“There are better players, better lyricists, better songwriters – but there’s an energy to their combined powers that is hard to rival at the moment”: The best guitar albums of 2024
The guitar albums that had the biggest impact in the guitar world and beyond, as chosen by GW editors and pro players
(Image credit: Getty Images)
There is something for everyone in Guitar World’s albums of the year, but especially surprise. While there are chops across the board, virtuosity at all age groups, many of today’s bona-fide shredders cropped up in best guitar solos of 2024 and best guitar songs of 2024.
There is, however, no shortage of technicality, whether it’s from the Cro-Magnon firepower of metal guitar icon Matt Pike, or the blues guitar’s modern day superstar Joe Bonamassa cutting loose in rock supergroup Black Country Communion.
But this list also focuses in on the albums that had a wider impact on culture at large, demonstrating the ongoing (and, we would argue, increasing) relevance of the guitar – how it sounds, how we play it – and how it provides this malleable platform for eternal reinvention, and for making song ideas a musical reality.
Jontavious Willis is not a lawyer who defends corporate malpractice by day and has himself a little Crossroads with his old fraternity brothers at night. As he sings in the title track of his phenomenal 2024 album, Willis’ roots in the titular West Georgia stretch back to 1823; but rather than hamstring Willis with tradition, those roots make West Georgia Blues feel alive.
Richly melodic and often hypnotic, Willis’ acoustic and electric playing on this record is stellar throughout, and without an ounce of those cliché turns. This is the real stuff, after all. (JM)
The first track of La Luz's News of the Universe sets the tone for the rest of the album – 53 seconds of angelic yet eerie choral vocals, contrasted yet complemented by the punchy guitar riff it immediately dives into on one of the album's standout tracks, Strange World.
This contrasting yet complementing element permeates the album, both in composition and production, illustrating a, ahem, universe of beautifully dark psychedelia and pockets of joy amidst an atmosphere of impending doom. Nothing epitomizes this more than Shana Cleveland's kaleidoscopic, genre-hopping guitar parts, making it, hands down, La Luz's best work yet – and one of this year's must-listens. (JB)
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Matt Pike might have cut his hair and embraced clean living but the man is no Samson; none of this has dulled his wits and that supernatural sense of smell he has for the riff. Cometh the Storm is High on Fire Redux.
Like electrons in a tube, Pike’s ideas culminate in perfect clarity and are supplemented big style by bassist Jeff Matz, who was fully engaged with writing this too, all making for something close to the ür-HOH album, songs about mystical shit, untamed guitars with doom metal super-animated at punk tempo, Middle Eastern tonalities, the violence and ecstasy of creation.
There have been a number of notable albums this year, but for me, there’s one that stands out above all the rest – and one I haven’t been able to stop listening to since its release. Wunderhorse made waves with their debut record in 2022, but Midas is another beast altogether, cranking up… well, everything, to deliver (yes, I’m going to say it) a perfect indie rock record.
The title track is a gut-puncher that showcases the thrash-the-fretboard of Wunderhorse’s sound. Cathedrals is an oversized indie anthem that dials back the mosh-appropriate madness but ups the awe-inspiring guitar hooks. Listen to Superman, and you’ll swear you could fly. “A band that could be generational,” Rolling Stone wrote in response to Midas. Amazingly, even that feels like an understatement. (MO)
21. Gary Clark Jr. – JPEG RAW
Gary Clark Jr. - JPEG RAW (Official Audio) - YouTube
Gary Clark Jr. turned 40 this year but he had his midlife crisis a few years back. “The whole world shut down and I decided to become a 12 year-old guitar player learning again,” he told Total Guitar. “This time, however, I went the other way and got an Ibanez with a Floyd Rose! I went crazy on distortion, chorus and delay, going nuts in my studio for hours and hours every day.”
That didn’t mean JPEG RAW was Surfing With the Alien but it did change Clark’s perspective going in. Spiritually, he’s a blues player, but he’s a free radical with how that comes out of the speaker. Whatever style came to his mind, he’d entertain it, work it into his songwriting. “I didn’t care what anybody thought because I didn’t know if anybody would hear it or not!” he said.
