From folk rhythms to pop to rap, local musicians were integral to the national musical landscape this year. Here’s a playlist.
by David Menconi 

North Carolina musicians were close to the center of things on the nation’s musical landscape in 2024, contributing in ways both large and small. Here’s our take on how this year sounded to us, through the work of some of our state’s finest players.

Daughter of Swords, “Alone Together”

Hurricane Helene delivered a staggering blow when it hit Western North Carolina in late September. One of the responses to it was Cardinals at the Window, a 136-track digital album created to benefit relief efforts. The compilation included artists from North Carolina and beyond, like Daughter of Swords, a project from Mountain Man’s Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. Known for for more folksy stylings, the uptempo “Alone Together” is a sonic departure for the artist.

MJ Lenderman, “She’s Leaving You”

While this Asheville singer-songwriter has always been more than solid, his 2024 LP Manning Fireworks is fantastic. Rough, raw, emotional and catchy, it’s one of the year’s best albums. The chorus — “It falls apart/We all got work to do/It gets dark/We all got work to do” — feels appropriate for his hometown in this moment.

Dawn Landes, “The Mill Mother’s Lament”

Chapel Hill singer/songwriter Landes’ latest album is an audacious undertaking, a reimagined version of material from singer/author Jerry Silverman’s seminal 1971 work The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, a collection of folk songs. Among the songs is 1929’s “The Mill Mother’s Lament,” a labor-union classic that Ella May Wiggins wrote the year she was murdered during a mill strike.

Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ’Em”

Queen Bey almost broke the internet by announcing her country album Cowboy Carter in a Super Bowl commercial in March. The album’s opening salvo — which was nominated for three Grammys this year — was its first single, “Texas Hold ’Em,” with a rippling banjo riff by Greensboro native Rhiannon Giddens on prominent display.

JPhono1, “Goldtop”

Carrboro’s John Harrison might be the Triangle’s most prolific musician and artist — 2024’s Beyond Provisional makes nine albums he’s released in less than five years (and he somehow finds time to paint, too). From that album, “Goldtop” pairs a sharp hook with a pulverizing drone to make pure psychedelic-rock goodness.

Bill Moore, “Just a Couple of Blueberries”

New Piedmont Style is Chapel Hill native Moore’s first album, and it sounds like it was made by an artist at the height of the late-1950s folk revival. But Moore was still a teenager when he wrote and recorded this thoroughly convincing set of old-time Piedmont blues, inspired by the likes of Blind Boy Fuller and Charlie Poole. The music lives on. 

Dex Romweber, “Good Thing Goin’”

Local legend Romweber’s death from cardiac causes at age 57 rocked Chapel Hill this past February, with tributes pouring in from all over the world. As shown by his final album, 2023’s Good Thing Goin’, he was never better than at the end. The title track sets his overpowering yowl to an epic full-band arrangement.

Rapsody, “3:AM”

Snow Hill native Rapsody marked 2024 with another widely acclaimed album, her fourth full-length LP, Please Don’t Cry. Its Grammy-nominated single “3:AM” sports a jazzy feel, accentuated by a cameo from Erykah Badu on the call and response. 

The Old Ceremony, “Earthbound”

Durham’s The Old Ceremony has always put forth an elegant sense of mystery, which befits their name (from the 1974 Leonard Cohen album titled New Skin for the Old Ceremony). Their seventh album, Earthbound, might be the group’s best yet, especially the title track’s cool vibraphone riff.

Cashavelly, “More Than God”

Even as Cashavelly Morrison has shortened her moniker, her music has broadened from Americana into something larger, grander and more conceptual. “More Than God” is the kickoff track to Meditation Through Gunfire, the second-ever release on UNC School of the Arts’ new record label, UNCSA Media, in Cashavelly’s hometown of Winston-Salem.

Katharine Whalen’s Jazz Squad “Let’s Get Lost”

From Efland, Katharine Whalen first gained notice in the mid-1990s as the banjo player and marvelous singing voice in local hitmakers Squirrel Nut Zippers. Three decades later, she’s still making music that’s as charming as ever. “Let’s Get Lost” is the title song to her latest album as Jazz Squad, Let’s Get Lost: Songs Chet Sang, an homage to the late great jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.

This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of WALTER magazine.