1) Bon Iver, “Sable,” / I can’t quite count the number of times I’ve drawn consolation, inspiration, restoration from Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver project. Just in time, a new Bon Iver EP arrives to surround my spirit and testify to the “Things Behind Things Behind Things” and the beautiful, staggering inevitability of change.
2) Porridge Radio, “Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me” / Beyond its perfect title, the latest record from this London outfit has an undeniable magnetism; Dana Margolin and her bandmates craft compelling emotional narratives set to a dynamic range of indie rock that’s well-crafted yet lets the seams show.
3) High Vis, “Guided Tour” / From another London band, a sharp and surrounding sound that immediately reaches out to listeners on its opening title track, fulfilling its promise to guide this tour of post-punk and new New Wave.
4) Louise Erdrich, “The Mighty Red” / Few of our storytellers mine the sad, sacred spaces between people—then show how those spaces add up to a whole community—like Erdrich. Her latest sets a character-rich, often comical tale of too-young brides and grooms against the depression of a North Dakota town and the darkness living at its edges. To follow Erdrich’s sentences is to see what’s so wrong here and be swept up with these people anyhow.
5) Anna Marie Tendler, “Men Have Called Her Crazy” / This memoir from artist Anna Marie Tendler is a finely-wrought, sometimes beautifully painful (and painfully beautiful) collection of moments, interspersing dispatches from a psychiatric hospital with memories of troublesome men and fraught family dynamics. The best memoirs bring you into rooms with the author, to feel what they feel; Tendler achieves this relationship with the reader and we are better for it.