1) Maggie Rogers, “That’s Where I Am” / My Maggie Rogers fandom seems to grow with every day, and I’m good and obsessed with her new single and its accompanying video. The song owns its “major '90s Alterna-Rock Chick Energy,” as NPR’s Lars Gotrich notes, with “crunchy production, big guitars, swirling but sturdy motion, restless and unafraid emotion.”
2) High Pulp, “Pursuit of Ends” / This Seattle outfit delivers delirious doses of jazz, funk and swirling soul on its latest. Vibes and serious substance abound, one feeding the other.
3) Carl Phillips, “Then the War” / This new and selected from the prodigious poet is stuffed with little miracles. Few poets write light like Phillips, dark like Phillips or sculpt trees from syllables like Phillips; these poems envelop.
4) Kate Folk, “Out There” / This story collection is a stunner; the way Folk reframes (unfortunately) usual dynamics related to love, sex, gender, social status and more through inventive scenarios is enough to turn readers’ worlds upside down—and, thus, finally see them right. With a black-coffee sense of humor and the ability to mine everyday tragedies for beauty, Folk staggers us with every page.
5) Sarah Salcedo, “Baseball Marks the Time” for Hobart / Although my rooting interests lie with that *other* Bay Area team, I fell hard for this flash piece from Sarah Salcedo on Oakland baseball, the 1989 World Series and belonging (with a wonderful illustration by Matt Mitchell).
Sealing a gorgeous revelry about the small virtues of the game, Salcedo writes, “But the most beautiful thing to me was the grass. Our team played on real grass that caught the low light at the end of the day, that moved and folded and bounced under the players’ feet. I was especially proud about that fact.”