1) Ben Harper, “Bloodline Maintenance” / Some days, a Ben Harper record does more for the soul than the equivalent time at prayer. A righteous yearning and a willingness to luxuriate in simple gifts attend the work of this veteran songwriter. “Bloodline Maintenance” is just the latest in a long line of wonderful musical companions from Harper.
2) Dawes, “Misadventures of Doomscroller” / The latest from one of my favorite bands on the planet never disappoints; Taylor Goldsmith and his band of brothers (blood and chosen) find deceptively simple ways to turn a phrase or a measure of music just enough to make you see it as if for the first time. Much has been made of the increased jam band-orientation on “Doomscroller,” but the elongated instrumentals sound perfectly natural to me—the heart’s wordless response to all the wisdom Goldsmith sounds out in his lyrics. First the mind wraps around it, then the soul works it out.
3) The music of Florist / There is a gentleness in the songs of Emily Sprague and Co. that so much modern music is missing. Florist’s indie-folk sound is never slight, never recedes into the shadows like a wallflower; rather it bends toward even the smallest source of light, seeking beauty and a way to bloom.
4) Isaac Fitzgerald, “Dirtbag, Massachusetts” / Two chapters into Fitzgerald’s new best-selling memoir, I knew I would read it again. The book approximates Augustine’s “Confessions” if the saint found himself while working in dive bars and on porn shoots. “Dirtbag” is among the most spiritually nourishing memoirs I’ve read, even as Fitzgerald lives in a sort of lapsed Catholicism. Readers who appreciate a writing voice that’s distinct yet sensitive, strong and kind, will dig “Dirtbag.”
5) Shaun Anthony McMichael, “Rush Hour Broadcast of the Children’s Advent Choir” for Fathom / I love the images in this poem: inside-out rain, cars like ferries, a children’s choir cutting the noise and refreshing the soul. For all its traffic and movement, I found myself longing to live inside the world of this poem.
There’s a gridlock of the heart
that persists when the cars have all come home.
A cathedral looms. The moon shines
through its arched windows. The fallen
rain has settled into its walls. Inside is a silence
that the songs do not deny
but confirm.