1) Merce Lemon, “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild” / I’m still wrapping my mind and heart around the songs on Merce Lemon’s latest; this music somehow delicately knocks you on your ass, excavating the spaces between what makes the world beautiful and where beauty decays. Lemon’s attention to detail and the way her voice somehow touches every part of you at once draws you into a deeply human experience.
2) Clem Snide, “Smothered and Covered Vol 2” / Eef Barzelay and Co. create a terrific, unassuming covers record and truly honor these songs by absorbing their spirit, then playing at the edges a bit—ever-so-slightly altering melodies and cadences to conjure up fresh meaning. Clem Snide tackles everyone from Dylan to Cohen, Journey to Daniel Johnston here and makes them all sound a part of the same musical universe.
3) Trace Mountains, “Into the Burning Blue” / Dave Benton’s songs create the right space, the right momentum to lay down vocals that are tender and reflective yet with eyes fixed ahead. Fans of indie acts like Wild Pink, The War on Drugs and later Death Cab for Cutie will find much to love in the latest Trace Mountains.
4) Elisa Gabbert, “Any Person is the Only Self” / Gabbert’s latest is my favorite of her work, which is saying a lot—this is literary and cultural criticism undertaken both with great rigor and great sensitivity, and an eye toward the only trait of art that truly matters; that is, how it makes us more human.
5) Sarah Manguso, “Ongoingness” / Manguso’s slender 2015 offering (which comes recommended via Gabbert’s work) is a true gem among memoirs. Detailing, with a sixth sense of perception and dimensionality, the close of a decades-long diary, Manguso sifts how we remember, what we remember and how our records of the world shape us as much as we shape them. Her pull toward, and away from, giving personal testimony feels especially relevant at this stage of my life and fills my mind with blessed questions.
And I’m forgetting everything. My goal now is to forget it all so that I’m clean for death. Just the vaguest memory of love, of participation in the great unity.