Longtime Ink 19 staff writer Christopher Long spent almost the entire year consuming and writing about new music. Here are his personal Dirty Dozen: the 12 records that made his heart the happiest in 2024.

Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum). Review by Steven Garnett.

24th Street Blues (Bohemian Neglect Records). Review by Bob Pomeroy.

The Westerner (Cool Rock Records / Thirty Tigers). Review by Carl F Gauze.

A fittingly ambitious film for a fittingly artistic and poetic band.

I’m Not There: Original Soundtrack (Sony Records). Review by Matthew Moyer.

No Questions Asked (Atavistic). Review by Terry Eagan.

Tom “Tearaway” Schulte blisses out to Kranky, gets nauseous with Necrophagia, and gives the nod to McClusky. It’s Outsight, daddy-o!

In 1993, three boys were tried and convicted for murder – not based on physical evidence, but on the grounds that they were ‘Satanists’ because they listened to heavy metal and read books by Stephen King. Despite a national outcry and an Academy Award-winning documentary on the case, the boys are still in prison. Supersuckers’ frontman Eddie Spaghetti put together a compilation to help Free the West Memphis Three, and recently discussed the compilation and the case with Sean Carswell.