1) Hiss Golden Messenger, “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “The Sounding Joy” / One of my favorite voices in any and every season, M.C. Taylor applies his hearth-warm instrument to midwinter music on these 2021 efforts. Christmas companions since their release, the former offers humane folk-rockers; the latter spools common material into mood pieces for whatever the holidays feel like.
2) The music of Giant Sand / I want to be Howe Gelb when I grow up. Sometimes I wind my way back through the Tucson troubadour’s catalog, as I did this week, and sometimes I think it might be the most underrated body of work in modern music. Cool and wry and somehow both ancient and relevant—this is desert poetry worthy of audiences in every clime.
3) Wishy, “Paradise” / There is a gorgeous glide and a sturdy heart to the songs from this Indianapolis outfit. Wishy’s brand of indie rock coaxes all the dreamy, romantic, bittersweet feelings that forever live just below the surfaces of you and me.
4) K. Iver, “A Psych Ward Is a Place” for The Cortland Review / Tenderness ripples through this K. Iver poem, a ballad for patients, nurses, anyone and everyone who offers shelter. A place so often looked down upon is still a place, yielding its kindnesses and moments of real respite and connection, the poet observes.
Past the double doors, everyone has a bed,
fifteen uninterrupted minutes of privacy, a shower
to scream in. No one screams outside of a place.
Tile isn’t selfish with the sound it catches.
Someone with fingers and thumbs glued it down.
5) Luke Johnson, “Hypnagogia” for One/Jacar Press / Elemental realities keep spilling forward, keep eroding and reshaping a family in this poem, gorgeous and painstaking. Johnson draws us close, to feel what he feels, hurt with his loved ones, to see how we’re all committing little acts of rescue.
Like rain, when in a flash a flood snaps pines then converts to powdered ponds. When the hand let go I gagged for voice & there my daughter stood. She was quiet & shivering & asking for a drink. I never considered if she was who tried to drown me. Not once.