.

3. TeZATalks, "Black Girl American Horror Story"

There is so much going on. TeZATalks is a rapper, singer, producer who's really become one of the more electrifying live performers in town, and as she's honed her stagecraft over the years, she's also refined her very genre-blurring sound on this album. The first half of the album is very aggressive and kind of sonically confrontational at times, with sort of like a goth-tinged mix of like mosh rap, electro pop. There's some like industrial, new metal guitars and some hyper pop and pop pump. There's just ton going on. Then on the back half of the album TeZATalks really switches it up and is doing more kind of alternative top ballads with a lot of piano and strings. Very dramatic. The album on a whole is really just an ambitious vision that's executed so well.

Michael Rietmulder is a Seattle Times music writer who curates the annual best Washington albums list. You can see the complete list by clicking here.