AdHoc’s Faves of 2024
💭 A little list of our staff's favorite things over the past year.
Hello & happy new year! We’re back today with a few items –– first, we’re proud to highlight our newly refreshed Thought Enthusiast branding and logo, created by past enthusiast and graphic design extraordinaire, Elana Schlenker.
Secondly, we invite you to check out the AdHoc staff’s favorite things of 2024. It’s not only the music that we each enthusiastically thought about the most over these last 12 months, but also the movies, musicians, meals, and more.
Lastly, we want to express our team’s gratitude to you for reading our little newsletter. This year was a generative one, and we feel super lucky to do the work we do. If you also dig what we’re doing, why don’t you share this email with a friend? It means more than you know. :)
Now, without further ado – scroll below for our 2024 faves & enjoy!
2024’s most memorable campaigns set a new standard for how deep a brand should go down the rabbit hole to build its own world. One of my favorite Thought Enthusiasts from this year Rachel Karten touched on Nutter Butter’s unhinged approach, but TikTok’s most immersive content series came courtesy of jewelry designer Alexis Bittar. A sprawling mockumentary that feels like Spinal Tap for the New York fashion elite, the Bittarverse comes complete with cameos from stylist Law Roach, power publicist Kelly Cutrone, Interview Magazine’s fashion director Dara Allen and her editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg, not to mention Susan Sarandan. Dialogue is infinitely quotable, and you can tell everyone involved is having an amazing time weaving their first-hand experience while also improvising lines to bring out the satire and joy of the industry they love. It’s a story that no brand can tell better than Bittar, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2025. –Ric Leichtung
The most moving film I saw this year. Daughters reveals the emotional turmoil that both young girls and their fathers encounter when the prison system disconnects their relationship. The film documents a special fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C. prison which brings young girls together with their fathers for an annual daddy daughter dance. Great score by Kelsey Lu. Grab your tissues. –Rachael Pazdan
🎫 LVL UP Anniversary Shows at Baby’s All Right
As someone who goes to a lot of concerts, getting to see LVL UP do a series of reunion shows around the 10 year anniversary of their seminal album Hoodwink’d at Baby’s All Right earlier this year was really something special. The NYC band (who basically provided the soundtrack of my early 20s living in Brooklyn) broke up back in 2018, and though all of its members have kept busy with various different projects, they’ve been sorely missed ever since. Getting to singalong to “Annie’s A Witch” at the top of my lungs with a room full of old friends inside Baby’s is definitely the top moment of the year. –Morgan Schaffner
I started listening to this driving but mellow, upbeat but soft, record in my headphones while I work. I am unable to process what I’m doing if English lyrics are playing so it (mostly) fits the bill for getting things done. Then, it made the rare leap from lo-fi beats territory to dinner soundtracks and small gatherings. Tropicalia, folk, bossa nova, and a weird old synthesizer all figure nicely. This album scratches a Devendra Banhart-like itch while also being something of its own. –Ben Hudson
🎷 Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
For me, London-based jazz musician Shabaka Huchings can do no wrong. I love his former projects like Sons of Kemet and Comet is Coming, and have seen him numerous times in different configurations. This excellent album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, shows off his gentle jazz wizard aesthetic, summoning calm, introspective arrangements that deliver boundless peace and comfort to my brain. –Rachael Pazdan
Great musicians are eulogized long after they’re gone, and so many artists have paid their respects to Sophie this year. Her past collaborators teamed up with her brother to release a posthumous album, St. Vincent did one called the “Sweetest Fruit”, and Charli XCX dropped “So I” ahead of a remix by A. G. Cook that was completely different but also still brat.
In it (innit??) Charli reflects on their time at FORM Arcosanti as one of the best nights of her life, which I absolutely believe considering how gorgeous and intimate the festival was and the lineup was fire for its time and had Solange, Kelela, Omar Souleyman, and Mount Eerie. Phil actually wrote a song about his experience playing the festival called “Now Only” shortly after releasing an album grieving the death of his wife to cancer.
“A music festival paid to fly me in to sing death songs to a bunch of kids on drugs… to be alive felt so absurd”-- I remember hearing these lyrics for the first time at a show we did for him in NYC on 9/11 and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I’m convinced that Phil did this intentionally and was designed with the same strength of vision and complexity as Brat. Charli and Phil may be at different stages of grief– one celebrating the memories while the other continues to wallow in what was lost, and I love the unexpected dialogue that comes from comparing two great artists. –Ric Leichtung
As a current resident of Philadelphia, I feel infinitely blessed to be surrounded by so many incredible restaurants here in the City of Brotherly Love. My favorite meal – and specifically my favorite bite – of the whole dang year has to go to southern Thai food restaurant Kalaya and their flower-shaped dumplings. Winner of the 2023 “Best Chef - Mid Atlantic” James Beard Award, and recently featured on the new season of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, Chef Nok not only brings to life some of the best flavors I’ve ever tasted, but she’s known to personally visit each table in the dining room during dinner service. Talk about hospitality. –Morgan Schaffner
The Penguin is a polarizing choice: everyone I talked to about the show either loved or hated it. I am personally obsessed. The show feels a lot more like The Sopranos than DC Comics. The character development, the attention to detail and easter eggs, the acting, Colin Farrell's MAKEUP (!), the twists and turns. It's a gripping, dark, villainous and epic first season. –Rachael Pazdan
🎧 The Wonder of Stevie by Wes Morris
In closing out 2024 I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is the year that I came upon the formidable and delightful interviews of Sam Frogoso via his decade long running pod, Talk Easy. He’s so good. Take a listen to the Juaquin Phoenix episode as well as the Hacks writers one, with Paul Downs and Lucia Aniello.
But The Wonder of Stevie actually came out this year so let’s talk about it. The exuberant, insightful and just plain charismatic Wes Morris tells the action-packed story of the five year stretch of albums made by Stevie Wonder starting with 1972’s Music of my Mind and extending to Songs in the Key of Life in 1976. Morris gets the Obamas, Questlove, Ray Parker Jr and a whole bunch of other relevant people to tell the surprising and useful stories behind the greatest hot streak in pop music history. –Ben Hudson
🎊 Last but not least – check out our playlist of our favorite tunes of the year. And have a happy new year!
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