1) Punch Brothers, “The Phosphorescent Blues” / Revisiting one of my favorite records from 2015, I was reminded just how strange and spiritual and sexy these songs are. Chris Thile remains one of the truest voices in my life.
2) The Smile, “Wall of Eyes” / The second offering from Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner is, simultaneously, a moody rock record and a nimble jazz record. I plan to measure 2024 in 8-minute, 3-second intervals (aka how many times I listen to “Bending Hectic”).
3) The music of K Kudda Muzic / Dulcet in timbre and insistent in approach, the songs of this St. Louis keyboardist both chill and thaw the listener; this is top-flight fusion, with R&B, pop and jazz uniting in the vein of a Terrace Martin or Robert Glasper.
4) Finnogun’s Wake, “Stay Young” EP / Back in 2015 (here we go again), a record from the Australian band Royal Headache enchanted me. This was punk edge meeting classic soul undercurrents; this was the sound of a smile and sneer crossing the same face.
Mourning the band’s farewell, as I have for more than a half-decade, I was heartened to hear new music from frontman Shogun and his mate Finn Berzin. These four songs shake and rattle, thicken the resolve and tenderize the heart.
5) Elisheva Fox, “Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen” / “i worship / the oak tree and the moon, / the fox and the stage, / the bluebonnets and the secret violets. / they have never asked me / to be anything other than wild,” poet Elisheva Fox writes in this remarkable, incandescent collection.
Whether enduring “technicolor” Texas summers, feeling exhausted by her stations as the artwork and the muse, or doing the longer, liberating work of knowing love and desire, these poems are deeply alive in a way we all need to encounter.