Playlist – January 2023

Took a couple of weeks off and didn’t worry as much about trying to include all the great stuff I found on other’s year-end lists but also didn’t worry as much about some late-2022 stuff working its way onto this list. It feels good to get writing again. This took longer than usual because I reviewed or previewed seven events between the last week of January and the first week of February. As always, thank you for reading, listening, or both.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/f6b0a965-8dd5-46e6-87dc-6535d2aea92c

• Married FM, “Winesburg, Ohio” – This collaborative project of Beth Murphy Wilkinson (Times New Viking) and Emily Davis (Necropolis, The Ipps) came with significant expectations because I’ve been a fan of both of their bands for more than 20 years. It exceeded every one of those expectations handily, an EP of six songs I can’t get out of my head, a few of which rose to some of my favorite songs to ever come out of Columbus, including the lead-off track “Slay Nostalgia” and this closer, a perfect slice of bedroom pop that winks at Sherwood Anderson’s paeans to loneliness in its shared title. Everything is played by Davis and Wilkinson, with the addition of drums from longtime collaborator Michael O’Shaughnessy (El Jesus De Magico, Connections, Natural Sway). “I have a boyfriend; you have a girl. We just sit side by side in the world. Enough about you, enough about me. We’ve got Winesburg, Ohio, in our mind.”
• Fred Hersch and Esperanza Spalding, “Some Other Time” – Pianist Fred Hersch has been on an incredibly hot streak lately, with two astonishing records last year, and bassist/vocalist/composer Esperanza Spalding also put out one of my favorite jazz albums in the last year. This duo, recorded at the NYC jazz temple Village Vanguard in 2018, is stunning. Spalding’s voice stretches and casts this Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne standard in different colors and shadows, surprising even me, who’s been a fan for a long while. Hersch’s mastery of the duo format, knowing when to accompany and when to take the lead, has never shone brighter.
• Future Utopia featuring Kae Tempest, “We Were We Still Are” – Kae Tempest is one of my favorite writers working today; I knew their work through poetry before I’d delved into any of their musical work but quickly became just as big a fan. This track from Future Utopia, the current guise of British producer Fraser T Smith, is a perfect meshing of styles and curiosities, flashes of light around cobblestone-crushing clatter and a stop-start bass line that makes me want to move, spot-welded to lyrics that make me want to stop and catch every word. “Hello disorientation, my old friend. Welcome to the days of distortion, complex parades of illusion. Charades on course for destruction; dawn for the horsemen. An end is an end until it’s a beginning. Winning: we built this city on what we stole and then it ate us whole.”
• Margo Price featuring Mike Campbell, “Light Me Up” – I’ve been a fan of Margo Price since her time with the Pricetags, and I devoured her memoir last year in a way I had a harder time with the last album. Strays keeps that burnished, expansive beauty but brings back a little more of the swaggering intensity I missed on That’s How Rumors Get Started. This barn-burning slab of paranoid seduction, with blistering guitar work from Mike Campbell, is a dagger in the heart and a perfect lesson in the power of dynamics. “Take me down, shake the ground; make the world explode.”
• Adeem the Artist, “For Judas” – No Quarter’s one of my favorite labels for anything rootsy where the weirdness is omnipresent and key to the work but not stealing the show; but I was so heads down, sifting through what had already come out and arranging it, that I completely missed Adeem the Artist’s early-December breakthrough White Trash Revelry. My loss because it’s one of the best singer-songwriter records in the last decade; I caught up to it through someone online comparing the writing to Lori McKenna which is about as high of praise as I can imagine for this kind of narrative songwriting, and goddamned if it didn’t live up to that comparison and then some, a warm voice delivering intimate songs that could speak to anyone, with astonishing, sympathetic production from Kyle Crownover featuring a who’s who of some of the best musicians of the genre right now, like Lizzie No, Jake Blount, and Kristin Webber. You’d better believe I’ll be early in line to see them at Big Ears (unless someone I’m worried might die soon is up against that slot, I have every hope there’ll be years of Adeem the Artist work in front of all of us). “He whispered, ‘I’m not the kind to lie about leaving,’ with me clinging so tight to his chest. In a notebook on the rough-hewn walnut stand by his mattress, I had drawn ultimatums in a cursive mess, and then I never told anyone, kept it quiet, inspired by the urgency of the love we shared. Some of our friends say I’m still alive in it, and others don’t believe I was ever really anywhere. I gave my body and blood for the power of love and hoped that I would conquer sin. But I never even rose again.”
