1) Drive-By Truckers, “Welcome 2 Club XIII” / The weary princes of Southern rock are back with an album full of ragged glories, ne’er-do-wells and just enough hope that the world might change.
2) Polica, “Madness” / Polica leader Channy Leaneagh is a natural force capable of shaking the trees and soaking the earth. Yet again, she and her band harness that elemental power by setting it against cool yet complex waves of sound. Polica lands near the top of my list of perpetually underrated bands, but once you hear them, you can’t be the same.
3) S.G. Goodman, “Teeth Marks” / I absolutely adore this record from Kentucky songwriter S.G. Goodman; I want to swim around in its shimmering pools of melancholy and resolve. Goodman owns a remarkable voice—quavering with power and vulnerability—and a lyrical perspective to match.
4) Chelsea Bieker, “Heartbroke” / No one writes about desire and disappointment, real and functional religions—and the slim spaces between these forces—quite like Chelsea Bieker. I was captivated last year by time spent with her novel “God Shot” and, here in this story collection, Bieker explores consonant themes while breaking strange new ground. There’s a sort of 21st-century Flannery O’Connor quality here (if O’Connor’s locus was the American West, and not the South) as Bieker proves unafraid to go dark or get weird in search of fundamental truths about why we treat each other the way we do.
5) Chris Abani, “Smoking the Bible” / Writing his away across physical and more soulful distances between his two homes—Nigeria and the American Midwest—poet Abani creates a wonderful digest of time, place and experience. Abani’s work sings sweetest and strongest when he explores the elemental.
Consider lines like these:
“A train travels through a Midwestern cornfield, / yellow slants to gold as the sun leans heavy on the horizon; / this meager harvest of memory and hope—/this entropy of a coffee cup half spilling into / a wash of half-truths. A sweet decline.” (From “Nostalgia”)
Or “Outside, snow travels in unhurried drifts. / Inside the overheated train, fog shrouds / the dirty window, drawing mottled patterns. / A second landscape of impermanence and breath.” (From “Cameo: Broach”)