The Year of Magical Listening

FEATURING  This Ain't The Way You Go Out by Lucy Rose, released by Communion Records in 2024. Listen / Buy direct     "Light As Grass" "Could You Help Me" "The Racket" TRANSCRIPT  I thought I had heard everything the piano could do. And then I heard this.  What a way to announce yourself. It's a deceptively simple accompaniment, keeping time like a metronome and moving between just a few chords. B...

FEATURING  Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee, released by Anti- in 2024. Listen / Buy direct     "3 Sisters" "Right Back to It" TRANSCRIPT  This is an artist who knows exactly who they are. They know exactly who "you" are, too, the second person in all their lyrics. Every song on this record feels like a frank conversation that needed to happen. It might seem accusatory if it didn't sound so sweet. But...

FEATURING  KNOWER FOREVER by KNOWER, self-released in 2023. Listen / Buy direct     "Knower Forever"   "Do Hot Girls Like Chords?"   "It Will Get Real"   "I'm The President"   TRANSCRIPT  I'm ashamed to say it now, but I didn't think I liked this music at first. I resisted it, even. It seemed, to put it simply, too much. And by the way, this music, what's playing right now: it's nothing like the r...

FEATURING "Free From the Guillotine" by Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, from Dancing on the Edge, released by Sophomore Lounge in 2023. Listen / Buy direct TRANSCRIPT I want to do something that's not easy for me to do on this show: I want to talk about an artist who's first and foremost a lyricist. Which means I will be talking over the very lyrics I want to highlight. It ain't gonna be pret...

FEATURING "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl, from If I Should Fall from Grace with God released by Warner Music in 1988. Listen TRANSCRIPT Here's another one that fell through the cracks, another song I have no right not to have heard until now. And I couldn't even get to it in time for Christmas. But like the song's narrator, let's pretend that it's an earlier time an...

FEATURING "Psychedelic Switch" by Carly Rae Jepsen, from The Loveliest Time , released by 604 Records in 2023. Listen TRANSCRIPT This is an ode to my song of the year – the song I played more times than any other song, and that played in my head countless more times than that – a perfect song, an electric song, an unstoppable, irresistible song that never failed to sweep me up and carry me away. T...

FEATURING Motewolonuwok by Jeremy Dutcher, released by Secret City Records in 2023. Listen / Buy direct ( digital | physical )   "Skicinuwihkuk" TRANSCRIPT The first sounds we hear are the music of nature: the harmonies of birdsong, the rhythm of the land underfoot. The next sounds we hear are the music of language: poetic speech in a seldom-heard tongue. It's like an invocation of the music that...

FEATURING "Solo for Tamburium" by Catherine Christer Hennix, composed and performed for MaerzMuzik in 2017, and released by Blank Forms Editions in 2023. Listen / Buy direct TRANSCRIPT A constellation of notes slowly comes into view, filling up the night sky with light. From darkness comes illumination; from silence comes reverberation; from nothing comes, seemingly, everything – every pitch, ever...

FEATURING Javelin by Sufjan Stevens, released by Asthmatic Kitty in 2023. Listen / Buy direct   "Will Anybody Ever Love Me?" TRANSCRIPT The first thing I noticed was how familiar it all felt: this fingerpicking, these harmonies, this dear little voice. And more than that, the distinctive flood of emotions that was instantly stirred up inside me. This music felt – and still feels – like reuniting w...

FEATURING Fountain Baby by Amaarae, released by Interscope Records in 2023. Listen / Buy direct   "All My Love" "Angels in Tibet" "Co-Star" TRANSCRIPT I loved this music from the moment I heard it, from the very first notes of its opening melody, with its haunting oscillation between dominant and tonic, and this ghostly choir of distant voices gradually surfacing amid a groundswell of strings. And...

FEATURING Maps by billy woods and Kenny Segal, released by Backwoodz Studioz in 2023. Listen / Buy direct "Soft Landing" "The Layover" "FaceTime" "NYC Tapwater" TRANSCRIPT Here's a little secret: When I listen to music, the lyrics are typically what I hear last. I am drawn to the sounds and harmonies and rhythms; but the words often pass me by. Which may make a lyrical genre like hip-hop seem like...

FEATURING Nymph by Shygirl, released by Because Music in 2022. Listen / Buy direct "Woe" "Wildfire" "Firefly" "Coochie (a bedtime story)" TRANSCRIPT The music starts, and we are immediately surrounded by voices: oohs and aahs and scrambled chatter. It's like we've stepped inside the artist's mind and are about to discover what's there. And when we arrive we are greeted by even more voices: a cooin...

