1) The music of Yo La Tengo / One among many bands I’m just now catching up on (the shame of it all), I’ve spent most of this week immersed in the sounds of the New Jersey trio. The ability to move almost seamlessly from lush, melodic pop to all-enveloping, guitar-driven soundscapes establishes the band’s greatness and gives listeners a new trip through their work every single time.
2) Various artists, “Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987” / If you lean toward the college-rock side of the dial, you’ll dig this collection composed of artists that—to my knowledge—never truly broke through, but filled in circles of sound around bands like R.E.M., the Jayhawks, the dBs and more. Especially worth your time: selections by 28th Day, One Plus Two, The Springfields and The Reactions.
3) Asher Gamedze, “Dialectic Soul” / The freshness and vision of this South African drummer radiates through everything here; Gamedze drives the beat—and a compelling narrative about how and where jazz holds relevance in the 21st century. Gamedze should rate near the top of any and all “artists to watch” lists as jazz takes shape over the next decade.
4) Esmé Weijun Wang, “The Collected Schizophrenias” / Wang’s 2019 book is a peerless marriage of analysis and anecdote. The author displays remarkable vulnerability, divulging the thorny details and striking brushstrokes of mental illness, then fills in the white spaces with facts, evolving consensus and more. There are chapters here that will steal your breath; and anyone who moves through the world with a different sort of brain and soul will recognize their highs, lows, fears and bated-breath ambitions in Wang’s work.
5) KJ Ramsey, “Too Holy To Hide” for Fathom Magazine / My pal KJ Ramsey contributes a powerful essay to Fathom’s new “Purity” issue. In her words, KJ excavates what it meant to grow up a young woman within evangelicalism and be taught to despise and fear her body. She writes:
Hating myself was the main way I knew how to be holy.
Hating my body and its sensations was how I held on to the hope of being the pure person my parents named me to be.
One of many strengths here: KJ’s ability to live in the little things, and show how they added up to a terrifying theology of the body. In one passage, she writes of how she experienced something like the freedom to exist on days when her school raised money for evangelism efforts.
Somehow missionary efforts evoked a temporary day of jubilee, and our lady legs would get to slip into the devil’s denim for the greater good of spreading God’s word to lands that supposedly didn’t have it. On those days, my female classmates and I would report to the cafeteria instead of our homerooms, where we’d line up to hand a teacher a dollar and our dignity.
As a young man, I went through my own hang-ups and guilt trips, but never quite experienced this fraught tie—between the holiness and salvation of others, and my daily appearance. For just a moment, KJ’s words allowed me to try on, and perhaps, share that burden. The recognition and, ultimately, hope she threads through this piece has much to offer those who lived it.