The Year of Magical Listening (Willie Costello)

FEATURING

Ritme Jaavdanegi by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, released by Latency in 2019. Listen / Buy direct

• "Tears of a Fakir : op1"
• "Riding Time"
• "Sudden Inspiration"

TRANSCRIPT

The first thing you hear is time. Not so much time's passing, or its pulse, but the dimension itself: pure Time, as it were. As a solo percussion performance, there is nothing to hear but time: no melody, no harmony, no lyric, just rhythm. And as much as the music brings you into time, it also brings you out of time, or, at least, out of regular time. Because the song's pulse is irregular, disarming, driving, hurtling forward. It seems to stretch out too long and then snap back too quickly, in a hiccuping hexameter of 5 long syllables followed by 1 short. The overall effect is a music that you cannot nod your head to, cannot tap your foot to, a music that resists the way we typically divide up time in our minds. As when a pungent flavour overwhelms one's taste, this music overwhelms our sense of temporality. All else stops, and only time moves forward.

The second thing you hear is space. Because this music is, in fact, not only rhythm. There is pitch and tonality here as well, which punctuate the metronomic rapping, lending it something like the prosody of spoken language: not quite melody, but far from mere percussive sound. Yet these tonal hits occur along a spatial, rather than harmonic, dimension. They serve to situate the music in the space of the tombak. What we are hearing in these disparate pitches is an outline of the embodied drum, a constellation of points from the centre to the periphery of the drumhead, around its rim, and along its shell. We are hearing the drummer's hands move through space: their pats, taps, knuckles, and snaps. We are hearing a three-dimensional musical object, a statue we are walking around with our ears.

The third thing you hear is the club. Listen long enough, closely enough, and this music puts you into a kind of trance, which then brings to mind the dancefloor, home to that other kind of trance. And it's not just the regular pulsing rhythms or the hard percussive hits. It's the experience of absorption into music, of being suffused with music. It's the dissolution of the ordinary boundaries of the self, the disappearance of everything but your immediate auditory experience. In the present moment, there is only the music. You are only the music. You are the drum. The drum is you.

FEATURING

Don't Lose This by Pops Staples, released by ANTI- Records in 2015. Listen

• "Somebody Was Watching"
• "Nobody's Fault But Mine"
• "Better Home"

TRANSCRIPT

It's customary to think of songs as built up out of a few fundamental elements: melody, rhythm, harmony, lyric – words set to a tune sung in time atop chords. But these songs are nothing like that. They of course have melody and rhythm, harmony and lyric. But that's not what they're made of, that's not what they are. Pops Staples songs, rather, are compositions of two timbres: his trembling voice and his tremolo guitar.

There's other sounds here, too, of course: drums, bass, other voices. But these songs are anchored by the unique signatures of Pops's two instruments: the wooziness of his guitar, the yearning in his voice. Either of these elements on its own is distinctive enough as it is. But together they sound like nothing else.

It's often hard to believe that these two sounds are coming from the same performer, in a simultaneous performance. They often have entirely different energies, moving not so much in counterpoint as in parallel, but in a way that somehow, miraculously, comes together as a single musical whole. These songs are like a conversation between Pops's voice and his guitar, but a conversation that does not just go back and forth between them, but also involves a lot of talking over one another.

And that's not the only reason these songs sound conversational. It's also a matter of the casualness and spontaneity of their performance. The rhythm is loose, the melodies meandering. Pops sings as if he's just telling you the lyrics, speaking them out in his delicate yet sonorous voice. The guitar licks feel extemporaneous, as if they're just whatever in the moment came to his mind. Though Pops has surely played these songs hundreds if not thousands of times before, they never sound rehearsed. They sound as if Pops has just sat down and started speaking through his instruments, channelling the energy of the moment into a new and singular performance.

There's one other element to this music's essence, one last thing that makes it what it is. This is spiritual music, gospel music, devotional music – and it's doubtful that Pops's sound could be put to any other purpose, let alone a better one. Listening to Pops play, you can't but hear the spirit moving through him, in the way his guitar quivers and the way his voice always remains pure, however quiet or loud it may be.