• All Powerful Sungoddess featuring Lee Tucker, “Easy” – My fellow freelancer for Columbus Underground, Lauren Sega, fronts this Columbus band with Eileen O’Sullivan. I missed the release show down the street from my house because it fell in line with my third bout with COVID but the record Greener, also featuring Seth Alexander whose work I knew from our robust jazz scene as producer and multi-instrumentalist, and Kyle Perkins (and trumpeter Lee Tucker on this track, perfectly smeared and bright). Orchestral folk accomplishing that hardest of tasks, songs like this one, about finding peace and living with the world without slipping into the maudlin and the saccharine. “Sometimes it’s hard to let a moment happen. It’s not made to prolong. Sometimes you think a good night can’t happen, and then it proves you wrong.”
• Ibex Clone, “Nothing Ever Changes” – This power trio, configured from a few of my favorite Memphis bands like NOTS and Ex-Cult, lead their upcoming All Channels Clear album on Goner Records with this beautiful piece of woozy, pounding jangle that’s a burst of heat and light I needed in these dark days of January but I bet will sound even better sitting on the porch or drinking in a parking lot with the summer sun beating down. “What’s the spin? Tell me now. Before this axis turns on itself.”
• Wally B. Seck, “Sexy Boy” – I got turned onto Senegalese singer Wally Seck through a conversation with a Lyft driver about Seck’s father, Thione Seck, who had recently passed away. I not only wrote down Wally’s name, I listened to his work the next morning and was an immediate fan. This single from Seck’s latest album Etat D’Esprit is another insinuating hook bobbing on waves of percussion almost as sweet and sticky as that glistening melody.
• Iggy Pop, “Strung Out Johnny” – Iggy Pop continues the late-career resurgence that started in earnest with the Josh Homme collaboration Post-Pop Depression, and while this collection of rock songs might be a hair less consistent, the high points, including this song, capture Pop as he is, leaning into the moment and telling the kind of stories he’s interested in, letting every nuance and crevice in his voice shine. “First time, you do it with a friend.”
• Obituary, “My Will To Live” – Since I was a teenager, Florida’s Obituary has occupied a high place in my pantheon. While I have a particular nostalgia for the original lineup, including Allen West on lead guitar – and was glad to get to see that first reunion tour at the Newport – their post-reunion records have remained extremely consistent, with the new one Dying of Everything another high water mark. The beefy groove on this one is a perfect vehicle for John Tardy’s unmistakable growl. “Sentence me to the sand. Liquefy my will to live.”
• Mr. Bow, “Mbilu Ya Mina Yi Happy” – This was my first exposure to Mozambican singer-rapper Mr. Bow, another example of being late to the party, and it’s a marvel, a lilting dance rubbing against the rhythm in a way that intrigues me, with a melody I can’t shake.
• CLC Trio, “Corcovado” – This pan-European jazz trio of guitarist Gustav Lundgren, bassist Ilaria Capalbo, and drummer Estefania Chamorro give us a gorgeous reading on one of my favorite songs, Jobim’s “Corcovado,” with the perfect blend of delicateness and mystery.
• Jacquees featuring Future, “When You Bad Like This” – My former work colleague and pal Cassie and I bonded over several things: a sarcastic sense of humor, a curiosity, a shared background in the West side of Columbus, and a love of R&B. She turned me on to a lot of contemporary artists I might not have known otherwise, including Jacquees. This single off his late 2022 album Sincerely For You, has the light touch and sense of humor, along with his thin but laser-focused voice, that makes his work so appealing to me, along with a delightfully woozy feature from Future that centers the seduction around Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. “Love the way that you came natural, easy decision, and I’m not here to complicate.”
• Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, “Darling, Be Home Soon” – I still talk about seeing the Campbell and Williams duo at Woodlands a few years ago, a simultaneously epic and intimate guided tour through the last 60 years of American music. If this early single from their new live album, recorded at Levon Helm’s barn, a rapturous, warm take on this Lovin’ Spoonful classic, is any indication, the record will capture that same far-reaching magic. “Go and beat your crazy head against the sky.”
