1) The Mountain Goats, “Dark In Here” / Everything about this record works for me. From the cover—an 1896 painting by Anshelm Schultzberg—to the spare, tasteful arrangements. John Darnielle remains one of our great bards, and here his words work in tandem with painterly musical colors that quite perfectly match the hues of that record cover. One of our best American bands does it again.
2) Lightning Bug, “A Color of the Sky” / The latest from this NYC band is just so damn exquisite. Singer Audrey Kang’s vocals slip and slink around the flickering firelight of guitars. Lightning Bug has been tagged as shoegaze, dream pop or (one of my favorite modifiers) “slow-burning.” All that holds up as far as vibe and mood go, but there’s something really distinct and intimate about this music that simple comparison can’t express.
3) T. Hardy Morris, “The Digital Age of Rome” / For my money, the Athens, Ga.-based singer-songwriter is an underrated, significant figure within what I like to call “The New Southern Rock” (think Drive-By Truckers, solo Isbell, Water Liars, Futurebirds, et al.). Here, Morris makes cosmic country with a conscience, mood music with something to say about consumption and how we treat each other.
4) Barrett Swanson, “Lost in Summerland” / Swanson has been compared to a young Didion for his work in this essay collection—and his appreciation for her comes through both explicitly and implicitly in the prose. But that’s an unfair frame for any examination. What Swanson does here—and often does quite well—is tangle and untangle head and heart, memory and experience, conviction and sensation in a thorough exploration of 21st-century living. Some of these pieces center thinking more than feeling, but the essays about Swanson’s relationship to his brother are revelatory and lived-in.
5) Ricky Ray, “Why I Learned to Do Drugs Responsibly” for Salamander Magazine / So many remarkable moments in this poem by Ricky Ray about recognition and recovery and reclaiming life’s simple, abundant graces. Perhaps my favorite echoes an old Chesterton saw about showing our gratitude for something by not consuming too much of it. Ray writes:
Because one beer, held by the neck, once a week, each sip
swished seven times, the mouthfeel leading to the slow trickle
down the back of the tongue, is how I learned to praise the Lord.
Then, later, this staggering line:
Because sometimes simply surviving
is the pinnacle of human achievement, and enlightenment
is seeing the ability to live as all the reason I need to.