These are holy sounds, but also human ones. In them one can feel the divine element in man. In them one can hear a man approaching the divine. Through this music one learns that we all can aspire to something greater, however humble our talents may be. Through this music one sees that there is transcendence even amidst the mundane.

FEATURING

Last Leaf by Danish String Quartet, released by ECM Records in 2017. Listen / Buy direct

• "Despair Not, O Heart"
• "Shore"
• "Shine You No More"

TRANSCRIPT

What even is a string quartet today? Do we need them anymore? What new could they possibly have to say? To many, the string quartet may seem like a dead language: beautiful, self-contained, but of things past, an object of study rather than a living medium.

This is all, of course, false, as any number of contemporary string quartets can attest. But this record, by the Danish String Quartet, presents a completely new way to see the string quartet completely anew.

Fittingly, the first sound one hears on the record – the sound you're hearing now – is not even a string instrument, but a keyboard: an organ of some sort, so intimate that you can hear the press of its keys. And yet, what it's playing is a hymn that, we're told, has been "arranged for string quartet", even if it's not played by one.

This opening underlines what I take to be the record's thesis: that the string quartet is not an ensemble or a repertoire so much as it is an orientation, a way of approaching music, whatever music that may be.

In this particular case, the music is old: this record, like many string quartet records, looks backward for inspiration. But rather than looking to the classical music tradition, it looks to the traditional folk songs of Scandinavia – melodies that were around long before the string quartet was canonized, long before the violin, viola, and cello even existed. In this way, the record is not reanimating a tradition so much as it is reimagining a tradition, not merely giving these melodies a four-part string arrangement, but, more deeply, refracting them through a string quartet's sensibility.

And what is that sensibility, that orientation? In my mind, it is characterized by a musical nimbleness, a fluidity in key and tempo. There is an undulation to these performances, in the way the tonal centre can shift and drift between measures, the way the pace will subtly modulate from beat to beat. I can only describe it as the movement of breath, or the movement of the heart, an expression of some vital, ineffable energy.

Great solo performances have this quality as well, being expressions of their performer's own singular energy. Yet with string quartets this experience is amplified, as their singular energy comes from four performers, working in concert, melding their individual energies into one multidimensional voice. Individuality dissolves into union, and what we hear is the sound of an intimate synchronization, of four people coalescing into a piece of music and bringing it newly alive.

The highlight of the record, for me, is "Shine You No More". The song is, essentially, a jig – a simple, looping melody played so fast and energetically that it can only be heard as an exhortation to get up, grab a partner, and dance. It's a performance that can't but set the listener into motion, whether that be a whirling of the body or a tapping of the foot. And so we, too, become synchronized with the music, and the unity between the players becomes a community with their audience.

It is, perhaps, the primordial function of music: to bring us together, by bringing sounds together. Yet here again, the old is refracted through the new: While sonically this performance follows the patterns of traditional dance music, structurally it follows the logic of contemporary dance music, in its dynamic shifts and swells, its four-to-the-floor heartbeat, or its middle section, which is basically one long slow build, and when the drop comes, it's ecstatic. Somehow this song manages to capture at once the poignant beauty and the exuberant joy of music. It's timeless, it's new, it's the essence of the string quartet.

FEATURING

"Savage Remix (feat. Beyoncé)" by Megan Thee Stallion, released by 300 Entertainment in 2020. Listen

TRANSCRIPT

Have four single chords ever sounded so dope? Have four single chords ever so effectively encapsulated a whole song? Two seconds in and you already know everything you need to know. This song is an attitude, and that attitude is defiance.

These chords, with their half-step alternation, refuse any stable tonal centre. These chords, with their taut syncopation, resist any clear metre (at least until the beat drops). Yet nothing here is wavering, nothing here is uncertain. The sound is all tension, holding these sonic contradictions together in a single, confident, self-standing whole.

