The Year of Magical Listening

FEATURING  ICEMAN by Drake, released by OVO in 2026. Listen     "Make Them Pay"   "Firm Friends"   "Janice STFU"   TRANSCRIPT  There are many things not to like about Drake. He is, for instance, not a particularly good rapper. His singing, if you can call it that, is even less remarkable. Lyrically, his songs express a monotonous solipsism and casual misogyny that is tiresome at best and disgustin...

FEATURING  A Wave That Will Never Break by WU LYF, released by LYF Recordings in 2026. Listen / Buy direct   "Letting Go"  "Love Your Fate"  TRANSCRIPT  It's impossible for me to hear this music without being brought back, fifteen years into the past, to when I first heard this band, and when they released their last record. The band has been virtually silent since then, and partly because of that...

FEATURING  Cruel Joke by Ken Pomeroy, released by Rounder Records in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Days Getting Darker"   "Bound to Rain"   TRANSCRIPT  Some pieces of music are so simple and pure that it's difficult to pin down just what's so remarkable about them. With this piece of music, I guess it's, first and foremost, the voice: so dulcet, expressive, and down to earth. But the instrumental a...

FEATURING  Jessica Pratt by Asher White, released by Joyful Noise Recordings in 2026, a reimagining of Jessica Pratt by Jessica Pratt, released by Birth Records in 2012. Listen ( Asher White / Jessica Pratt ) / Buy direct ( Asher White / Jessica Pratt )  "Night Faces" ( Asher White / Jessica Pratt )  "Casper" ( Asher White / Jessica Pratt )  TRANSCRIPT  How soon is too soon for hagiography? How so...

FEATURING  "Give-upping" by Disiniblud, from Disiniblud, released by Smugglers Way in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   TRANSCRIPT  What am I hearing? That is, perhaps, the fundamental question I hope any new piece of music I come across will pose. What I am constantly seeking is music that throws me into a state of bewilderment and also wonder. And this music, in all its shimmering brilliance, is a per...

FEATURING  How You Been by SML, released by International Anthem in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Daves"   "Chicago Three"   TRANSCRIPT  Jazz wasn't meant to be like this. And I'm not talking about this music's sound or arrangement or atonality. In all those respects, this is exactly how jazz should be: exploratory, experimental, playful, and free. No, I'm talking about something much more basic: t...

FEATURING  s h i n e by Tobias Jesso Jr., released by R&R in 2025. Listen   "Everything May Soon Be Gone"   "Black Magic"   TRANSCRIPT  Most of the album is like this: quiet and delicate, just a piano man at his piano, recorded so closely that you can hear the air in the room, the creaks of the chair, the rise and fall of the piano's pedals. It's an intimate affair. Yet as much as I love this,...

FEATURING  Nexus by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, released by Latency in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Particle"   "Swamp"   TRANSCRIPT  The first thing I hear is time: the time that has passed since I first heard this artist and since I decided to feature them on the very first episode of this show. Now, five years later and fifty episodes in, the artist is back and I have returned to the place where i...

FEATURING  Baby by Dijon, released by R&R / Warner Records in 2025. Listen   "Yamaha" "HIGHER!" "Baby!"   TRANSCRIPT  How do I even begin to describe this music? Its unruly beauty – its unlikely collage - and then, this piercing vocal, cutting through the tempest aswirl around it – and then, this heartbeat, grounding us in place. This song defies my expectations at every turn, every second bri...

FEATURING  "June Guitar" by Alex G, from Headlights, released by RCA Records in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   TRANSCRIPT  There are some songs I think of as just perfect. It's a silly thing to think about any piece of music, but especially about something as humble as this. Yet there's an unmistakeable quality here, a potent mix of vulnerability, pathos, and yearning – a remarkable delicacy, like a...

FEATURING  Tether by Annahstasia, released by drink sum wtr in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Villain"   "Waiting"   TRANSCRIPT  What does it take for a piece of music to capture our attention? Can it come down to just one thing, a singular instrument, a miraculous voice? That's all I needed to hear. With a single phrase I am captivated, fascinated by this individual before my ears, unlike any other...

FEATURING  Paradise by The Westerlies, released by Westerlies Records in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Paradise"   "Fight On"   TRANSCRIPT  Such a timeless thing, music – despite the fact that it exists in time, is inextricably bound to time, somehow it's able to transcend it.  I could tell you that this song was released this year, was recorded not long before that, but this says so little about h...

FEATURING  caroline 2 by caroline, released by Rough Trade Records in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Total euphoria"   "When I get home"     TRANSCRIPT  If this is the first time you're hearing this music, I envy you. And actually, if this is your first time, maybe stop listening to me talk about this music and give yourself a chance to hear it firsthand, unadulterated. I'll still be here when you'r...

