1) Wild Pink, “ILYSM” / John Ross and his Wild Pink mates are on a hell of a run. After creating one of the very best records of last year (“A Billion Little Lights”), the band returns with another miniature American symphony, spacious atmospherics sealing its heartland rock like sky and stars. The songs here often travel more emotional terrain within the span of just a few minutes than on their predecessor, making “ILYSM” a deeply moving listen.
2) Plains, “I Walked with You a Ways” / Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Jess Williamson join forces on a record that reminds me of an AM country version of Indigo Girls. Not simply because of their twinned talents and harmonies, but because the songs here move forward with a quiet confidence, sending their melodies straight to the heart.
3) Camp Trash, “The Long Way, The Slow Way” / This Florida outfit creates smart, serrated rock and roll songs that live in a house with emo and punk as next-door neighbors on each side. These 12 songs will cause listeners to, in league with the title of the album closer, “Feel Something.”
4) Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan, “Faith, Hope and Carnage” / Essentially a book-long interview, this considered and always-candid conversation yields volumes of truth about creativity, grief and the forms our spirituality take. In one exchange, Cave offers this proverb:
It seems to me, life is mostly spent putting ourselves back together. But hopefully in new and interesting ways. For me that is what the creative process is, for sure — it is the act of retelling the story of our lives so that it makes sense.
5) Will Leitch, “Sad Kind of Way” / Really appreciated this newsletter entry from Leitch on catching a Bob Mould solo show, the fate of a generation of rock heroes and, ultimately, the sort of people we want to be as we age.
“There are two fundamental lessons that strike me as essential to growing older, lessons that, if you don’t learn them, you’re in danger of being miserable,” he writes. “The first is knowing what you are good at. The second is knowing what you are not.”
Find this, and the rest of Leitch’s newsletter, at https://williamfleitch.substack.com/.