1) SG Lewis, “AudioLust and HigherLove” / The British songwriter keeps a carefree flow across the surface of his second record, reinforcing his songs with elements and echoes of classic soul. This specific alchemy (as well as collaborations with the likes of Tove Lo, Charlotte Day Wilson and Channel Tres) makes for a perfect pop feel.
2) Oddisee, “To What End” / The veteran Washington D.C. rapper delivers an absolutely assured performance on his latest, an album that sets the body in motion, the head toward complexity, the heart toward longing. This is as fully-formed as artistic statements come.
3) R. Ring, “War Poems, We Rested” / Indie-rock greats Kelley Deal and Mike Montgomery make intuitive, visceral—and deceptively accessible—songs together as R. Ring. The pair’s newest set contains moments of dissonance and drive, and also expands to fold in glorious elements of early rock and girl-group soul.
4) Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas (Ed.), “Christian Poetry in America Since 1940” / As someone making up for lost time through his own independent study course in poetry, I owe a great debt to Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas for this invaluable collection.
Their curation has introduced me to the “godfire” of Jeanne Murray Walker, the tragic awakening of William Baer’s “Adam” (recreating the first elegy) and Dana Gioia’s “liturgy of the rain” and “prayer to unbelief” while further stoking my affections for Diane Glancy, Marilyn Nelson and others. A true gem of a textbook.
5) Anna Gazmarian, “Sins of the Mother” for The Sun / As someone living with, and puzzling over, his anxiety—its origins, its implications, its potential as an inheritance for my son—I felt truly known by this essay. Gazmarian thoughtfully handles the tenses of our religious disquiet, how future anxiety is steeped in the past and present:
By the second trimester my belly was too big for me to sit comfortably on the couch, so we bought a large beanbag chair and placed it in the center of the living room. I spent evenings there, reading books about the afterlife, the Crucifixion, and feminism. I kept envisioning my unborn daughter as a teenager asking me about these topics and my being unable to give her definitive answers.
My husband gently reminded me that such definitive answers don’t exist.
Ultimately, this work is an act of great affection for her child, herself—and, by extension, for readers like me.
… The more scared I become about the future, the more compelled I feel to show my daughter that the world doesn’t have to be a frightening place. Part of what made me want to become a mom was this desire to teach my child what I wish I had known — and also, maybe selfishly, to re-parent myself.