1) Yo La Tengo, “Old Joy” EP / The low-key indie icons both sound just like themselves and fork at slightly different paths on this companion to the nearly 20-year-old Kelly Reichardt film.
2) Panda Bear, “Sinister Grift” / While I typically haven’t run too hot or cold on the music of Animal Collective and its members, the latest from the artist otherwise known as Noah Lennox hit home with its seemingly fathomless pop grooves and an air mingling melancholy and fancy.
3) Deep Sea Diver, “Billboard Heart” / The new one from Jessica Dobson and Co. swirls colors and curls sounds till it achieves anthemic heights and emotional depths.
4) Paige Lewis, “Space Struck” / I was deeply moved throughout this 2019 collection of poems from Lewis which often finds the burning heart of love and the biting teeth of our broken social contract with anyone who isn’t a man.
5) Rigoberto González (ed.), “Latino Poetry” / What a gift editor González and the Library of America give us with this anthology, chronicling these centuries’ worth of treasures in the form of poems from across the Americas. By turns formal, soulful, cutting and healing.