Janet Jackson, Snõõper, Bob Dylan and more: the best music of autumn 2024

After Yorkshire guitarist Michael Chapman died in September 2021, aged 80, his partner Andru found solace in the music of Brisbane banjo player Andrew Tuttle. The pair eventually met in Australia and Andru left Tuttle with some of Chapman’s final recordings, which he has partly reworked and partly preserved. The result is Another Tide, Another Fish, an unusual collaboration of evocative, ambient marvels. (Also one for fans of William Tyler’s cosmic Americana.)
Released 30 August
When the Belgian-Caribbean harp player’s debut album for Warp, Space 1.8, was released in September 2021, her spellbinding stillness became a balm in those uncertain dregs of the pandemic. Her return, Endlessness, is pitched as a “deep dive into the cycle of existence”: another quietly transcendent and contemplative suite, featuring performances from the likes of Nubya Garcia, Sheila Maurice-Grey and the 21-strong string ensemble Orchestrate.
Released 6 September
The Brooklyn guitarist and member of Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet has been quietly building a catalogue of knotted, exploratory songwriting, landing somewhere between the ornate tapestries of Richard Dawson and the wandering lens of Phil Elverum. Filled with intimate songwriting and jazzy digressions, their incredible new album Viewfinder was inspired by getting laser surgery after a lifetime of eye pain and poor vision, and coming to terms with life in perfect clarity.
Released 13 September
When the Scottish producer Sophie died in a tragic accident in 2021, aged 34, she had been working on “literally hundreds” of tracks, her brother and collaborator Ben Long said, including ideas to maintain a continuous cycle of releasing a pop album followed by an experimental album. Details remain scant on which of those what will be her only posthumous self-titled album – completed by Long – falls into, but brightly hued, hard-edged preview tracks featuring acts including Kim Petras suggest the former.
Released 27 September
White Roses, My God – Sparhawk’s first solo album since the death of his wife and Low bandmate Mimi Parker – is a genuine shock. Gone are the band’s hymnals and staticky distortion; in its place are vocoder-heavy vocals indebted to Neil Young’s Trans, Prince’s Camille and even Cher’s tweaky 1998 single Believe, alongside production that shares DNA with 100 Gecs’ whacked-out signal-noise ratio and Kim Gordon’s latter-day embrace of trap. Startling and majestic.
Released 27 September
The Oklahoma City noise-rockers delivered an instant-classic debut with 2022’s God’s Country: a radically empathetic album confronting grief, addiction, gun violence and homelessness, with songs sometimes written from the perspective of serial killers or Jason Vorhees’ mum. The follow-up, Cool World, is even better: more tuneful, even funky, it expands their remit to an entire planet’s-worth of horrors.
Released 11 October
They were the hirsute, lustful, almost psychedelically heavy revolutionaries of 1960s rock, lighting up Detroit with proto-punk noise – but they split after just two early-70s albums. Inspired by recent threats to American democracy, MC5’s long-awaited third album Heavy Lifting is hugely poignant: the two surviving members of the band, Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson, died this year before they could see its release.
Released 18 October
The Welsh producer’s fourth album Dreamstate – and first for dh2, the new club-facing label run by George Daniel of the 1975 – is her most euphoric and extroverted to date, mingling trance, techno and dreamy haze with heart-in-mouth choruses about post-breakup rediscovery. Daniel, the Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands and Bicep are among the collaborators; meanwhile Owens’ punchy recent DJ sets have showcased the transformational live quality of these tracks.
Released 18 October
Also featuring Hill’s son (and Bob Marley’s grandson) YG Marley, fresh from scoring the biggest roots reggae hit in years with Praise Jah in the Moonlight, this all-star tour rolls on after being cancelled in the US for poor ticket sales. OK, Hill is known for rather elastic timekeeping at gigs – but she and Fugees spanned soul and hip-hop with so much elan and romance that these dates remain unmissable.
Three-date UK tour begins 9 October, Cardiff Utilita Arena
With papier-mache stage props – giant dumbells, traffic lights, human figures, a huge bug outfit – and the cardiovascular fitness of spin-class instructors, this Nashville punk rock quintet are regarded as one of the best live bands in the US. They’ve got the songs to back up the mayhem, as they confront the banalities of techno-corporate existence from company cars to national lotteries.
Six-date UK tour begins 2 September, Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Perhaps it’s the shadow of her brother, or her versatility making it difficult to neatly package for the masses, but Janet Jackson still feels fairly underrated despite her millions of sales and considerable fandom. Her Together Again tour will hopefully underline her claim to be one of the greats, with 39 songs that show her enthusiastically choreographed affinity with pop, hip-hop, house, balladry and beyond.
