1) The music of Ben Lee / I know Ben Lee is Australian. I know it. But still I want to claim him as a national treasure. Working my way back through his catalog, I’m impressed again at the high emotional and pop-culture IQ in his songs, and the way he writes immediately accessible hooks that are just idiosyncratic enough to avoid sounding worn-out.
2) Open Mike Eagle, “Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering” / Mike Eagle’s latest reminds us he is the current and undisputed creative champion of hip-hop. He keeps his arrangements (and by natural extension, his listeners) on their staccato toes; and his lyrics remain fresh, funny and at the poetic edge of left field.
3) Jeff Rosenstock, “Hellmode” / A punk-rock Pied Piper, Rosenstock knows how to lovingly shove listeners toward what actually takes hold and satisfies. The songs on “Hellmode” never deny the storms of our modern lives—they just prefer to get louder, gnarlier and ultimately more big-hearted than the storms.
4) Haruki Murakami, “Drive My Car” from “Men Without Women” / I’ve finally read the Murakami story which inspired the 2021 Oscar-winning film (which means I can finally surrender to the film). I genuinely sense some sort of interior distress signal if I haven’t read Murakami in months, and this story scratched the itch for now; he is a true master at drawing the mystery from ordinary interaction, and this tale of marriage and motion, questions with obvious answers and no answers at all, only underlines his superpower.
5) Sarah Sanderson, “The Place We Make” / Sometimes I glance over my shoulder at the ways of other societies, their reckoning with and reconciliation of great national sins. And I wonder what would it look like for America to find a similar way. I think Sarah Sanderson’s new book shows us one possible answer, at least on the personal and communal level (which is nothing to say “at least” about).
Sanderson wrestles with a historic but all-too-quiet case of racial exclusion in her home state of Oregon, her familial connections to this swept-under-the-rug tragedy and what it means to repent of white supremacy. “The Place We Make” is lyrical and gorgeous, tragic and tortured, and ultimately a beautiful and necessary picture of what it means to start making piece within and around yourself.