1) Lydia Loveless, “Something Else” / One of my favorite songwriters takes one of my favorite albums (2014’s “Somewhere Else”), reimagining and rendering it as a series of piano ballads. So many perfect songs exist here (“Wine Lips,” “Head,” “Verlaine Shot Rimbaud,” and more), and Loveless makes you feel as though you’re hearing them for the first time—or, at least, hearing secrets and depths these songs weren’t fully ready to give up on first pass. Such an undeserved treasure.
2) Fontaines D.C., “Romance” / The Dublin band won my allegiance with the pulsing post-punk of 2020’s “A Hero’s Death,” lost me a bit on “Skinty Fia” two years later, and now—in yet another two-year cycle—has me again with “Romance.” These songs bound forward, but they also ache; they unsettle, but leave space for living with that unsettled feeling.
3) Gift, “Illuminator” / There’s something familiar and yet so subtly innovative about the new one from this NYC band. “Illuminator” is all stormy rock and roll, colliding and washing over you, cajoling you into feeling something from within the storm.
4) Willy Vlautin, “The Horse” / This week, I told my wife every time I think a new Willy Vlautin book can’t possibly live up to the rest of his work, it always proves me wrong. How happy I am to be wrong. Vlautin, a novelist and songwriter, understands the lonely hearts, the people living on the margins, the debts we trade throughout our lives—those we could never repay and those we deserve to reap. This tale of a gifted, but ultimately failed, musician who encounters a lost animal is so heartbreaking and humane. Vlautin’s work hurts, but you always want to live in his worlds.
5) Chris Payne, “Where Are Your Boys Tonight?” / This oral history of the early-aughts emo explosion is such a dynamic, necessary document. Payne compiles and curates like a great record producer, finding the touching, humorous and disarming notes that convey the moment’s spiritual realities.