Thus it's no surprise that when the vocals make their entrance they are equally confident and defiant. Indeed, the lyrics are a litany of conventional contradictions, all proclaimed to coexist within the MC herself: "Hood but I'm classy / Rich but I'm ratchet", "bougie", "moody", "sassy", "nasty". The song is a proud declaration of what would ordinarily be insults and slurs, a reclamation of otherwise derogatory language, captured at once in its titular word, "savage" – simultaneously denoting the dominating and the dominated subject.

Yet as much as this song is a personal statement, it is also a personal mantra, a refrain to be repeated over and over again, so as not to let yourself be defined by how others see you. But where does one find the strength to contain such multitudes? Where does one find the strength to stand up against the regressive and oppressive opinions of an unwelcoming world? Mere repetition of the mantra is not sufficient. You need an inner champion, a second voice inside your head, that validates your identity and incites you to carry on.

And this is where we find the true brilliance of this song, because that second voice is here too, whispering in this ear and then the other, punctuating and giving new strength to the song's mantra, and all the more effectively because this voice is Beyoncé, the strongest inner champion one could ever have. In this way, the song doesn't feature Beyoncé so much as it summons her into being, channelling her power and making it one's own.

What we hear is the sound of Beyoncé sublimated – the sound, not of Beyoncé herself, but of what it's like to listen to Beyoncé – the vicarious experience of being unstoppable, incomparable, and indefinable.

FEATURING

"Deep River (Live at Le Guess Who?)" by Beverly Glenn-Copeland, from Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, released by Transgressive Records in 2020. Listen / Buy direct

TRANSCRIPT

We will end in jubilation, but we begin in prayer. A single, solitary voice — a simple, five-line verse — an earnest plea for deliverance and grace. As this voice stands before us, naked and exposed yet confident and assured, we hear both the vulnerability and the strength that come with prayer, the humility and the awe that one feels when addressing and communing with a higher power, like the humility and awe that we feel in the presence of this miraculous voice. And so, as this voice asks for grace, it is also itself an act of grace, and thus serves as a kind of grace, a blessing of the performance now to come.

And that's not all, for this opening prayer, it should be noted, was also an invitation. As much as it was calling upon a higher power to come down and bless this musical gathering, it was also calling on us, its audience, to come over and take a seat at the table. "Don't you want to go to that Gospel-feast?" it asked. And that, as I see it, is the point of this performance: to get us to share in its beatific vision, by itself being something beatific to behold.

And so it welcomes us in and leads us along, with its steady djembe beat, its wide and open chord voicings, and its slow descending bassline. Without our even noticing it, we have crossed over into a new and beautiful musical space. It's a transition that, coincidentally or not, mirrors the song's lyrics, which are all about crossing over, across the great divide of a deep river, into that home over Jordan, into campground, into that promised land. In short, the lyrics, and their delivery, are an embodiment of the radical hope for a better life beyond this one, and this music is helping us keep our faith in that other life, by showing us the glorious sound of freedom and salvation.

Yet the true sound of deliverance transcends words and language. And perhaps this is why, in the song's third verse, the lyrics shift to ululation. Or perhaps the shift is yet a further invitation, showing that literacy is not a requisite for salvation.

And this brings us to my absolute favourite moment of the song, its most direct invitation to its audience, when the singer momentarily goes off script and breaks the fourth wall to explicitly tell us to join in.

There is just something so tender about that little instruction, something so incongruous with the singing that surrounds it. To realize that this is what the singer normally sounds like, that from a speaking voice so light and playful can come a singing voice so powerful and divine — well, it makes anything seem possible. Somehow the majestic beauty we've been hearing now doesn't seem so out of reach.

If this is how you, too, feel by the end of this performance, then that means the performance has done what it set out to do, transporting you across that deep river to the salvation on the other side. And so the song ends in a finale of overflowing jubilation, for not only has it finally reached the promised land, but it is also now here together with all of us.

