1) Courtney Barnett, “Things Take Time, Take Time” / A few critics have noted (some even bemoaning) the more laid-back, mid-tempo feel on the Aussie rocker’s latest. I, for one, don’t mind at all.
First off, the title jogs my memory back to a Mary Oliver line: “Things take the time they take / Don’t worry. / How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?” More important, Barnett’s voice (physically and lyrically) is among the most unique of our generation, and this latest dispatch sounds out that voice in familiar and fresh ways. The arrangements perfectly frame that voice, and allow Barnett to reach the listener with thoughts sublime and strange.
2) Houndmouth, “Good For You” / I’ve always reacted to the electric ache of Houndmouth’s music. The band’s latest continues to bottle up that pain, then set it free to console listeners.
3) Alissa Wilkinson, “Procession is a doc about the Catholic sex abuse scandal. Its approach is wholly unexpected.” for Vox / Wilkinson is one of our best critics, and sharpest thinkers on the gloriously messy overlap between faith and art. Here, she reviews the remarkable “Procession,” Robert Greene’s film about clergy abuse survivors creating and healing together. (Because Greene lives in my town, I also wrote about the film. You can read my piece here.)
The review, as the best reviews are, is an act of bearing witness. As Wilkinson makes plain and powerful, that’s all the more important here:
Now, having been called to literally hear their testimony and their experiences — just as I might in a church — I have been made a witness. I can’t turn away or pretend the statistics are faceless, even if I want to. I know too well that’s exactly what happened to them in a church that was supposed to be a spiritual home; the people who ought to have protected them instead made them prey.
In letting them retell those stories their way, and asking us to watch, Procession dares its audience to not look away. It calls us, in other words, to join the healing community, not just with vague aspirations but with our actual eyes. To play our roles as audience members and then take what we learn and bring it to others.
4) Martha Silano, “When We Say It’s the Little Things” for Image Journal / If this great writing project of mine has been about anything, it’s exploding the seemingly mundane into clearer relief and meaning. Martha Silano’s poem is a kindred spirit, and I just loved living in the little things with her.
5) Margaret Ray, “After” / This Margaret Ray poem, like Silano’s, deserves to be read over and again, to be relished. Flight patterns and grounded observations call us to see more. And I’ll be pondering these lines for a very long time: “& this is what beauty is for— / a trap to make us stay.”