Sophie Allison is an indie-rock savant who, like many indie-rock savants, uses alternate tunings to break the conventions of guitar playing and make all listening feel as though it is we that have been CAGED all this time, not the fretboard. She makes the most of the liberation.
Dreamy is an overused descriptor for the Soccer Mommy sound but what else is the choral M or the kinda Cure-inspired Abigail? Evergreen traffics in these big moods, a soft-focus tide of bittersweet real-world emotions that would hurt more if we were fully awake.
19. Black Country Communion – V
Black Country Communion - "Enlighten" - Official Video - YouTube
Joe Bonamassa is way too successful a solo artist to give it all up and play guitar in a rock band, even if that band has The Voice of Rock® on bass and vocals, Jason Bonham on the drums, and Derek Sherinian on keys.
But every now and again, when that blue suit of his is in at the dry cleaners, he’ll hook up with these A-listers, book studio time with Kevin “Caveman” Shirley, and make records like this – a convincing case that he is one of the world’s great rock guitarists. Which he is, right?
18. The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards
The Black Crowes - Wanting and Waiting (Official Video) - YouTube
Happiness Bastards went so well that the latter day Cain and Abel of southern-fried rock ’n’ roll forgot to try and kill each other while making this. Maybe next time, boys. But then perhaps Chris and Rich Robinson are past all that.
Arriving five years after the Black Crowes reunited, Happiness Bastards is proof that whatever strange energy is replenishing the Atlanta, Georgia mojo machine it is undiminished after all these years, with a record that’s all hot buttered soul and the electric energy of the groove.
It takes a lot to put IDLES’ super-explosive post-punk sound together. A lot of ideas, an efflorescence of hyper-kinetic poetry musing on the human condition in all its absurdity. A lot of energy.
And a lot of transistors; because all of this manifests in a lot of sounds and tones from the maverick imagination of Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, who as CEOs of their own pedalboard silicon valley, have deconstructed and bastardised electric guitar anew with fuzz, reverb, delay, whatever they can put their foot to to side-step convention, all of which makes Tangk unstoppable.
16. Amyl and the Sniffers – Cartoon Darkness
Amyl and The Sniffers "Chewing Gum" (Official Music Video) - YouTube
I raised a few eyebrows in September when I labelled Amyl “the best actual rock band in the world”. I’ve since had time to reflect and double-check against literally every other rock band on the planet – and have decided I can stand by that sentiment.
verything they do barrels along in a rolling maelstrom of hurtling guitar licks, foul-mouthed takedowns and raw tone. Cartoon Darkness shows real growth, too, though - pulling in heartland rock arpeggios and post-punk wit on Big Dreams, vicious fuzz noise tones on It’s Mine and an electrifying (or, indeed, levitating) off-the-cuff solo crescendo on Chewing Gum.
There are better players, better lyricists, better songwriters, but there’s an energy to the Australian quartet’s combined powers that is seriously hard to rival at the moment. A true band. (MP)
The Swedish progressive rock heroes are at a stage in their career where anything they release is pretty much guaranteed to dominate the end-of-year lists. But the return of singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt’s roar alongside the heavily orchestrated psychedelia explored on albums more recent makes this an incredibly significant moment in their collective journey.
Highlights on their latest masterpiece include the head-melting twists on tracks like §2 and §5, as well as Fredrik Åkesson’s stunning lead work on §4, §6 and grand finale A Story Never Told. It really doesn’t get any better than this. (AS)
16 long years since we last heard new material from the Cure, and that’s a long time. The world has changed. People change. And yet Robert Smith’s guitar tone, the melancholy and infinite sadness in his voice, the profound physiology of a Cure arrangement, all these great artistic wonders are just as potent and vital as they have always been.
No-one articulates these sorts of emotions better. There are new elements, of course. This is Reeve Gabrels’ Cure debut on record, and his guitar presents a fresh texture. But Songs of a Lost World invites its audience to luxuriate in this modulation between bleak and bittersweet and back again.
13. Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice
Mdou Moctar- "Funeral for Justice" (Official Music Video) - YouTube
The only way to describe Funeral For Justice is visceral – aided by the unmistakably live feeling of the record, the dynamic ebbs and flows of each track, the powerful political message, and, of course, Mdou Moctar's distinct guitar work.
