1) The music of TV on the Radio / Reunion rumors and realities sent me back to the TV on the Radio catalog, and I wonder if there’s ever been a more perfect band to blindly recommend to friends or strangers. Love pop? Rock? Cool funk? They’re here for you. Interested in super-catchy choruses or artful dodges? They have both. Killer on their records and even better live? You know it. Just one of the most versatile, easy-to-love bands I can imagine.
2) Shovels and Rope, “Something is Working Up Above My Head” / Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst are forever up to something special. The vocal blend, and songwriting bent, from these partners in life and music touch the soul in ways no one else can. True as ever (and true in new ways) on their latest.
3) Midwife, “No Depression in Heaven” / Anyone who knows me can appreciate the magnetic pull exerted by the title of Midwife’s latest. More than this, what’s on the record is exactly what I needed to hear: Madeline Johnston’s dark, sensitive, ethereal guitar joints console from an unsettled place.
4) Dummy, “Free Energy” / This L.A. band takes a different way into and around the current shoegaze boom, mingling magnetic beats and colorful synths with washes of guitar to create something that baptizes and leans into a certain verve.
5) Ewen Glass, “Placing in a Competition” for HAD / Oh, what it feels like to be wrecked by tenderness. Ewen Glass accomplishes that right devastation here in a poem that had me contemplating my own place among fathers and sons.