FEATURING "Pretty in Possible" by Caroline Polachek, from Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, released by Sony Music in 2023. Listen / Buy direct TRANSCRIPT You'd never guess it, but this is a song that defies all expectations of what a pop song must be. There's no chorus, or verses really; there's barely any chord changes. But for all that, it's still a bop. We begin a cappella, nothing more than a...

FEATURING Self Help by Future Teens, released by Triple Crown Records in 2022. Listen / Buy direct "Well Enough" "Doorknob Confessional" TRANSCRIPT Sometimes music helps us realize something about ourselves. And what this music made me realize is that I'm still a sucker for emo pop. We all have our nostalgias, and I guess this is mine. I don't know if this music has universal appeal. I don't know...

FEATURING Premonition by White Lung, released by Domino in 2022. Listen / Buy direct "Hysteric" "Bird" TRANSCRIPT Some music grabs you from the moment you hear it, and some music grabs you by the throat, doesn't let go, and drags you along with it as it drives itself into the ground. This music is pure energy, blistering intensity, breathless velocity, an unrelenting wall of sound. It exists at ju...

FEATURING Bruised Orange by John Prine, released by Asylum Records in 1978. Listen "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round" "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)" TRANSCRIPT This artist is no secret. Bob Dylan named them as one of his favourite songwriters. Johnny Cash cited them as one of his few sources of inspiration. Bonnie Raitt called them the next best thing to Mark Twain. But up until a cou...

FEATURING Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messiaen, performed by Martin Fröst, Janine Jansen, Lucas Debargue, and Torleif Thedéen, released by Sony Classical in 2017. Listen TRANSCRIPT With text from Orfeo by Richard Powers, published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2014. Buy

FEATURING The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen, released by Interscope Records in 2022. Listen "Surrender My Heart" "Talking To Yourself" "Joshua Tree" TRANSCRIPT It's generally a mistake to approach pop music intellectually – to explain its appeal by reference to the precepts of musical theory and compositional technique. And not because pop music doesn't reward such analysis; it absolutely doe...

FEATURING RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé, released by Parkwood Entertainment in 2022. Listen / Buy direct "I'M THAT GIRL" "COZY" "ENERGY" "BREAK MY SOUL" "AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM" TRANSCRIPT What more can be said about Beyoncé? What more can be said about this record? So much has already been said. I mean, when the world's greatest pop star releases their long-awaited seventh album, people tend to notice. A...

FEATURING Boat Songs by MJ Lenderman, released by Dear Life Records in 2022. Listen / Buy direct "Hangover Game" "You Have Bought Yourself a Boat" "Under Control" TRANSCRIPT The record begins, naturally enough, with a song about the 1997 NBA Finals. The Chicago Bulls are in Utah, it's the night before Game 5, and Michael Jordan, at the peak of his career, is keeled over on his hotel room floor. He...

FEATURING Gospel Train by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, released by Mercury Records in 1956. Listen "I Shall Know Him" "Jericho" "Cain't No Grave Hold My Body Down" "99 1/2 Won't Do" TRANSCRIPT You never just hear the music itself. Music always exists in relation to other music in our minds. Each piece of music reminds us of countless others, becoming a kaleidoscopic soundscape of sonic resonances and re...

FEATURING SINNER GET READY by Lingua Ignota, released by Sargent House in 2021. Listen / Buy direct "PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE" "THE ORDER OF SPIRITUAL VIRGINS" TRANSCRIPT Music, in its best moments, feels otherworldly. It speaks to us as if from another plane of existence. It's hard to say what exactly it is that gives music this ethereal quality, but you know it when you hear it, because of how it ma...

FEATURING Songs by Willie Dunn, originally recorded and released in 1971 and reissued in 2021 on Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies from Light in the Attic Records. Listen / Buy direct "I Pity The Country" "Charlie" TRANSCRIPT This is not my story to tell. The story is the singer's, and it's right there in these songs. It's a story of colonization, and a story of resistance. It's the story...

FEATURING "Kusuri o Takusan" (くすりをたくさん) by Taeko Onuki (大貫 妙子), from Sunshower, released by PANAM in 1977. Listen TRANSCRIPT The wonderful thing about pop music is that, when it works, it just works. You don't have to think about it. It just makes you feel good. Like a warm summer breeze, or soft ocean waves, you just let the sound wash over you and take that feeling in. I can't say wh...

FEATURING "Robber" by The Weather Station, from Ignorance, released by Next Door Records in 2021. Listen / Buy direct TRANSCRIPT A folk singer is a singer with something to say. And although this singer hasn't yet spoken a word, the music is already saying so much. We can hear it in the halting rhythm of the drums, the aimless harmony of the saxophone, the punctuated melody of the strings, and the...