1) The songs of Bridget Kearney / Best known for her work as the supremely talented bassist/more-than-a-backing vocalist with Lake Street Dive, Kearney teases a forthcoming record with songs like “Obsessed” and “Security Camera.” These cuts bear a simple but sublime vibe and subtly charged adornments, suggesting Kearney’s work continues to deepen and widen.
2) The music of Nightmares on Wax / Since the early ‘90s, George Evelyn and friends have been releasing records brimming with dynamic electronic music. A deep dive reveals a multi-dimensional catalog, and a sound that’s ambient enough to be consoling, vibrant enough to spur dreaming in Technicolor.
3) Meatbodies, “Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom” / Somewhere between paisley-patterned psychedelia and the propulsive side of grunge, the latest from this L.A. band envelops and enlivens the listener.
4) Adam Petty, “The Good News Caboose” for Short Story, Long / This Adam Petty story is smart and wry and devastating, both in its painful accuracy about a certain time, place and spirit among American evangelicals—and in its Lynch-ian twists and turns.
We attended an evangelical congregation where congregants raised their hands and cried during services. I did neither, my blandness unshakeable.
5) Amy DeBellis, “Julia, Unremembered” for Tiny Molecules / Here, DeBellis crafts a stunner: questions of identity and isolation become tangible in the slightest gestures, the motion in these sentences chiseling away at something inside you.
Julia has record after record of where she’s been and what she’s done—CCTV footage, call logs, store receipts—and nobody says she’s lying, exactly, but nobody can confirm with their own memories what Julia insists is true.