1) The music of Deftones / For the sake of a work project, I’ve dived deep once again into the catalog of the true Sacramento kings. I am freshly amazed at the synthesis of heaviness and dreaminess that Deftones achieved right from the beginning, and how that union evolved and recalibrated over time. The band has been huge commercially in seasons, yet should loom even larger in our collective consciousness.
2) Wednesday, “Rat Saw God” / The North Carolina band puts it all together on this volatile, brilliant symphony of rock and country, quiet and screaming, and nearly every other musical dichotomy you can conjure or invent. Wednesday knows how to live in and explode the spaces between.
3) Brandee Younger, “Brand New Life” / The harpist’s jazz orientation and lush, spiritual sound can—and does—evoke comparisons to Alice Coltrane. All that lovely influence is here, but so is a refreshing perspective, a desire to dip into cosmic soul and hip-hop and a collaborative nature that enfolds artists like Mumu Fresh and Pete Rock. Just a gorgeous, heart-spinning record.
4) Blondshell, self-titled / In some future discussion of great Side One, Track Ones, Blondshell’s “Veronica Mars” will pass somebody’s lips early. A sort of pop-culture elegy, a sort of prayer, the less-than-2-minute cut erupts into atom-splitting noise, each measure of guitar expressing a different emotion. From there, Sabrina Teitelbaum crafts one of the most assured rock debuts I’ve heard in a long time, a brilliant union of refined songcraft and raw power.
5) Zadie Smith, “On Beauty” / Late to the party as usual, I just finished Smith’s 2005 novel, an academic comedy of manners—Or is it a comedy of academic manners? Or is it a tragedy? Whatever the book is, it coheres through Smith’s mastery of scene-setting (several moments here will forever be stamped upon my imagination) and a characterization that unfurls slowly, surely and in the only way it possibly could.