1) The music of Talking Heads / Thanks to a way-too-late-to-the-party dive into the music podcasts of Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman, I am taking another I-should-do-this-at-least-annually dive into the catalog of Talking Heads, resurfacing each time with fresh appreciation for their quirky, innovative, paranoid brilliance.
2) Runnner, “Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out” / The music of Noah Weinman returns me to a golden age (my golden age?) of indie-pop, in which washes of digital sound meet warm acoustic instruments to create something that feels earthy and grounded yet thoroughly contemporary. Taking up the mantle of acts like Radical Face and Sparklehorse, Weinman’s interest in musical and narrative detail creates a greater mood that will work on and in listeners.
3) Cormac McCarthy, “Stella Maris” / The concluding piece of his two-part epic (following “The Passenger”) is one of the great two-handers in recent memory, delivering justice for a character from the first book and troubling the narrative on every page past and present. I don’t know what McCarthy’s aims look like from here, but the last lines of this novel are absolutely perfect—and would make a perfect cadence to his career if the fates will it.
4) Ling Ma, “Bliss Montage” / Ma opens her new story collection with the tale of a married woman harboring 100 ex-boyfriends on her family’s property, one of which she loved, one of which abused her. From here, she presses forward into new dimensions of writing about love, loss, violence, identity and the ties which bind us (for better or worse). Her voice is remarkable, to the point you can’t anticipate any beat in these stories—and you also can’t imagine them reading any different.
5) Mischa Willett, “Oh Lord, Through the Revolution” for Reformed Journal / Among our moment’s most consistently delightful, inventive poets, Willett lives up to his regular promises here, leapfrogging a Steve Miller Band hit into a thoughtful meditation on the nature and shape of time’s passage.