FEATURING

Wuddaji by Theo Parrish, released by Sound Signature in 2020. Listen / Buy direct

• "Hambone Cappuccino"
• "Hennyweed Buckdance"
• "Radar Detector"

TRANSCRIPT

Nothing about this should work. At any given moment it feels like the whole thing could fall to pieces. So let's start by just appreciating the fact that this music not only does manage to hang together, but that it grooves.

Take, for example, this song's main loop, a jazzy, jittering melody played on electric piano. The phrase has a clear enough hook, but surrounding this hook is a tempest of other notes that set the phrase off kilter, destabilizing it both harmonically and rhythmically, to the point that it almost sounds like it's glitching, on the verge of breaking down, before it recovers and returns to its recognizable refrain.

And that's just what's happening within the main loop. For surrounding it is a tempest of other sounds that further destabilize this loop yet somehow also simultaneously ground it. Undulating synths shimmer in and out of existence; a kick drum periodically pounds its way to a downbeat; a slap bass meanders across the low-end; and a layer of buzzy static sits on top of it all. Like a crackling fire, the song continuously bursts with energy while also always seeming on the brink of collapse.

Nothing about this should work. And yet, we groove along all the same. Naturally and automatically, our minds start to hum the glancing melody, our bodies start to move in step with the throbbing beat. It's uncanny, how easily we resonate with this music, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it's uncommon to hear dance music that possesses so much soul. The song breathes, heaves, pants, and wheezes. It's dancing with itself, as we dance along with it.

It's not just this one song, either. The entire record exists in this liminal state, standing right on the edge of harmonic and rhythmic cohesion, ever on the verge of toppling over but always just barely maintaining its balance. Each song is like a spiderweb or a ship in a bottle, an object that seems like it shouldn't be able to exist in this world, an intricate and delicate construction that appears to defy the natural laws to which we all are subject. To listen to this music is to marvel at all the different pieces suspended in time, moving together in an unlikely choreography to create something that feels utterly grounded and yet also seems to float on air.

I can only think to describe this music as magic. And like magic, its aim is to entrance — to command our entire attention, and yet ever elude its grasp. But like magic, the point is not to figure out how it works its trick, but simply to go along with its sleight of hand, to exist for a moment in this state of wonder, to immerse ourselves in this impossible world, and to temporarily feel as weightless as this music itself.

FEATURING

Sound Ancestors by Madlib, arranged by Four Tet, released by Madlib Invazion in 2021. Listen / Buy direct

• "There Is No Time (Prelude)"
• "The Call"
• "Theme De Crabtree"
• "Road Of The Lonely Ones"
• "Riddim Chant"
• "Two for 2 – For Dilla"

TRANSCRIPT

What's the point of music? What's a musician striving to do? The simplest answer, which holds true much of the time, is that music is about the expression and conveyance of emotion, the translation of private, ineffable feelings into a public, sonic medium where others can feel them too. But this is not all that music can be. Sometimes, music is just about revelling in the joy of sound. Sometimes, the medium is not a means but an end. Sometimes, all the musician wants is for us to listen, to hear what they hear, and to be, like them, enthralled.

Listen to the crunchiness of that bassline, the crispness of those snare hits, the tenacity of this groove. And now listen to something completely different: the steady jingle of the bells, the syncopation of the bass and the kick drum, the soulful crooning in the background, that funky harp-like arpeggio. There's just so much to love here on a purely sonic level, and that's precisely the point.

Now is probably a good time to point out, for those who don't realize, that the musician behind this record is a DJ, and that this music is an assemblage of samples — bits of sound that caught the artist's attention, fitted together so as to catch ours. In other words, before this music could exist it had to be discovered, and much of its excitement lies in simply hearing everything the artist has found. Because the artist here is a master listener, and what we're being treated to is a performance by someone who hears the world better than we do — who looks where we wouldn't think to look, notices what might escape our notice, and can bring all these sounds into focus so that we can perceive them too.