• Angela Perley, “Wreck Me” – Current torch bearer of the Columbus roots rock tradition, Angela Perley makes better records every time she’s at-bat, and her new Turn Me Loose is another step forward, with more subtle playing from a band that includes longtime foil Chris Connor on guitar and jazz bassist Nate Smith, and songs that keep enough wildness and texture but feel like finely polished stones, especially this album closer. “Two-step, cigarette, are we gonna figure out this dance or quit?”
• John Cale, “Night Crawling” – One of the great pleasures of John Cale’s late-career work has been a resurging interest in rhythm. Sometimes – like the recasting of older material in cut-up fashion at Big Ears a few years ago or chunks of blackAcetate – it doesn’t work for me. Still, his new one, Mercy, combines those interests in aggressive, surprising rhythms, nuanced texture, and his career-long love of harmony into one of the most satisfying records of his career. This sleek, thrumming tribute to the ’70s New York demimonde that fueled one of his most creative periods and one of personal dissolution hit my sweet spot solidly but still left room for wonder. “I can’t even tell when you’re putting me on. We’ve played that game before.”
• Mick Harvey, “A Suitcase in Berlin” – Another fine writer, producer, interpreter, and translator who’s done some of his most acclaimed work as a collaborator, I love Mick Harvey’s solo work. This mood piece fits with the track before and the one after for its dive into the perpetual practice of picking up the pieces. The way – with diligence and attention – nostalgia can be the soil we plant our roots in, the way memories and gratitude can feed and nourish us instead of nostalgia as a numbing agent or a rotting disease. This reworking of a Marlene Deitrich classic features a cast of stunning musicians, and longtime collaborators, all playing with restraint, orbiting around Rosie Westbrook and Thomas Wydler’s rhythm section. “I still have a suitcase in Berlin. That’s why I go there whenever I can. The memories of times gone by, all inside that suitcase in Berlin.”
• Ingrid Laubrock and Andy Milne, “Kintsugi” – I first saw saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock in Brooklyn in 2009, the same year she moved there from her native Germany, in a trio with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tom Rainey and within the first minutes she was one of my favorite saxophone voices. I know Andy Milne’s work from great records by Ralph Alessi, John Hebert, and his own Dapp Theory band, and I interviewed him once for a preview but couldn’t make the show. This record of duets, Fragile, takes one of the sturdiest but also well-trod formats in jazz and makes it feel fresh, as exciting as dancing in a slow-motion explosion and simultaneously as intimate as whispering in your ear. I love the Japanese art of Kintsugi, repairing broken things and leaving a distinct gold where the cracks were, bringing them together but not making them perfect – in the same vein, one of my top five cigars that are always in the humidor is Alec Bradley’s Kintsugi. It’s a dazzling feat of interplay that never feels showy or ostentatious.
• Kæry Ann, “Imaginary Room” – This project of Italian singer-songwriter Erika Azzini, co-arranged with bassist Francesca Papi and guitarist Davide Rosa, with ominous, glowing drums from producer Andrea Volpato, has a slow night’s sky crawl that reminds me of early Neko Case and Nina Nastasia, filling a niche I always have room for, subtle settings for her chiseled lyrics and room-full-of-smoke melodies. “Air was filled up with our breath, with pleasure and joy. We’re going mad. Time stood still but the vinyl was turnin’ round.”
• Carliane Tamara, “Kiss in Public” – The intensity kicks up a little bit with this song, a dance-pop gem from New York-by-way-of-Puerto Rico singer-songwriter Tamara, with a laid back, assured in its questioning vocal that’s not terribly far removed from the mood of the previous fistful of songs but layered over skittering drums and making the most of that tension. “Wrote you in my diary, really want you to stay. Saw you in my dreams too much to let you get away.”
• Rian Treanor featuring Ocen James, “Rigi Rigi” – UK-based electronic producer  Treanor built instruments for this organic, live-sounding collaboration with Sudanese fiddle player Ocen James. I’m a sucker for slightly off-kilter dance music and this fits the bill to a t, something addictive I never could have expected.
• Ernie Vincent, “Midnight Rendezvous” – Dance music of a slightly more classic Americana stripe, New Orleans local legend Vincent’s new record Original Dap King (after his instrumental classic “Dap Walk”), created a perfect slab of vintage R&B with co-producers Matt Patton and Bronson Tew, and players including Jimbo Mathus. This horn-drenched delight is representative of what keeps me coming back to the record. “When the clock strikes two, we know just what to do.”