FEATURING  For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) by Japanese Breakfast, released by Dead Oceans in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "Here is Someone" "Mega Circuit" "Picture Window" TRANSCRIPT  The best music, in my opinion, simply makes us listen, captivating our attention so fully that everything else falls away. So I guess it goes without saying that that's what this music does for me, unspooli...

FEATURING Cupid & Psyche 85 by Scritti Politti, released by Virgin Records in 1985. Listen / Buy direct "Absolute" TRANSCRIPT  Imagine, for a moment, that it's 1985, and a British band of post-punk Marxists have decided to pivot into pop. What would you expect their music to sound like? Abrasive? Ironic? Overly cerebral? Perhaps that would be the most likely story. But what if I told you it so...

FEATURING  LOWER by Benjamin Booker, released by Fire Next Time in 2025. Listen / Buy direct   "BLACK OPPS"   "NEW WORLD"   TRANSCRIPT  I never cease to marvel at how music in an instant can evoke a feeling or create a mood – and what's more, that it's able to do so in perpetually new ways, just through the careful selection and novel juxtaposition of sounds: a lacerating guitar tone, accentuated...

FEATURING  "As" by Stevie Wonder, from Songs in the Key of Life , released by Tamla Records in 1976. Listen   TRANSCRIPT  Classic songs are classic for a reason. And this song wastes no time. It just immediately launches into this immaculate verse, a silvery melody set atop prismatic chords, all to express that most quintessential of messages: "I'll be loving you always". It's an encapsulation of...

FEATURING  Curyman by Rogê, released by Diamond West Records in 2023. Listen / Buy direct   "Pra Vida"     TRANSCRIPT  It's a new year, and this isn't a New Year's song, but that doesn't stop it from feeling like one, from feeling like the song I need to have with me to face the year ahead: this energy, this vitality, this exuberance.  Just listen to this rhythm section: the classical guitar strum...

FEATURING  "Beautiful Horses" by Christopher Owens, from I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair , released by True Panther Records in 2024. Listen / Buy direct   TRANSCRIPT  Let's end the year with a little tenderness. Because what better time is there to open up and show how you feel, to bare your heart and say all the things that so frequently go unsaid.  ♪ Please don't nag at me ♪ Okay, perhaps...

FEATURING  "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released by Constellation in 2024. Listen / Buy direct     "RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD"   TRANSCRIPT  Must music have a meaning? Does it have any other choice? Obviously, music need not be representational; its sounds need not be taken to depict anything, concrete or abstract. But what, then, to make of the fact t...

FEATURING  "Viderunt Omnes" by Pérotin, performed by The Hilliard Ensemble, recorded and released by ECM in 1989. Listen   TRANSCRIPT  In the beginning was the word – a mere syllable – a solitary tone. And then, there were several. And just like that, there was music: harmony, rhythm, dynamics – but more than that, a strange, otherworldly beauty that seems to appear out of thin air, suddenly float...

FEATURING  Passage Du Desir by Johnny Blue Skies / Sturgill Simpson, released by High Top Mountain Records in 2024. Listen / Buy direct   "Swamp of Sadness" "Who I Am" TRANSCRIPT  I know it may not sound like it right now, but I'm here today to talk about country music and a masterful singer who knows just how to play it and how to play with what we expect it to be.  Now that sounds a little more...

FEATURING  brat by Charli XCX, released by Atlantic Records in 2024. Listen / Buy direct   "360" "365"   TRANSCRIPT  It had to happen. I had to talk about this album. It is brat summer, after all.  And you know what's so great about this song? It's not giving voice to some universal feeling, like the thrill of romance or the exuberance of youth. It's not even trying to be relatable. It's just a so...

FEATURING  I Am Toward You by How To Dress Well, released by Sargent House in 2024. Listen / Buy direct     "New Confusion" "Crypt Sustain" TRANSCRIPT  From its very first notes, it's like a beatific vision. Almost laughably so, with its arpeggiated harp, ethereal synths, and lush reverb. It welcomes us warmly, sweetly. But before long it will overwhelm our senses.  The first voice we hear sounds...

FEATURING  Sti.ll and Stil. by Taylor Deupree, released by 12k in 2024 and 2002. Listen ( Sti.ll / Stil. ) / Buy direct ( Sti.ll / Stil. )    "Snow/Sand (For Clarinets, Vibraphone, Cello & Percussion)" (2024) "snow/sand" (2002)  TRANSCRIPT  There's a story behind this music, and I'll get to it in time. You can't discuss this music without going into it. But to begin, I just want to take this m...