Each day of December this year, I’m highlighting one of my favourite albums of 2024. Counting down the list, we start with #31 on December 1st and go all the way down until we’ve reached #1 on December 31st. Today, #28 on my Album of the Year list: Mud Whale – ‘Humans Pretending To Be Human’.

Mud Whale is one of my latest discoveries of 2024. Only a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon their song ‘Smoke Signals’ and immediately took a liking to it. No surprise. Being an emo kid, I’m a sucker for this stuff: grungy, we’re-sad-but-we’re-making-the-most-of-it kind of music. I thank my lucky stars, since the Cleveland, Ohio band was just about to release their 2nd album.

As is quite common for albums within this genre, it gets straight to the point. So does ‘Humans Pretending To Be Human’, starting off with ‘Checking In’, a song about checking in on your friends every now and then, and ‘Smoke Signals’, which is probably the best song on the album. Music within the (midwest) emo range has one interesting and rare feature which is something along the lines of ‘the lower the production quality, the better the songs’. Of course, that’s not always the case, but in Mud Whale’s it sure is. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying the production on this album is poor, but the fact that this band is still quite small and probably did a lot of the production themselves, works in their favour. It gives their music a bit of an edge which then makes for solid tunes such as ‘Echo Through’ and ‘Part of Me’, both songs I think wouldn’t have sound as good if the production was over the moon. On the flip side, cutting back on that strange trap beat at the end of ‘Fluorescent’ would be preferred. Don’t quite know where that’s coming from. Anyway, I feel like this album balances a bit between Gaffa Tape Sandy and a hidden gem story like Panchiko’s. It’s not the best release of the year, but certainly enjoyable for a couple of plays. I know from experience that seeing bands like these perform can lift the overall appreciation. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any Mud Whale gigs in 2025.