There are enough great books about music each year to fill a library. It can be a lot to get through, so we selected a handful that we really love, including memoirs, history tomes, and more. Below, find a list of personal favorites from this year, as picked by Pitchfork staffers and contributors. Happy reading!
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2024 wrap-up coverage here.
Taste in Music: Eating on Tour with Indie Musicians
When summarized, Taste in Music: Eating on Tour With Indie Musicians sounds pretty straightforward: a document of musicians’ snacking habits on the road. Across its essays, though, some of the biggest artists in the indie world (Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz, Pavement’s Mark Ibold, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold) and beloved acts on the smaller circuit (Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline, the Beths, Sen Morimoto) use food as the entry point to tell some of the most entertaining and moving essays of the year.
Compiled by Real Estate bassist Alex Bleeker and former Krill and Frankie Cosmos drummer Luke Pyenson, Taste in Music pulls back the curtain on the cooking challenges of Phoebe Bridgers’ private chef, Lily Chait; Animal Collective’s Geologist and his complicated relationship with car meals; and Bob Mould eating “econo” in the 1980s with Hüsker Dü and pining for the avocado trees in Greg Ginn’s mother’s backyard. Be prepared for stories that get raw, too, like Dawn Richard on how eating well impacts body image, Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering on solo meals as a yardstick for self-perception, and PUP’s Steve Sladkowski on mourning his grandmother over pierogies in Poland. Taste in Music expands upon the best part of indie music: seeing ourselves in how these artists view the world.
–Nina Corcoran