1) Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster, “No Tongue Can Tell” / The longtime Water Liars (and Theodore!) songwriter has penned some of the most aching, memorable songs of the past 10 years. Kinkel-Schuster’s catalog is dark and novelistic, reminiscent of Denis Johnson passages set to timeless melodies. Here, he does some of his best work to date, on a set of 10 songs that will level you and yet make you feel heard and known.
2) Dave Douglas, “Secular Psalms” / The veteran trumpeter-composer creates a set that more than lives up to its name, blending sacred imagery with a generosity of spirit and forward-thinking jazz language. This record is a complex thrill, yielding new moments of wisdom with each listen
3) Warren Ellis, “Nina Simone’s Gum” / The raconteur, and rocker Nick Cave’s first mate, seamlessly blends his loves of music and storytelling in this true, tall tale about saving (and properly venerating) the title artifact—a piece of gum chewed up and discarded by one of our most luminous singers. Like his pal Cave in the book accompanying his “Stranger Than Kindness” exhibit, Ellis displays a laudable commitment to life’s littlest gifts and an understanding of how they represent greater ones. This book is an eminently readable treat.
4) Megan Mayhew Bergman, “How Strange a Season” / Bergman’s new collection is so refreshing and devastating. This series of stories focuses, as Amy Hempel notes, on “strong women, or women on their way to becoming strong, often while aiming to do some good.” These main characters are as complicated and smart, sexy, frustrated and frustrating as real life—and Bergman offers ample reason to both root for them and hope for their change.
Bergman also ranks among our most clear-eyed writers, as issues of climate change and social decay go. She writes in a way that accepts and mourns these realities, acknowledging them to a degree so many writers wriggle free of. And for all this, the writing is such a treat to read at the sentence level. Absolutely one of the best books of the young year.
5) Margaret Ray, “Making Out at the Movies” for Southeast Review / This Margaret Ray poem does so much, and with such a delightfully sneaky mixture of simplicity and staggering emotion. The poem invokes teenage lust, a growing understanding of female agency and the stark same-ness of so many youthful memories—all while sounding a clear-eyed call to fight for more than this. Ray writes:
Kids of America, let yourself go to good movies!
There are things you can absorb
without meaning to, like that protagonists
are mostly white, or that you can tell sincerity
by its sound, or that there are whole genres
where the woman evaporates
during the good parts, or that people usually know
what they want.