• FAMEYE featuring Peter, “2Am” – I was a little slow to catch onto Ghana-based rapper FAMEYE but I’m trying to catch up. This song is a magical slice of the current wave of afrobeats, produced by LiquidBeatz. I couldn’t find much about the featuring act, Peter, but there’s nothing I don’t love about this track.
• José James featuring Ebban Dorsey, “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long” – I was skeptical when it was announced that James was taking on the catalog of one of the finest writers and singers of our shared generation, Erykah Badu, but I’d been skeptical of his earlier tribute to Bill Withers too, and he keeps shutting me up by finding interesting angles on this towering work and a way to make it his own. This recent-ish classic, one of my favorite songs from New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, makes excellent use of a shuffling beat from Jharis Yokley’s drums and Ben Williams bass, sun-splashed keys from BIGYUKI, and Ebban Dorsey’s buttery alto. That almost-whisper on “Why do I feel you masking?” gives me chills every time.
• Chiild featuring Lucky Daye, “Good for Now” – This early taste of experimental soul project from Canadian artist Yonatan Ayal’s sophomore album sets the bar high with a supple, minimal groove and a swaying, serpentine melody, plus a vocal assist from Lucky Daye that knocks a wall down and lets the moonlight in. “When you get close, I get reckless; laying in the wreckage. And I can’t stay for breakfast.”
• Le Coco, “Cristales” – Miami-based Venezuelan artist Le Coco broke onto the world’s consciousness with “Dueno” and the early references included a lot of mention of trip-hop, a genre that’s mostly vanished in its primary form but resonates through a lot of pop genres. This tune bounces more than what I think of as the standard trip-hop groove, there’s a lighter touch and a definite club shine but the echoing, cinematic murk conjures some of my favorite work from that genre without feeling too beholden to it.
• Ledisi, “I Need to Know” – I really enjoyed Ledisi’s foray into the Nina Simone oevrue but I’m overjoyed to hear new originals from her. This wrenching ballad with torturously slow drums and keys floating like dust in a beam of light under a vocal that could burn down cities, is a prime example of what makes her one of our finest soul singers. “I don’t know what to do. Need to walk out the door, oh, but then I want you more.”
• Yazmin Lacey, “Late Night People” – Picking up the pace a little, this stellar end-of-a-club-night pulse pounder from UK-based singer and songwriter Lacey digs into the same kind of restlessness and longing  of the last few songs with a punchy drum beat and glittering keys around her grinning, sly vocal. “In the back seat of the taxi, on the road to no return, I set out early and my throat, it starts to tell flittering tales of my yearnings and my leanings. We all seek the same things, but we cover it well.”
• Chris Jones and The Night Drivers, “The Price of Falling” – We touch on that border between night and that first light of morning with this, a gentle tumble through dark truths of a song by these bluegrass stalwarts, with Jones’ warm tenor leading a crack but never overplaying band and sweet, high harmonies.”Sometimes an easy road, other times you pay for your heart’s calling.”
• Kali Malone featuring Stephen O’Malley and Lucy Railton, “Does Spring Hide Its Joy v2.1” – This also reminds me of the sun rising, especially in a city and especially in one of those transitional seasons like the Spring it references in its title. Composer Kali Malone worked through these long synthesizer pieces on her new record that shares its name with them all, with subtly accompaniment by Lucy Railton on cello and SUNN O)) leader Stephen O’Malley on guitar thickening, extending, and subverting the tones.
• GoGo Penguin, “Glimmerings” – I had an issue with GoGo Penguin at first, a little too much like a cross between The Bad Plus and a more accessible, bite-sized version of The Necks. But – and maybe it’s just me getting soft in my old age – this opening salvo from their upcoming record is beautiful, retaining those touchstones but expanding on lush harmony and pastoral qualities those earlier two bands didn’t explore in the same kind of beautiful detail.
• Melanie Dalibert, “A Song” – This penultimate tune from French composer Dalibert’s moving, rapturous piano suite Magic Square was the first of the album’s eight pieces to get its hooks in me and that opened up the entire gorgeous introspective scope of the work.
