1) Drive-By Truckers, “Live at Plan 9 July 13, 2006” / This recently-released live set is such a gem, showing off one of America’s greatest rock bands at the height of its powers. The 1-2-3 punch of Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell on guitars and vocals is staggering. The set is worth its weight just to hear Isbell sing “Goddamn Lonely Love,” one of the great soul sides of our time. But it’s so much more.
2) The Haden Triplets, “The Family Songbook” / Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden craft an intricate, earthy album of folk and bluegrass standards. The sisters check off all the boxes you’d expect—exquisite harmonies, warm string playing—but sand and stretch these songs just enough to introduce some glorious weirdness.
3) Status/Non-Status, “1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years” / Anishinaabe artist Adam Sturgeon delivers an EP brimming with colorful, cinematic folk rock. The whole document works, but leadoff track “Find a Home” is especially special. Rock guitars and crackling percussion lend their light to a song that vacillates between a dreamy melody and unbidden exclamations of joy and freedom.
4) Anna North, “Outlawed” / North’s latest novel grew on me till it bowled me over. Touching on themes of identity, gender, infertility and more—in the span of a genre novel—she offers a great take on the Western; some might call it revisionist for its gender flexibility, but it feels more true to lived history than most standard fare. Barren women, kicked to the margins by their communities, form their own small society and live as whoever they want. They make their life by thieving, but in the process prove more honest than most “respectable” citizens. A triumph of character and pacing.
5) Michael Garrigan, “Postindustrial Wilderness” for Orion Magazine / This brief Garrigan essay is worth reading, then reading again until it settles (or unsettles) in. The piece beautifully functions as a lament for paradise lost, and also a call to dig your heels into turned-over soil and find the wonders that remain. Garrigan writes:
It is easy to fetishize untouched wilderness—distant places where we might connect with something sublime, something larger than ourselves. But while we turn our gaze away, we ignore what we stand on until, inevitably, attention is drawn to what we already have.