1) Paul McCartney, “McCartney III” / The rare record to bear the family name, “McCartney III” (following in the footsteps of its 1970 and 1980 forebears) may or may not stand up as one of Macca’s best. What the album can and should be remembered for is its place as a personal portrait. McCartney plays almost everything on this record, and the songs are marked by the sorts of lyrical and melodic quirks that endear the artist to his diehards. Whether or not you give “McCartney III” dozens of spins, you’ll know the man behind the name and the music better.
2) Mourning [A] BLKstar, “The Cycle” / This 2020 effort from the upstart Cleveland collective is a true marvel. The group gathers protest music, performance art, poetry, forward-thinking hip-hop and buttery retro soul, spinning out a garment whose seams only show when it serves the song. Certainly one of the more vital and endlessly fascinating song cycles of the just-finished year.
3) Growing Concerns Poetry Collective, “Big Dark Bright Futures” / While we’re on the topic of hip-hop poetics, this Chicago trio creates something really special on “Big Dark Bright Futures,” sounding like the 21st-century analog to an Arrested Development or P.M. Dawn. Medium, message and mood care for one another in a smart, big-hearted record.
4) Ellen Bass, “Indigo” / What a joy to live inside this collection and feel welcome by Bass’ words. Love, aging and other elemental topics (such as aging love) suffuse this collection which surprises, heartens and nourishes. Among my favorite moments is Bass’ affectionate study of a “Grizzly”:
At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holy,
if what that means is something like being
wholly unaware of the good she gives,
how even her rooting tills the soil
and even her shitting ferries the seeds
and even her bathing is a joy to behold
In the title poem, the sight of a young, tattooed dad pushing a jogging stroller unspools a thread in the poet’s mind, causing her to contemplate the fathers she’s known (real and prospective) and embrace gratitude for the simple gift of living:
That anyone is born,
each precarious success from sperm and egg
to zygote, embryo, infant, is a wonder.
And here I am, alive.
Almost seventy years and nothing has killed me.
5) Chelsea Dingman, “Memorial Day” for Four Way Review / I could (and probably will) return to this one time and again. Dingman offers readers a strange mercy, breaking down even our softest illusions (“Not a history of revisions we call / love, or survival”) so that we might see ourselves and others in all our collective possibility.