Do yourself a favour and play my top albums of 2024 - Kevin Buckle

In June vinyl copies of the Star Wheel Press album, Machines With The Knowledge Of Good And Evil, were brought to the shop not long after Ian Rankin, who is also a big fan, had teased us by saying he had a copy himself

Thankfully none of the albums that fell into this category were disappointing. I’ve been an Only Ones fan since their first gig in Edinburgh and saw every gig they did after that and have enjoyed all the solo albums Peter Perrett has done since. His latest album The Cleansing came out in November and the combination of his distinctive voice and interesting lyrics did not let me down.

Avalanche is so named as the shop opened the day the first Nick Cave album was released and the first song on that album From Her To Eternity was Avalanche.

Nick released an album Wild God in August and while I feel the deaths of two of his two sons has understandably coloured his lyrics that doesn’t stop his albums still being head and shoulders above most of his peers.

Advance Base's new album, Horrible Occurrences

The shop is actually well known in the States for supporting Bright Eyes and in the past we have even had US editions of their albums sent over and stocked their US only T-shirts. In September their latest album Five Dice, All Threes came out and while it saddens me that they are a band “the kids” are yet to discover we still regularly play it in the shop and have had a few successes!

Those disappointed that there have been no Scottish bands mentioned so far will be relieved to see the last two albums in this quintet.

The Star Wheel Press album Life Cycle Of A Falling Bird released in 2012 came out of nowhere and in fact the band came in to see me to ask what to do after they had received national radio play and great reviews without doing anything more than hopefully sending a few copies off to radio stations and music reviewers.

Having been told there was a second album recorded for several years, I had all but given up hope of ever hearing it but miraculously in June vinyl copies of Machines With The Knowledge Of Good And Evil were brought to the shop not long after Ian Rankin, who is also a big fan, had teased us by saying he had a copy himself.

The month before had seen the release of a new Arab Strap album. They can always be sure to not let you down no matter how high your expectations and they also won title of the year with I’m Totally Fine With It Don’t Give A F*** Anymore

However, my album of the year came from an artist I only recently discovered who had changed their name from Casiotone For The Painfully Alone to Advance Base over a decade ago.

I had stumbled across an album Etiquette from 2006 and then listened to the many other albums that been recorded over the years only to discover there was a new album called Horrible Occurrences due to be released in November.

The album is about a fictional town called Richmond where all the bad memories live and the storytelling is very reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. That description does not do it justice. It is wonderful.