1) Hotline TNT, “Cartwheel” / I’m unsure why I waited till the end of the year to tether myself to the Hotline TNT wagon, but “Cartwheel” is a near-perfect alt-rock record, sublime and rough-hewn in equal measure.
2) Gentle Organisms, “I Wish You Could See Yourself Right Now” / Phoenix singer-songwriter Michael Kelley’s latest is stacked with indie-rock songs tailor-made to soundtrack the scenes of your life. These tracks glide at the right moment, soar at the right moment, sit back and sigh in the same.
3) Michael Azerrad, “The Amplified Come as You Are” / Veteran journalist Michael Azerrad gives rock lovers the gifts of time, wisdom and context, returning to his seminal Nirvana bio some 30 years later to annotate and expand the material. Such distance lends a sharpness to some notions, a slipperiness to others, and Azerrad accounts for both. A must-read (again) for listeners who care about Nirvana and everything/everyone who came after.
4) Gabriel Bump, “The New Naturals” / Bump’s debut novel, “Everywhere You Don’t Belong” felt like a quiet feat of character and voice. There was something special, almost sacred about walking the world alongside Claude McKay Love.
Here, Bump spools those gifts toward greater concerns, as his well-drawn characters try to rebuild their lives together, in a freshly rendered society. The beauty of Blackness, the thorniness of creating community and the endlessly exhilarating prospect of designing the way to live meet, maybe even crash into each other, on this beautifully-written journey.
5) Eliot Li, “What I’m Thinking About When I’m Making Out With Someone Of My Own Race For The First Time” for Spry / The promise of this Eliot Li piece grabbed my attention on social media, and sifting the work, never let me go. A litany of dizzy spiral thoughts, it perfectly and originally marries the specific and universal, gliding along the surface of young love/lust and grappling with real questions of identity and belonging. Among the speaker’s thoughts:
On Monday morning, we pretend like nothing happened. Except for the graze of her fingertips on my shoulder as we pass each other in the hallway.
The seniors near my locker glare at me and chant Nerd! Nerd! Nerd! I’m not as invisible as I thought.
Suddenly, she’s next to me, on her tiptoes, whispering in my ear, “我爱你.” Even I understand those three words.