1) Jockstrap, “I Love You Jennifer B” / The full-length debut from London duo Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye landed on my radar quite late this year, but still ranks among my top-tier records of 2022. Jockstrap weaves a fascinating musical garment, ostensibly under an electronic genre label, but working in elements of rock, folk and more; all of it tied together with Ellery’s dreamy, expressive voice.
2) The music of Storefront Church / Lured by a gorgeous cover of Low’s “Words,” featuring a second vocal by Phoebe Bridgers, I plunged deep into the music of Lukas Frank and have barely come up for air. Storefront Church makes aching, moody indie rock (though the music flows and ebbs more than it rocks) that feels painstakingly personal without ever turning the drama dial too far. These are remarkable songs worth losing yourself inside.
3) Lauren Camp, “The World I Can’t Remember is Now” for Five South / I adore the work of New Mexico Poet Laureate Lauren Camp, and this one is soulful as it sifts what past, present and future mean—and how we live among time periods in each moment. Camp’s images (of “fog whipped limpid,” desert rain and the “liturgy of Manhattan, and the runes and disbound fields of Montana”) stick to the ribs, as do her proverbs and punchlines.
“We are suspended in places / entire and different and home.”
4) Susan Leary, “Four Poems” for Superstition Review / These four poems contain an entire collection’s worth of images worth examining and exploring. Picking a particular favorite is nearly impossible, though I’m partial to the first lines of “Ice” (“It started snowing inside the jail—a deer sprang / from winter’s hip & shed its antlers into the left ventricle / of your heart, the fresh rots fencing plasma / from the thin trails of your body”).
Or is it this meditation at the opening of “Influencing the Angels”? “Loss transpires & then comes the recognition that you are not God. You are more like the failure of / man-made music hovering above an outdoor café. It is your fault you have forgotten how to pray.”
Or is it … you see my trouble.
5) Shannon Hardwick, “How to Support the Mission” in Whale Road Review / The collective pull of covenant, the way it tethers and tears, is beautifully evident in this poem from Shannon Hardwick. Hardwick faithfully describes the instincts developed during a marriage or long-term relationships, as well as the still-surprising strangeness of it all.
Staying isn’t easy
when you’re born with a door
in the chest, a mouth full of crickets.
Our song slows in the fall. But,
like a machine, we’re still here
with arms as instruments we predict
with an algorithm.