In this way, the DJ reminds me of a photographer, walking the streets, camera slung around their neck, ever on the lookout for that decisive moment, where there is, however briefly, something uncommon and marvelous to see. A photograph, if it's a good one, brings the world into view, capturing, yes, what was already there, but in such a way that it becomes more potent, more pregnant, more visible. In photography we are able to glimpse the world through the photographer's discerning eye, and thus learn better how to look, just as in this music we are able to hear the world through the DJ's discerning ear, and thus learn better how to listen.

But actually, it is not only the DJ's discerning ear that is here on display. For this record is in fact the work of two musicians, one acting as DJ and the other as producer, or, as I prefer to think of it, one acting as artist and the other as curator. What we're hearing, more precisely, is one DJ listening to another and honing the other's vision, magnifying what's best and intensifying what's most powerful in their music. Through this, what might've been a mere collection of first-rate photographs is transformed into an first-rate exhibition, which shows us not only how to listen to the world but also how to listen to this music.

And like any good exhibition, this record is more than the sum of its parts. As gemlike as each track is on its own, there's a special brilliance that appears when we hear them all together, as we notice the eclectic range of soundscapes and the ecumenical use of genre across the record. We start to see that behind this music is an expansive and capacious sensibility, so devoted to sound itself that it recognizes none of our conventional boundaries. And we begin to appreciate that this music is asking us to share its vision: to broaden our own sensibilities, to turn away from nothing, and to possess, like it, a universal love of sound.

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 occasional accompaniment of the piano. It's the sound of hesitancy, of tentative exploration, a fitting soundtrack for what's to come — for this song, and indeed this entire record, is a folk singer confronting how little they know, how little we all know, and how difficult it is to communicate anything to anyone.

Not that any of this is obvious on a first listen. The song's refrain – "I never believed in the robber" — is an enigmatic phrase, which might be heard as defensive or boastful or insistent or exculpatory. Yet as the song goes on, it becomes clear that the singer is in fact recapitulating their own past ignorance, documenting how they were able to delude themselves and deny what was always in front of their eyes. And as the song goes on further, it becomes clear that the singer is recounting not just their past ignorance but ours too, which is why in the second verse they switch from the first to the second person, the refrain now becoming "You never believed in the robber".

But the point of this song is not to chronicle some cheery epistemic conversion and to celebrate how we all know better now. Rather, the song persists in its retrospective mode, only ever looking back on the past, only ever reporting what wasn't believed, and why and how it wasn't believed. The song holds us here because it wants us to see ignorance not simply as an absence of knowledge but as a refusal of it, an active state of resistance to the truth which requires the construction and maintenance of an entire mental and social edifice to buttress our false beliefs. This is how ignorance works, how it perpetuates itself, and how it becomes the default and the norm.

At this point you might be wondering, So who is this "robber", anyway? It is, admittedly, a capacious metaphor, which might be taken to refer to the rapacious forces of settler colonialism or late-stage capitalism or hegemonic masculinity or environmental extractivism. But at bottom, the robber is a stand-in for all the oppressive forces in our world, which as part of their oppression hide themselves from view and give us ways to not see their effects or believe in their very existence. To never believe in the robber is precisely what the robber wants us to do.

This, at any rate, is what I hear in the singer's words. But it is to the singer's credit that they never actually say any of this. They are not here to tell us the truth about the robber; after all, if they did, how could they ever expect to be believed? The singer knows how the robber gets in your head and distorts your beliefs and makes you refuse all evidence to the contrary. The singer knows that if you don't already believe in the robber, then this song is not going to be what changes your mind. The singer knows that just because you have something to say doesn't mean that anyone else will hear it. Because that is the robber's ultimate theft: to make the ignorant deaf and the soothsayers unintelligible and the truth a glancing melody drowned out amidst a sea of noise.

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 what it is about this song. All I know is that every time I hear it I feel an immediate pleasure, as if the song has cast a spell and worked some soothing magic over me. Everything about it is just so carefree: the buoyancy of the singer's vocals, the ease with which the melody floats over the harmonic landscape, the punchy electric piano and funky jazz guitar, and oh, those flutes.