Four-date UK tour begins 27 September, Birmingham Utilita Arena
The Sheffield experimental festival returns with a characteristic embarrassment of riches. Artist Mark Fell curates an exhibition in the depths of the old John Lewis at Coles Corner, 90-year-old FM synthesis pioneer John Chowning will give a rare lecture and performance, while the untold musical highlights include the likes of Rian Treanor, the Tara Clerkin Trio, Iceboy Violet & Nueen, Lord Spikeheart and Kelman Duran.
11-13 October, various Sheffield venues
With Dylan now 83, it’s not macabre but merely pragmatic to wonder quite how many more chances you’ll get to see him play live. But doing so wouldn’t be a mere case of ticking someone off a list – Dylan remains plugged into his muse, with this tour focusing on material from his late-period masterpiece Rough and Rowdy Ways. He’s infamously not fond of big-hits setlists, but recent US dates also saw him re-introduce the likes of Highway 61 Revisited, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35.
10-date UK tour begins 1 November, Bournemouth International Centre
Given the degree to which Brat, Charli’s seventh album, has already dominated summer, who knows what degrees of the Bratverse we’ll be living in by the time the long-awaited tour for the album hits the UK this November. How many more pop stars will she have roped into her lurid green orbit? Will we have the first Brat president? Either way: ready your sandwich bags.
Four-date UK tour begins 27 November, Co-Op Live, Manchester
Few rap releases have ever been as anticipated as the third (as yet untitled) album from Playboi Carti, the gothically dripped Atlanta MC whose flows have almost a jazz sensibility in the way they take improvisatory yet melodic routes around their lyrics. If that sounds delicate or polite, it’s quite the opposite: blown-out bass shakes the tracks’ foundations and makes them even harder to grab on to, earning Carti a vast young fanbase enthralled by his punkish, uncontainable talent.
Release date TBC
Scottish Opera unveils its chamber staging of Britten’s comedy at the Lammermuir festival, before taking the show into its autumn season. Daisy Evans’ production is an updating to the 1990s; William Cole conducts, Glen Cunningham is the innocent Albert, with Susan Bullock as the redoubtable Lady Billows.
Corn Exchange, Haddington, 5 and 6 September, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18 and 22 October, Festival theatre, Edinburgh, 13 November
The first new production of the season from the newly renamed Royal Opera and Ballet revisits Tchaikovsky’s lyric scenes. Ted Huffman, making his main stage debut at the ROH, directs, with Henrik Nánási conducting; Gordon Bintner is Onegin and Kristina Mkhitaryan is Tatyana.
Royal Opera House, London, 24 September-14 October
A new era begins at the Hallé, as Kahchun Wong succeeds Mark Elder as the orchestra’s chief conductor. For his first concert he pairs Britten and Mahler: a new suite from the former’s ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas, arranged by Wong and Colin Matthews, is followed by Mahler’s First Symphony.
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 26 September
A real treat for connoisseurs of French baroque opera – concert performances of Actaeon, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s tragédie en musique, and Rameau’s acte de ballet Pygmalion. Laurence Cummings conducts the Academy of Ancient Music, and the cast is headed by sopranos Anna Dennis and Rachel Redmond, and mezzo Katie Bray.
Milton Court, London, 9 October
Two of the hottest properties in the classical world today join forces for a programme of music for two pianos. They play two classics of the repertoire, Schubert’s F minor Fantasia and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, as well as pieces by Berio and Ligeti, Nancarrow, Adams and Pärt.
Royal Festival Hall, London, 1 November
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group gives the first performances of the English version of one of the final works by Péter Eötvös, who died earlier this year: Secret Kiss is a monodrama for narrator (Meg Kubota) and five instruments, on a text from the novel Silk, by Alessandro Baricco.
Wigmore Hall, London, 26 November, CBSO Centre, Birmingham, 27 November
Leonard Bernstein’s two one-act operas are staged by Oliver Mears as the double bill that the composer intended, with A Quiet Place as the sequel to Trouble in Tahiti, set 30 years later. Nicholas Chalmers conducts both scores, with Henry Neill and Wallis Giunta as the young Sam and Dinah, and Grant Doyle as the older Sam, coming to terms with his wife’s death.
Linbury theatre, London, 10-24 October
Walton’s First Symphony is the main work in Mark Wigglesworth’s first concerts as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s new chief conductor. He precedes the testosterone-fuelled work with the prelude to Wagner’s Mastersingers and Ravel’s Concerto for Piano Left Hand, in which Nicholas McCarthy is the soloist.
Lighthouse, Poole, 20 November, Beacon, Bristol, 21 November
Britain’s foremost new-music festival has yet to announce its full programme for this year, but Lina Lapelytė will be the composer-in-residence, and the opening weekend will include a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Arditti Quartet, and the UK premieres of Anna Cleare’s Terrarium, Okkyung Lee’s Signals and Enno Poppe’s new work for 10 drum kits.
Various venues, Huddersfield, 15-24 November