2024 Comeback Comeback

Here's a post to correct significant omissions from 2024’s Comeback Special compilation.  I haven’t found a reliable method to keep up with all the comebacks released in a given year.  Having only recently completed a 2025 comebacks compilation, I’ve already found four that I missed (Feedbacks, Bill Fox, Rwake, and Thee Headcoatees).  

The 2024 Comeback Special included 22 artists who released albums of new original music after an absence of a decade or more.  And yet, I missed another 28 comebacks from 2024: far too many to include on a CD-length compilation.  I had to leave out Belong, Kittie, Manu Chao, Propaganda and Stetsasonic.  (There was also a 2024 release from Plasticland called Spree, but I couldn’t find it online anywhere, and apparently the songs were completed a decade earlier.)

The award for the longest time between albums (40 years!) goes to The Heats, whose self-titled 2024 album follows their 1983 debut, The Heats Have An Idea.  It’s been almost that long for The Prisoners, who returned with Morning Star in 2024.  And over 30 years passed before the 2024 comebacks of the Jack Rubies, Propaganda, Stetsasonic, and Toadliquor.

Last year, Khayem reminded me that Beth Gibbons and Gavin Friday had released solo comeback albums in 2024.  Koen discovered that Jona Lewie also released a new record in 2024. 

The biggest name I missed among last year’s comebacks was The Black Crowes.  The Robinson brothers buried the hatchet and reunited in 2019, but it took another five years to release an album of new songs. At the ass-end of 2025, “Rats And Clowns” sounds quite topical, as does “Cross The Line” by Connecticut hardcore band The Pist (who already knew in 2024 that the essential question of 2025 would be, “Am I being detained?”)

I front-loaded this compilation with the grooviest songs, and put the heavy stuff at the end. Like 2024 itself, it starts out fun and ends in anger and despair, with everyone wondering how the hell to make sense of this crazy mess. Here's to better days, friends.