Derived from his assouf (desert blues) music lineage, it confidently leads the rest of the band in a sense of righteous fury through a flurry of virtuosic fingerpicking and weeping solos – a palpable, quasi-human cry for rebellion that perfectly captures the zeitgeist. (JB)
Listening to Rack might not be as dangerous as seeing the Jesus Lizard live, and being up close to the stage when David Yow has worked himself up into the aerobic zone and is about to blow, Duane Denison’s aluminum headstock swinging around, but it sure sounds every bit as dangerous.
Whether it is Grind, a rhythm as persistent as gravity as you fall down the stairs, or the metallic crunch of Lord Godiva as Denison’s guitar riffs along with Yow, the Jesus Lizard have lost none of their edge. You can’t write that kind of energy onto sheet music. It’s either there or it isn’t.
The Jesus Lizard have made uneasy listening their specialty, working pockets of disquiet, of weirdness, subversive agitation, all lessons learned from the second golden era of punk-rock rebellion.
11. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere
BLOOD INCANTATION - The Stargate (Official Video) - YouTube
The Denver, Colorado quartet’s evolutionary radicalism has been coded in their DNA since day one but on Absolute Elsewhere, recorded at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios, it finds them finally unshackling death metal from Earth’s gravity to send it through the weightlessness of krautrock.
Choose whichever astral or cosmological metaphor gets you juiced the most, but it’s like Paul Riedl and Morris Kolontyrsky’s guitars are hard matter barreling through space and time.
Kim Deal sings of being cut adrift and lost on the lush fairytale arrangements of the title track, performing for a flamingo in the video because why not, but, surely, she has never been more aware of what’s what when it comes to her art.
There is a case to be made that Nobody Loves You More is the best thing she has ever recorded, and that is not an easy thought to arrive at when you are a Gen Xer who grew up with Pixies and the Breeders on regular rotation. And yet here we are, with tracks like Crystal Breath that’ll hit you like a cannonball all over again.
The acoustic guitar tone that opens MJ Lenderman’s fourth solo album reminds us of those formative moments when learning the instrument, playing a note or a chord and sticking our ear to the soundhole, and experiencing that those frequencies in three-dimensions, the timbre of the note’s decay.
Like, that tone almost comes with the smell of the acoustic guitar, and all that’s to say there’s an elemental pleasure to Manning Fireworks – to Lenderman’s indie-rock intimacies shared under mewling tremolo throb of electric guitar – that might give you that feeling you are hearing all this for the first time.
All Born Screaming has to be one of the greatest DIY pop albums of all time, what with St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, taking full responsibility for every aspect of its super hi-fi production. Her application of pro studio gloss to that pitch-black pop sensibility, often firewalling the raw firepower of her indie/alt-rock electric guitar behind a grander logic, all to let this beguiling, enigmatic set of songs mature.
She got so carried away in the passions of creation that she even had a gear epiphany, namely that the Fender Stratocaster was not so bad after all, having hitherto avoided them lest she played anything too familiar, a pastiche of what we’ve heard before. Not likely.
It’s a strange thing indeed for a band that’s blown up in a commercial sense, securing the services of a blue-chip producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys/Depeche Mode), booking out arenas, and in short, is living the dream, to be able to make a record that meets this all this positive momentum with alt-pop and indie-rock nightmare fuel.
And for all the smudged beauty of tracks like Horseness is the Whatness, Romance often feels like an exercise in anxiety and disquiet, a blockbuster record with an arthouse sensibility. From the night owl’s strut of Starburster to the decadence of In the Modern World, it follows the surreal logic of a dream going bad, unpredictable and brilliant.
6. Knocked Loose – You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Knocked Loose "Suffocate" Ft. Poppy (Official Music Video) - YouTube
The latest LP from Knocked Loose is music to smash concrete to, the sound and fury of the Kentucky metalcore champs’ sound taken to its logical conclusion, and it might just break them into the mainstream – as unlikely as that might seem. Hey, they were invited onto Jimmy Kimmel to perform Suffocate, featuring Poppy on vocals, for a watching audience of millions, many of whom were no doubt horrified.