• JC Sanford, “Lonely Woman” – Trombonist JC Sanford’s album Imminent Standards Trio Vol 2 takes on mid-(last)century classics by composers like Tommy Flanangan, Dexter Gordon, and this stunning take on one of the best love Ornette Coleman pieces. Bassist Charlie Lincoln makes a meal out of the tune, paying appropiate homage to Charlie Haden’s original flamenco-tinged bass work but using that as a point of departure. Drummer Abinnet Berhanu lays back more in the cut but makes his presence felt, especially with sparkling cymbal work.
• Rachel and Vilray, “Join Me in a Dream” – I liked Lake Street Dive, but the minute I heard this duo of vocalist Rachel Price and guitarist Vilray at an outdoor tribute to Memphis Minnie on a Manhattan summer day, I needed to hear more. I Love a Love Song has some of the best contemporary songs using the form of standards I’ve heard in years, and the playing, fleshed out by masters like Larry Goldings on piano and organ (that solo near the end is a textbook example of deceptively easy mastery), David Piltch on bass, and Joe La Barbera on drums, is exemplary. “I’m here, patiently awaiting your return to me. For feeling so tired, I ran from your side, to join you in a dream.”
• Rozi Plain featuring Alabaster DePlume, “Agreeing for Two” – Rozi Plain’s subtle, introspective mood piece of a fifth album, Prize, keeps revealing secrets and new facets the more I listen. With a cast of killer players, including Kate Stables, James Howard, and Alabaster DePlume, she wraps ingratiating, gentle but tense melodies around lyrics carved out of space and what she’s not saying. “If nothing will do, it’s nothing we’ll do, but nothing makes me hungry.”
• Gabriels, “Angels & Queens” – This title track from LA’s Gabriels debut record slides from classic soul moaning into a minimal, narcotized blue howl and back, using the elements of maximalist arrangements to paint a very interior landscape. “I’ve been feeling alone, still believing that this would grow.”
• Scratcha DVA featuring Skream and Mez, “X Rated” – The minute I heard that first wave of dubstep – at this far remove from London or Manchester, interest stoked by message boards, Soulseek, and a little later The Wire – I was in love. One of my favorite singles of that period, and defining songs of my mid-20s and walking around at night, was Skream’s “Midnight Request Line.” I found grime around that same time and Scratcha DVA became one of my favorite producers a few years later. This co-production is a glee-grenade lobbed into a mirrorball, with idiosyncratic rapping from Mez, about whom I knew almost nothing before this.
• Oddisee, “Hard to Tell” – This internal taking-stock from DC-based rapper and producer Oddisee, with an assist of gorgeous strings from Felix Herbst and Fredeka and keys from Ralph Real, is a beautiful example of facing melancholy and existential despair but not being sucked into it. “I’m scrolling messages while being negligent to something relevant. It’s pretty evident it don’t take precedence if it questioning life.”
• boygenius, “True Blue” – I liked the first boygenius record but it didn’t wow me as much as its three members’ – Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker – individual work, but in true grower fashion those songs kept lodging themselves in my memory and making their presence felt. And if this early single from the group’s new record is any indication, it’s going to be astonishing. That crunching drum and the webs of synth set up those harmonies perfectly. “But it feels good to be known so well: I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself. I remember who I am when I’m with you.”
• Danny Arakaki, “Make It Out” – Singer-guitarist for Garcia Peoples, Danny Arakaki knocked me over with this solo record Tumble in Shade. Waves of haze that make me want to lean in closer and pick out the details, nowhere more than on this album closer. It balances the crunch of the New Weird America scene I loved so much in my early 20s with the laid-back swagger of ’70s Cali folk and R&B, using great players like former Columbusite Ryan Jewell on drums, Mike Bones from Endless Boogie on guitar, and Rachel Herman on violin. “No, I’m not the enemy so know me to lie to me. Crutches of official fools? No need to rely on these.”
• Deiquisitor, “Autosarcophogy” – Walking that line between crunch and deliberately paced swagger but at a louder volume and a world away, this Danish death metal band made probably their clearest, most accessible record without sacrificing any power on Apotheosis. When I talk about death metal, this is exactly what I’m looking for, dirty drums and alternately sharp and grinding guitar, a growl back in the mix and a breakdown that makes me want to go crazy.
