My buddy Bob Cosmo recently asked me for a list of my favorite albums from last year. He’s a DJ for KGNU and does a good job keeping up on the new-new. 

I’m less good at that. 

Partially, it’s because I am an old, in that I don’t subscribe to a streaming service, and, thus, don’t have the benefit/horror of Spotify’s Wrapped to learn, to the second, the specifics of what I spent the last year putting into my head. 

The other reason is this column, which focuses less on new music and more on dusty ass records from the 1800s. Inevitably, a large chunk of each week’s ear time is dedicated to music that was originally released on wax cylinders, instead of laser beams or plasma clouds or whatever media music is released on these days. 

Needless to say, I didn’t put together a year end list for 2024, even though I like the idea in theory. With a gun to my head, I would probably say I liked Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven the most, but I also dug records by the Cure, Blood Incantation, Kanye West (just kidding), Shellac, Cindy Lee, and others. 

Weirdly, the record I may have listened to the most isn’t a career level up like Mannequin Pussy’s or Blood Incantation’s. It’s not a career summation like the Cure’s or Cindy Lee’s. And it’s not an unexpected epitaph like Shellac’s. It’s a hangout record from a group of middle aged, indie rock lifers. 

Even though the Hard Quartet is technically a supergroup, the band members are probably less famous than most of the NFL’s backup quarterbacks. God Stephen Malkmus is still best known for his occasionally reunited iconic 1990’s band Pavement. Matt Sweeney was a member of Billy Corgan’s supergroup Zwan, but I know him best from the under-sung Chavez and his Guitar Moves, which set a template for Youtube guitar videos. Jim White has played with everyone, but is best known as the drummer for the Dirty Three. And Emmett Kelly, whose work I’m least familiar with, has also played with everyone, but most consequently, to me, Ty Segall. 

For the first twenty seconds of the album, one wonders if the Hard Quartet are taking their name seriously. A high droning guitar string lays down a counterpoint to a bass-y, blown-out guitar riff. This could be the second coming of Red-era King Crimson. And then Malkmus enters: “Sister Sludge I need to come clean / I adore your eyes of stoplight green.” The guitar may sound hard, but the band does not. 

Other than the punky “Renegade,” the album is gentle. Hell, the band behind Sweeney’s sunshine pop of “Rio’s Song” might as well be called the Soft Quartet. And the decision to end the album with three low BPM closers might be better dubbed the Torpid Quartet. 

Honestly, nothing on The Hard Quartet will find its way to the top of its members’ respective CVs, but the whole thing goes down easier than cool lemonade on a hot day. The playing is skillful and creative, the songwriting is unexpected but not overly complicated, and the round-robin delivery is amiable. 

With “Rio”, “Killed By Death”, and “Jacked Existence,” Sweeney gives us the album’s best songs, and on “Our Hometown Boy” and “It Suits You” Kelly makes dark folk not unlike the music he worked on with Will Oldham. But, as much as the band has been promoted as a band band, Malkmus is still the star. He sings on the majority of the songs and makes the biggest impression. 

The multi-part “Action for Military Boys” has a great strutting, cock-eyed riff, a minor-key breakdown with a seemingly genuine anti-war message, a proggy middle, and a Wings-esque major key outro that’s supportive of our troops, in that it supports them getting laid. It’s Malkmus running 1970s rock through his inimitable filter, and coming up with something wholly new. 

We also get these new classic Malkmusisms: “You kiss me like a Qualuude” on “Hey,” “I was a roof dog, I got tagged” on “Six Dead Rats,” and on “Thug Dynasty,” “Order of Merit, why can’t we share it / Pour me some claret and go back to your lair so high in the sky.” Malkmus has more internal rhymes than Eminem. 

I’m sure I listened to The Hard Quartet more than any other album in 2024 because of its modest ambitions, lack of pretensions, and immaculate delivery. Here are guys I like making music I enjoy. This is easy listening indie rock. This shit doesn’t always have to be hard.