1) Belle and Sebastian, “A Bit of Previous” / There are two bands I implicitly trust to deliver the goods when it comes to smart, sardonic power-pop: The New Pornographers and Belle and Sebastian. The first two tracks on the Scottish band’s latest—“Young and Stupid,” “If They’re Shooting at You”—might actually be perfect. The former is a gift of guitar and violin, the wistful edge of poetry and sublime descant parts; the latter feels like a secular gospel tune, complete with Memphis horns, handclaps and a backing choir. From there, the band delivers another satisfying, tuneful effort, a worthy addition to their significant canon.
2) Warpaint, “Radiate Like This” / This L.A. collective never wastes a moment, never presents a measure’s worth of dull music. The best moments on the band’s first record in six years are slinky, sexy, atmospheric and primed to soar. Some of the best sounds you’ll hear this year arrive via “Radiate Like This.”
3) Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, “Endless Rooms” / I’m always excited to learn this Australian band has new songs on the way; their latest sticks to a blueprint without ever sounding formulaic: ‘90s rock jangle and gliding grooves frame delightfully raw vocals.
4) Michael Wear, “Food and the Life of the Nations” for Mere Orthodoxy / Wear delivers a soulful meditation on identity and belonging, its greater ideas framed by the intimacy of a shared table. He writes affectionately about learning who (and whose) you are through a series of meals as conversations:
This is how I experienced life growing up, the way in which food seemed to express and implicate everything else. If anything was left on someone’s plate, my grandmother would half-tease, half-plead with them that they had “left the best part.” The morsel of meat stuck to the end of a rib that had spent the day in a simmering pot of sauce? The best part. The starchy broth leftover from a bowl of macaroni and peas? The best part. This sentiment conveyed the importance of not wasting food, as well as the care with which it was made. It also expressed the care you were subject to when you were eating.
5) Catherine Pierce, “Party” for Court Green / I trust few poets the way I trust Pierce; she regularly unearths something like joy and wonder in the early stages of apocalypse, and this piece is such a specific, clarifying example of her brilliance.
See, the bike rack
gets it, all stolid in gunmetal and rust.
The lamppost, grim, unbending. But
look at the daffodils—Jesus! The dandelion
poking its grinning sunhead through the mulch
that someone spread so carefully just
last week.