1) The music of Depeche Mode / Tripping back through the synth-pop band’s catalog (especially 2005’s “Playing the Angel”) offered a chance to revisit the dark delights—and ultimately humane posture—throughout.
2) Japanese Breakfast, “Orlando in Love” / The new song from Michelle Zauner is a 2-minute, 25-second promise of more gentle poetry and replenishing sound from her Japanese Breakfast project.
3) The music of Lissie / Lissie Maurus is a remarkable songwriter, and also a remarkable interpreter of song; to spend time inside the years of her recordings is to hear her take and remake tracks from Fleetwood Mac, the Chicks and more and hear them as if the first time.
4) The Innocence Mission, “Midwinter Swimmers” / The late-2024 album from this stalwart Pennsylvania band delicately touches folk and chamber pop to create sounds that dress the listener for any of life’s coldness.
5) Lidia Yuknavitch, “The Chronology of Water” / A dear soul held out this book for me right when I needed it; Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir happens inside (though mostly outside of) the pool, drug dealers’ basements, early marriages, homes that feel like any place but; anywhere the author might absorb life’s pointiest pleasures—and, ultimately, the beauty of really becoming.