• Djunah, “Seven Winds of Sekhmet” – This early taste of the sophomore album from Djunah, a collaboration between Donna Diane and Jared Karns, made it one of my most anticipated records of the year so far. Diane’s howl over a tense groove makes it all the sweeter when everything explodes, but the arrangement wisely doesn’t let that catharsis stick around, it pulls back in intriguing ways without selling out the forward motion and muscularity that got my attention in the first place. “Seven hells I ripen in flames at your doors.”
• Gloria Groove, Anitta, and Valesca Popozuda, “Proibidona” – This fist pumping, ass-shaking piece of carioca funk from one of the great drag music icons of Brazil, in collaboration with Anitta and Popozuda, their three voices occasionally blending but mostly throwing each other into dazzling relief, makes me wish I still knew clubs cool enough to play this.
• Algiers featuring Samuel T. Herring and Jae Matthews, “I Can’t Stand It!” – High in the running for my favorite current band, Algiers fired off this opening salvo from their new record Shook and set my expectations even higher than they already were. With ample assistance from Future Islands’ Herring and Boy Harsher’s Matthews, this streamlines the groove, pushing their gospel influence back to the fore, but surrounding that slinky rhythm and sumptous melody with as much noise and grit as a Bomb Squad track. “Every number repeating; they echo all that you said. It’s in the wind. Whatever it is, it’s almost here.”
• Nick Waterhouse, “Hide and Seek” – This advance single from Waterhouse’s new record The Fooler continues in the Roy Orbison-esque mode he started exploring on the last album, lush, laid-back drama with a finger-snapping rhythm and perfectly-placed backing singers. “Setting suns and scanning bars and peering through windshields of darkened cars. Getting dark and we are about to play hide and seek.”
• Rebecca Bakken, “Why” – I’d heard the name of Norwegian Rebecca Bakken over the years, but had never delved into her work before this Annie Lennox cover, an advance single of her upcoming Always on My Mind album. The pastoral backing, minimal bass and right-up-against-each-other guitar and keys, heartbeat drums, sets up a coiled, intense reading on this song I’ve always loved. “Let’s go down to the water’s edge, and we can cast away those doubts. Some things are better left unsaid but they still turn me inside out.”
• Rosa Passos Quartet, “Doralice” – Brazilian singer-guitarist Rosa Passos’s Samba Sem Vocé, recorded live at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival with a backing group of some of the finest musicians of her homeland, pianist Fábio Torres, bassist Paulo Paulelli, and drummer Celso de Almeida who provide sympathetic, radiant backing that never overshadows that pure-water voice and surprising, melodically tricky guitar. I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard this João Gilberto classic but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better version than this one.
• John Pizzarelli, “Just in Time” – Torch-bearer for classic vocal jazz, and the lineage of his father Bucky Pizzarelli, this first single from John Pizzarelli’s upcoming collection of tunes written for other media in Stage & Screen, bodes extremely well for the full record. This charming read on the Styne, Comden, and Green song from Bells Are Ringing (I’m quite sure my first exposure was the Dean Martin version from the movie) is a prime example of what he brings to the contemporary cabaret scene.
• Chad Fowler, “Sentient Sentiment” – I’m not sure I heard a record last year that better summed up that sense of possibility and visceral power that improvisation and especially the downtown New York scene gave me when I first heard it and, on the best of nights, still lights up inside me. Chad Fowler, stritch and saxello player, wrote in the lovely liner notes that he got this idea watching the great William Parker at the Parker-founded festival Vision Fest, and assembled an astonishing group for studio sessions he already had planned with drummer Steve Hirsh. William Parker on bass, Matthew Shipp on piano, Ivo Perelman and Zoh Amba (the one member of the band I haven’t seen yet but is at the top of my list to check at Big Ears). This gorgeous ballad that spirals out into ecstatic shouts is that kind of music at the height of its powers.
• Iris DeMent, “Workin’ On a World” – Continuing my trend of closing these playlists with a benediction, because I think I still need them. No one writes that style of song better than Iris DeMent and she’s been doing it since “Our Town” and “Let The Mystery Be.” This title track of her upcoming album is another classic of complicated comfort, honoring the struggle and the effort, because everything has to start there, shot through with glowing horns and clear, just-dirty-enough production from Richard Bennett, Jim Rooney, and Pieta Brown. “I’m joinin’ forces with the warriors of love who came before and will follow you and me. I get up in the morning knowing I’m privileged just to be working on a world I may never see.”