1) Remi Wolf, “Big Ideas” / Who officially adjudicates the song and album of the summer? I hope, whoever they are, they’ve heard the latest Remi Wolf record. This is smart, sexy, slinky pop with as many grand notions as the album’s title suggests.
2) Loma, “How Will I Live Without a Body?” / I don’t want to throw the word “transcendent” around lightly. I don’t. But hear me when I say the latest Loma record owns more than a few transcendent moments. They come in arrangements which reach through spaces and styles; they come carried across the timbre of Emily Cross’ voice; they come to make each song more like a narrative than standard indie-pop fare.
3) SML, “Small Medium Large” / The best kind of chemistry experiment, this project joins five remarkable players (bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann) to create music that lives in the reactions between jazz and electronica. This album swings, surrounds, soothes.
4) Kathy Fish, “Cracks” for Matchbook / “We dreamed We worked We tried We failed We were not big We were not strong We were not bold We were not good This was not hard This was not all.”
This Kathy Fish piece bears remarkable weight and motion, never sacrificing one for the other, as it inhabits the emotional rhythms of maintaining or repairing anything, be it a home or a heart.
5) Adrian Dallas Frandle, “I'm Only Happy When it Rains Mellon Collie Supervixens” for Major 7th /
I am only twelve, but I feel a lot,
& so don’t want anyone to see inside my jewel
case
The bleed between beloved bands, between who we are and how we’re accepted, is alive in this Frandle poem. The writer excavates a real ache and its era, and does so with a rare compassion for their younger self. These are the feelings music or art are meant to evoke, feelings we’re meant to carry with us until we understand them more fully.