1) The music of Andrew Bird / Gliding back through Bird’s catalog, especially his most recent albums, I feel both the lightness and heaviness in his work. The songwriter, while refined and rehearsed, sits with the weight of the world, then casts a melody—in full voice, strings or even a quavering whistle—as a sort of signal back out into the world that beauty and life and something gentle remain.
2) Hannah Jadagu, “Aperture” / To learn that Jadagu was still in college—is still in college—when recording these indie-pop dreams felt like a wonderful promise being made. How many more years and songs might we get if Jadagu feels up to the task. And it is a matter of the artist’s feeling and control, because these songs show she’s more than capable of enchanting us as long as she wishes.
3) The music of Fog Lake / A new record, “midnight society,” sent me reeling into the music of Canadian songwriter Aaron Powell. There is something truly captivating, charming in a hypnotic way (or the other way around?) about Powell’s work. It’s atmospheric, idiosyncratic, unconventionally catchy, absolutely worth being immersed within.
4) Dave Eggers, “The Eyes & The Impossible” / I’m smitten with the latest from Eggers, a novel ostensibly for young readers but ready to yield delights across audience. Written from the ancient wisdom of a dog who oversees life in a vast island park, the story becomes a lovely meditation on friendship, genuine freedom, the way art reshapes us and more. There are long, lovely sentences here worth languishing in (a sort of stream-of-canine-consciousness) and adventure enough to keep younger hearts engaged.
5) Nicholas Mainieri, “The Ax Man Cometh, Again” for Belt Magazine / Baseball eases my mind and restoreth my soul enough to place me in touch with my inner lyricist. And so I resonate with lyrical writing about the game—its fine touches, its straining comebacks and, at its best, its atmosphere of mutuality. Mainieri’s profile of relief pitcher John Axford bears all those things (and more), buoyed by Axford’s personality and the author’s insightful prose. Even if you don’t know the Ax Man, there’s something human for you here.
Time, I suppose, is undefeated. Smarter people than me have called baseball itself an antidote to that plain fact, but I’m not sure how you square it with the other oft-cited observation that baseball is best understood as a game designed to break your heart.