The best album of 2024 dropped earlier this month

I’ve been traveling a lot lately. Part business. Part pleasure. Nothing to complain about, really. Everything has gone very smoothly. Except this one thing. Because I was on the road, I wasn’t able to write anything about the best album of the year when it dropped on October 11.

Some people may qualify the Linda Lindas’ second studio release, No Obligation. They may say that since the band is comprised of four young women ranging in age from 14 to 20 they may not be able to compete with grown-up rock & roll bands. Or because they tilt toward punk rock, maybe they can’t be taken entirely seriously as a mainstream pop act.

Poppycock. (I wanted something stronger there, but we’re a family-friendly website.)

The Linda Lindas might have released the best album of 2024 this month

No Obligation isn’t the best “genre” album. The Linda Lindas’ aren’t the “most promising” act out there. They are the best rock band we have today – no qualifiers – and their new album is, as of now, the best rock/pop album released in 2024.

I admit I am biased. I had the expanded version of their debut, Growing Up, as the best album of 2023. I had already heard half of the songs on No Obligation before it dropped and figured it would be great, but I did want to wait until the entire album came out before making any bold proclamations.

I can finally do that.

You really don’t need to go any farther than the first two tracks of No Obligation to understand why this SoCal quartet is so potent. The title track, from bass player Eloise Wong, marks out one extreme. Wong handles the hardest punk songs the LLs produce. She has a great, violent, angry scream, and on “No Obligation,” she hits the ground at a thousand miles per hour.

“You’d like me better if I wasn’t a mess – You’d like me better if I’d put on a dress!” She screams it over a driving guitar riff and machine gun drums courtesy of the youngest of the Lindas, 14-year-old Mila de la Garcia. We know right away that if Growing Up was primarily concerned with standard coming-of-age issues, No Obligation will be taking a long hard look at where young women fit in the modern world. There will be fear and anger, admissions of self-doubt, and very powerful pronouncements of individual freedom.

We get almost all of the above on the second track, “All in My Head.” This is pristine power pop from Mila’s sister Lucia de la Garza. Lucia has the remarkable ability to sing classic sunshine pop melodies with the edge of a true punk rocker. “All in My Head” speaks of isolation, a running theme throughout No Obligation. It is often self-imposed as a defense against the speed of the modern world. There may not be a more apt lyric in all of 2024 pop music than Lucia’s beginning to the second verse…

“Making plans sounds like a living hell.”  I can’t begin to count the number of teens and young adults who I have heard echo that sentiment.

If the Linda Lindas merely relied on the twin poles represented by Wong’s melodic punk and de la Garcia’s hard-edged pop, they would still be a first-rate rock band. But they have another weapon in the arsenal. Guitarist Bela Salazar, the oldest of the Lindas at 20, is able to merge those two impulses.

The martial opening of “Lose Yourself” gives way to a back and forth between an assaultive verse (“What are you gonna do now! What are you gonna do now!) and a sweet, bouncy chorus about hiding behind a façade and never confronting the question posed in the verse. And Salazar goes full-out punk on ”Resolution/Revolution,” with its in-your-face chorus…

“You don’t know how to face it – Your arguments are baseless – You don’t have any takes and – Your sympathy is wasted.”

The band credits all four members on all of its songs. Sometimes it appears that an individual track may be the work of one member only, as on Salazar’s “Yo Me Estresso,” or Wong’s snotty punk “Excuse Me.” Other times, it sounds like it is a truly collaborative effort as on “Too Many Things,” sung by drummer Mila de la Garcia, and then pushed forward on the chorus by the rest of the band.

And that is the true power of the Linda Lindas. They are a genuine band. They do not have a clear front person. They do not have one dominant songwriter. They share, and since they each have something distinctive to say, you get on No Obligation a wide-ranging collection of first-rate modern songs, whether they lean pop or punk or anything in between.

Like any great album, No Obligation has no weak tracks. In addition to the songs already mentioned, you get Lucia’s throwback pop “Nothing Would Change,” which recalls 2000’s sunshine pop as well as an electrified take on Kim Wilde’s “We’re the Kids in America.” And Salazar’s “Don’t Think” (“Sometimes things that are fun are not fun for me”) seems to capture modern angst as well as any pop song of the year.

Salazar sings “You Me Estresso” in Spanish because she says she is not as comfortable wearing her heart on her sleeve as Wong and de la Garcia are. The Lindas got Weird Al Yankovich to take a very withdrawn role on the outstanding rhythmic anthem about dealing with anxiety. And as we all know, Weird Al doesn’t give his stamp of approval to just anything. He is a big get which only furthers the band’s rep.

As if being discovered by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna when they were barely out of middle school wasn't pedigree enough. Or if opening on a national Green Day tour alongside Rancid and Smashing Pumpkins were par for the course for a bunch of high schoolers. The Linda Lindas will be headlining their own tour beginning in late March of ’25 and stretching from the Fillmore in San Fran to Brooklyn Steel in NY.

Get your tickets early. The Linda Lindas aren’t a secret anymore. They are simply the best American rock band there is. Until the shows, you can content yourself with the best rock album of the year.

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