1) Maggie Rogers, “Surrender” / The latest from the pop dynamo is a pure stunner, possessed of both melodic and spiritual conviction. Immaculately crafted yet shot through with authentic emotion, these songs work on every conceivable level.
2) Murder by Death, “Spell/Bound” / This veteran Midwestern band creates cinematic Americana, roots music with a dark, beating heart yet enough hope to hold out till morning. The band’s latest might be its finest—rich, soulful and haunted in the most beautiful way.
3) The music of Joe Pug / I spent far too long outside the walls, aware of Joe Pug’s songwriting but (for whatever reason) too distracted to cross the threshold. Slowly, methodically working through Pug’s catalog, I am transfixed by the melodic purity and lyrical depth of a songwriter’s songwriter. Pug offers me new language for my lifelong mission statement: “to do more than just get by … to test the timber of my heart.”
4) Alison Wisdom, “The Burning Season” / At the end of Alison Wisdom’s new novel, I kept coming back to one word—searing—and one question: What burns hottest: The fires of devotion or lust? The need to believe in something? Human touch? The high Texas sun? Wisdom creates a visceral, thoughtful portrait of a woman living as part of a small-town cult, aflame from the inside out and hoping any or all of these forces will satisfy the fire. You feel the heat and you won’t soon forget the burn-mark it leaves.
5) Edie Meade, “Quarry Light” for (mac)ro(mic) / My favorite writing, across genre, slips between layers of the elemental to show us glorious, crackling life. Edie Meade does this masterfully in a short span, penning phrases such as: “where the quarry growls in heat thunder over the fields”; “we can hear the electric lines of the high pylons hum through the easement”; “lingering, thick sunset”; and “The heat thunder gives way to the truth of real thunder from an anvilhead flashing milky electric purple over the woods.”
That Meade does so in a quietly compelling look at grief, responsibility and our common ties, is all the more praiseworthy.