The Friday Dispatch
Cassandra Jenkins, BEL, The Organ, Tapir! and the most slept-on albums of 2024
Into the blue with Cassandra Jenkins
In late 2022, Cassandra Jenkins began recording My Light, My Destroyer. Just two weeks after coming off her last tour, only to listen back and realise that she had too little in the tank. The electricity she’d hoped to articulate had fizzled out, right underneath her nose. “I think I wasn’t recognising a certain amount of pressure that I was feeling,” she explains. “I had been through such a big shift in my career that was very transformative. It’s a very ‘me’ thing to think, ‘Okay, I’ve had enough character development, can you just give me a break? Can’t I just cruise for a second?’ but I had to recognise, ‘Oh, I have an opportunity to grow and change, and I’m resisting it.’ Addressing that resistance, and where it lives in me, in my writing and in my day-to-day life, was a really uncomfortable process, but I had to go through it in order to grow.”
She doesn’t care much for timelines, in terms of what happens exactly when in the course of making a record, but, once she finally rounded the corner she’d been trying to define, things started to move quickly. Regrouping with a cast of friends including producer Andrew Lappin, Palehound’s El Kempner, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, Katie von Schleicher, and Josh Kaufman she started over. Jenkins says that she doesn’t try to overthink things when creating, calling it “a recipe for art that’s kind of stilted.” So much of her growth as a songwriter, and elsewhere, has been in finding ways to let things take their natural course, to not “grip things too tightly.” She references a favourite Leonard Cohen song, “In My Secret Life”, as an expression of some of what she’s struggled with. “Loosening your grip is something you always have to do as a human,” she says. “It’s a lifelong process, and you never master it. You just have to learn how to sense when that’s what you need to bring to a situation. It’s a muscle you need to develop.”
The best albums of 2024 that you might have missed…
Last week, we gave you our ranking of some of the biggest and best breakouts of 2024. But there was so much excellent art this year that just simply flew under the radar. This week, we’re running back the records our staff thought deserved more flowers. In no particular order…
Howl by Daisy Rickman
A Lonely Sinner by Samlrc
Pain Without Hope of Healing by Basque
FEE FI FO FUM by Dactyl Terra
sentiment by claire rousay
Chastity by Chastity
The Clearwater Swimmers by The Clearwater Swimmers
Daylight by Hi-Fi Sean and David McAlmont
Impossible Light by Uboa
Girl by Coco & Clair Clair
Cleaver by Computer Science
No Hero by Desperate Journalist
Chasing Moving Trains by Roy Blair
Endlessness by Nala Sinephro
Amen by Joy Guidry
Orion by orion sun
angeltape by Drahla
Critterland by Will Carlisle
Beach Day by Another Sky
The Cool Cloud of Okayness by Tara Jane O'Neil
Um by Martha Skye Murphy
Water by Fie Eike
Imposing On A Hometown by Sofia Wolfson
Is There Love In Outer Space? by Jimi Tenor with Cold Diamond & Mink
The introduction
Meet BEL, the artist serving up your new favourite indie earworm
Hometown… Clovis, California
Describe your sound… Driving with the windows down while laughing and/or crying
How you started making music… My mom always says I used to make up songs in the car seat before I even knew how to form sentences. I was always drawn to music and performing. I grew up doing musical theater, choir, and playing violin in orchestra up until I left for college. I got a guitar for my 15th birthday and started using that as my main instrument for writing songs. Once I went off to UCLA my world really expanded. I met a lot of musicians there who I wrote and played shows with and I also took audio engineering to learn how to record my own songs. I've always written songs as a way of processing my own feelings about things I'm going through at the moment. I use lyrics as a way to record snippets of observations about life and how to get through it with a little humor and a little brutal honesty.
How you got your stage name… My full name is Isabel but all my older siblings and my parents call me "Bel" for short. It feels special to use the nickname my family gave me as my stage name because they've always been my biggest supporters.
What you can’t leave the house without… Running back in a few more times because I forgot something!!!
One time when you failed to read the room… I tend to laugh in situations where people are supposed to be serious. Humor is my coping mechanism when things are awkward. It's even harder for me not to laugh when my joke doesn't land and we're sitting in uncomfortable silence.
BEL’s latest EP, Read the Room, is out now
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community on two iconic records — one from the past, one from the present. This week, writer Charlie Ivens shares his thoughts on Grab That Gun by The Organ (2004) and The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain by Tapir! (2024).
The Organ, from Vancouver, flamed brilliantly in the early to mid-noughts, appearing as if from a chrysalis and then moving on too soon. Those who joined the privileged likes of me to witness the quintet onstage, perhaps at London’s much missed Buffalo Bar or the first ever Latitude Festival, bathed in the strobes of a band whose singularity of purpose - ultra-minimalist queer-coded post-punk with a Smiths-like yen for startling melody - equalled their introverted cool. The Organ’s only album (re-released in 2024 as a striking gatefold along with their final release, the 6-track Thieves EP), Grab That Gun holds the power to recall that fecund period a shade before the smartphone, and also next week, and somehow 47 years ago too. Soul plus sinew, tight but lithe, motorik and emotion. You can spot them on The L Word if you root around, and you can cheerfully (or perhaps dolefully) file them somewhere between The Twilight Sad, Electrelane and Warpaint, if it suits your purpose. Fun, they weren’t - but embedded in the stained hearts of many, The Organ remain.
Tramping the streets of Brighton at The Great Escape festival in May, it was becoming a little wearying to chase yet another tip for what turned out to be yet another #bunchofgreatlads who for some reason wanted to sound a bit like Editors, or just the staples in Magazine. Hallefuckinglujah then, for chancing upon Tapir! completely by accident, incongruous and unrepentant in folk horror masks at the snazzy Club Revenge. On their captivating debut LP, The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain, they till terrain that’s anything but familiar; it’s a 3-act folktronic adventure with cello, synth, disarming harmonies and a narrator to guide the listener toward both their intent and their destination. Gablé and Moulettes having a mangled tilt at Mercury Rev, perhaps. Sidestepping the strong desire to write an unnecessary pub quiz round about punctuation in rock, I’ve instead revisited this album time and again in 2024. It’s a calming place, agrestic and yearning, full with poetry and charm. Let it lap around your toes.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks from the last five days in music that we’ve got on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Topping our list this week we’ve got Uche Yara, Carla Aakre, Artemas, Theo Bleak, and cover star Kathryn Mohr.
“For [Eve Babitz] to write Slow Days, Fast Company, it had to be the right guy, the right editor, just the right amount of coke.”