1) Julien Baker, “Little Oblivions” / Baker’s latest is a (very) early contender for my personal Album of the Year; the 25-year-old singer-songwriter is three-for-three so far, each of her albums qualifying as masterpieces. The narrative around “Little Oblivions” (understandably) centers on Baker going full band, instead of living in the space and sparse sonics of her two previous efforts. Nothing changes in terms of quality or emotional impact—it’s just that now the natural swell in Baker’s singing and storytelling is matched in the instrumentation. Doubt, catharsis, vulnerability and hard-won hope collide here, offering light in darkness.
2) Cloud Nothings, “The Shadow I Remember” / Among the most consistent, compelling bands on the indie-rock spectrum, Dylan Baldi and Co. offer another set of hard-charging guitars, high-wire hooks and emotional satisfaction. Baldi’s work splits the difference between melodic grunge influences and a brand new way of living in the loud and soft.
3) Cassandra Jenkins, “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature” / This album from Cassandra Jenkins moved out of my peripheral vision to knock me flat. Remarkable songcraft, shaded nuance and a bent toward the avant-garde allow Jenkins to create songs that hit the head and heart in equal measure.
4) Maurice Chammah, “Let the Lord Sort Them” / On the issue of the death penalty, I was radicalized (as the saying goes) by a nun. Sister Helen Prejean’s unsinkable, soulful activism recalibrated my understanding of justice, mercy and the way one must be fulfilled by the other. Chammah’s new book, subtitled “The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty,” simply adds support to conviction. A thoughtful, journalistic text, “Let the Lord Sort Them” documents both systemic and individual pendulum swings on the subject and describes—rather than prescribes—the landscape for readers.
In a favorite, deeply moving passage, Chammah depicts exactly what his own work does. He tells the tale of lawyers learning to see death-row prisoners with the same clarity and compassion evidenced in his own writing:
In order to defend someone properly, you had to study the “diverse frailties” that had produced the act of violence the state was now seeking to punish. And once you did that, you no longer saw these men as monsters; you saw the state as a monster, for refusing to look as you had looked, for turning its head in order to placate the same kinds of public impulses that had created lynchings decades earlier.
5) Courtney LeBlanc, “The Night My Father Died We Made My Brother-in-Law Watch Dirty Dancing” for Whale Road Review / This poem from Courtney LeBlanc is a tragic miracle of time, grief and release. The writer describes the seemingly insignificant moments that gather gravity in their setting: the last hours of a family member’s existence.
And when my dad’s brothers and sister arrived I greeted them in the driveway, the day cruelly bright and beautiful. It took his brothers three tries to make it into the house, three tries to say goodbye. My aunt called my sister by the wrong name but none of us corrected her. And then my dad’s best friend showed up. It took him thirty minutes and four cigarettes to gain the courage to hold his hand.
By the poem’s end, its speaker has said goodbye and turned to the soul comforts of pop culture, companionship, “nostalgia and distraction and a happy ending” and the promise that life goes on.