But what of those who were exhilarated? There’s a big demographic of people who inhale protein and look like they recreationally smash concrete – they’re everywhere these days. Are you, too, living for the cathartic release of the breakdown? For the percussive thud of the sledgehammer? Isaac Hale and Nicko Calderon are only too happy to oblige.
With über-producer Rick Rubin overseeing sessions with his semi-detached air of a Zen master, Marcus King had the environment in which he could take his demons on one by one, sublimating this emotional violence in redemptive soulful compositions that prove King is not just one of his generation’s finest guitar players – always playing the right part, just enough and no more – but its finest voices, too.
King often sounds like he belongs to another era. He always sounds wise beyond his years. In sharing his troubles, unsparing of the details, paring the production down to the essentials, he shines the light for others – in fact, Mood Swings was Grace Bowers’ album of the year.
“It’s a very vulnerable place and there’s not much to hide behind in the way of production, and that’s given me a new perspective,” King told Total Guitar. “It’s knowing when not to play, to allow the spaces in between to speak louder than the notes themselves.”
4. The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy
The Last Dinner Party - Prelude To Ecstasy - YouTube
Certainly, her playing carries all the hallmarks of her idol: it’s melodic, hummable, and in the wailing, tap-bend solo showcase on Nothing Matters, downright heroic. Debut album Prelude to Ecstasy topped the UK album charts on its release this year – a rare feat for a new band whose sound is rooted in Kate Bush, David Bowie and, crucially, guitars. No wonder May himself gave the band his seal of approval. World domination awaits. (MAB)
3. David Gilmour – Luck and Strange
David Gilmour - Luck and Strange (Official Music Video) - YouTube
But as with classic Floyd, we catch Gilmour here in the act of cheating time, conducting it, of playing and performing in a liminal space between past and present, day and night as he meditates on mortality, love and loss, and the fundamental aspects of the human condition, occasionally losing himself in the moment, like on his cover of the Montgolfier Brothers’ Between Two Points.
“I got so into the guitar part, it was like being on drugs,” he told GW. “I could forget where I was in the moment and get completely lost in the playing. Which is actually quite unusual. It’s a feeling – a movement – that you search for.”
2. Jack White – No Name
Jack White - That's How I'm Feeling (Official Video) - YouTube
A perpetual blur behind the scenes, this year Jack White has been steering all kinds of gear collaborations between his Third Man Hardware brand, teaming up with Fender for his signature collection, working that entrepreneurial mojo.
But Jack White, the man with the guitar, was really tunneling back to womb with his sound. It’s like all that factory floor electricity fried him. They switched him off then on again and we got this – raggedy punky blues, a helter-skelter of riffs, tension and release.
That’s How I’m Feeling does that thing with the late ’70s No Wave New York sound in the verses before garage-rock explosion for the chorus. Old Scratch Blues is like Bobby Liebling’s Pentagram, doomed blues-rock for doomed times. There’s You Got Me Searching and it’s Dirty Deeds-style AC/DC verse building to that scratchy psych riff. This is high-voltage Jack White, hooking himself up to the variac for another fix.
Mike Gordon is the ultimate artist for the playlist era, the musician who can make sense of today’s exploding star of pop-cultural information, its sounds, its methodologies, and the emotional frequencies that his atomized audience are vibrating at. It takes a modicum of genius to do that in the digital era, to have a data vocabulary to match large language models; he’s like Garry Kasparov playing chess with Deep Blue, only this time our money is on the human.
And that of course doesn’t mean everything informing and inspiring Two Star and the Dream Police is from the here and now. Take Are You Looking Up. Here he capos his Jazzmaster at the third fret and gives us this iconoclastic indie take on yacht rock, a guitar motif that would have made Clapton’s ears prick up circa Journeyman. It’s like the ‘80s is just far away enough to be fresh enough for reinterpretation.
He repeats the trick on the smooth rock-pop of ROCKMAN, a songtitlesurely a nod to the Tom Scholz-designed headphones amp used by Def Leppard et al. Gordon’s songwriting sensibility – the hooks, and the very real emotional rump they’re stuck into – folds all this neatly into the one timeline, the urgency of now.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to publications including Guitar World, MusicRadar and Total Guitar. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.
