BMAs // Album
A guide to the 2024 Boston Music Awards
The 2024 Boston Music Awards is at Big Night Live on December 11.
Hump Day News was nominated for Best Music Publication.
You can vote for all the nominees here.
To honor our glorious symbolic inclusion and insufferable clout chasing, we’re rolling out the BMAde Betterz series for 2024. In this series we send the nominees through the meat grinder to yield three main categories of sodium-enriched meat byproducts.
The “New To Us”
Never heard of them, or at least never heard them. But they’re on the list, so let’s have a listen.
The “House Specials”
We’ve covered these acts, we treasure these acts, we 100% get why they’ve been nominated.
The “New To You”
These artists didn’t make the list, but they should have!
Album/EP of the Year // Nominees
Alisa Amador "Multitudes" / Cloudbelly "i know i know i know" / DeevoDaGenius "Champion Sound" / Exit Fame "Exit Hell" / Gio Dee "Hardbody." / Gollylagging "Dry Rot" / JVK "Who Is JVK (Deluxe Edition)" / Latrell James "Running In Place" / Layzi "in between" / Worshipper "One Way Trip"
Worshipper brings metal back to the fundamentals with its third full-length album One Way Trip. Big guitars, big vocals, big solos. And Exit Fame’s Before I Exit Hell is a rap album with samples chock full of operatic drama and cinematic splendor.
The title track of Gollylagging’s Dry Rot shows it’s a band that can’t be painted into the post hardcore grind corner. JVK has had a big year, including a Boston Calling appearance. But didn’t Who Is JVK? come out in 2023? Even the “deluxe version”? Latrell James raps over immaculate studio production on Running In Place, with all the digital bells & whistles, but don’t miss him live when he cooks in real time with a full band. And Layzi’s 6-track EP in between is a dreamy grower. The “lo fi” self-descriptor doesn’t do it justice.
Otis Shanty’s Up on the Hill is one of the Shantiest record Outis there! We’re still coming to terms with Beeef’s band name, but Somebody’s Favorite is one of our favorites. And Jake McKelvie’s A New Kind of Hat is one of those albums that, like a cozy fireplace in winter, you always look forward to coming home to.
So many albums to shout out, can’t hit them all. Some of these just hit in the right way. Honorable mentions: Main Era, The Bank, a Farmer; Circus Trees, This makes me sad, and I miss you; Jean Paul Jean Paul, It Comes Back; Impossible Dog, Shoeless In A Casket and Specifics; Ribbon, I Watched the Ribbon; Hell Beach, Beachworld; Watercoat, Circles On My Map; Lane, Receiver.