1) Ben Kweller, “Circuit Boredom” / The pop wizard is back. I have a serious soft spot for Kweller, whose growing and grounded albums fulfill what listeners have wanted from floundering bands such as Weezer. Kweller leans into both the ‘80s and ‘90s side of his influences on his latest, which is big (as always) on melody and has the anthemic backing to match.
2) Brooks Ritter, “Ghosts Come to Life” / The Kentucky-based singer-songwriter owns a great instrument—a voice that draws from reservoirs of soul and feeling. On his latest EP, Ritter bends that voice in the direction of songs that are, by turns, bold and vulnerable.
3) Michaelangelo Matos, “Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year” / Matos, a venerable music journalist and historian, crafted a thoughtful, thorough book that just … well, pops. I was 3 in 1984, but owe much of my musical taste to the artists, producers and technology that shined that year—and Matos covers them all with a tone that is serious yet totally accessible.
4) Noah Falck, “Poem Excluding City” / Containing a beautiful, devastating opening line (The sky was a concussion of clouds / and notorious for dropping everything / at a moment's notice.) and ringing with unfortunate present-tense resonance, Falck’s poem is brief but profound.
5) Betsy Sholl, “Ladders of Paradise” for Image Journal / Sholl’s poem in the new issue of Image deftly unites modern and ancient, the way of simple devotion and a more distracted existence. Its opening portends the beauty to come:
Rung of boredom, rung of daily distress
from morning news, rung of thumbing
aimless through my phone, till landing
in gold leaf and a twelfth-century ladder
of monks on the rise, some falling.
Then on a bigger screen more—
a huddle of others at the icon’s bottom edge,
hands folded in prayer, and at the top
what must be saints leaning to yank a monk up
over the last arduous rung.