And sure, there's a commercial slickness here. Sure, this song sort of sounds like it was written for a department store sound system. But there's also all these little uncanny touches, like the cowbell here rattling off in the background. Nothing's ever quite what you'd expect. And that's what's so refreshing about it.

If this is easy listening, then I say, let me ease into it and let everything else fall away.

Music so often moves us by making us feel an emotion vicariously: the love or anger or heartbreak expressed by the singer. But this music moves us by making us feel an emotion directly: not reminding us of joy, but filling us up with it. It almost feels like that's the point of this song: just to be pleasant, and to make us feel pleasure. And while this may not seem particularly deep, it does make me wonder, what more do I really ever want out of music?

At this point, unless you speak Japanese, you might be wondering what this singer could possibly be singing about. From how it sounds, you might expect to find lyrics about sunshine, or happiness, or hope. But as it turns out, this is actually a song about prescription drugs, and not subtly so: Its refrain is "Kusuri o takusan" (薬をたくさん), or "lots of medicine", and its lyrics are an ode to the piles of pills that doctors push and patients pop, in our societal obsession with medicating all our anxieties away.

And so, uncannily enough, this song is lyrically about the very thing it sonically represents: our attraction, and even addiction, to easy euphoric feelings. And maybe that should make us think twice about its breezy groove, but for my part, I just want to keep taking it in. The singer says it best: "Tonikaku kusuri ga ichiban yo" (とにかく薬が一番よ) / "Anyway, medicine is the best".

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 of an Indigenous Canadian folk singer, singing to the nation and never being heard.

I'd prefer not to speak over this song. I'd prefer just to let you listen, to this singer and their words. But seeing as this is a show built upon the premise of me speaking over music, I will proceed, and tell you that what I love most about this song is how unsparing, and yet matter-of-fact, it is. Lyrically, the song is a catalogue of the sins and hypocrisies of the settler state: its lies, its greed, its acts of violence. But musically, the song is an unassuming folk ballad: soft spoken, slow moving, lightly plucked, pleasant, even, and most of all, calm. It's not the accompaniment you'd expect for a text so full of righteous condemnation. But as I've listened to this song over and over again, it has come to seem perfectly fitting. For the views it expresses are not just the singer's personal opinion or subjective experience. They are fact – the facts of settler colonialism, the facts of what it means to be Indigenous in this country. And facts don't need an emotional presentation; they just need to be said. And that's precisely what this song does. If the singer sounds dispassionate, that's because they're telling the truth.

Still, you might think that some anger would do some good for the message – make it more apparent, less easy to disregard. But why see this as the song's problem and not, rather, the listener's? As if the burden were always on the oppressed to catch the oppressor's attention, and never on the oppressor to pay attention in the first place. And so I hear in this song's delivery also an act of protest, the singer's refusal to sing on the other side's terms. The facts are laid bare, for all to see. If some do not listen, that is on them.

Most, of course, did not listen. We know because these songs were written and recorded five decades ago, and yet their singer remains in relative obscurity, and the political realities they describe remain sadly and remarkably unchanged – which gives these songs a tragic timelessness, even when they couldn't be more historically specific.

Take, for instance, this song, which tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve-year-old Ojibwe boy who ran away from the school he was forced to attend, only to die one week later of exposure on the long walk home. In the most direct and obvious sense, this song is an elegy for this cruel and needless death. Yet in its quiet and measured sorrow, the song also keeps vigil for all the other lives lost and shattered by the residential school system, and also, to my ears, somehow reaches into the future and expresses grief for all the tragedies yet to come. For the fact that it would be another twenty-five years until the country's last residential school shut its doors. For the fact that this year, twenty-five years after that, the discovery of 1,397 residential school gravesites was met by this country with shock and, then, inaction. For the fact that to this day we still speak of "Seven Fallen Feathers" and the "Missing and Murdered". For the fact that the story of Chanie Wenjack is not a story of the past but of our continual present.

This all may seem like a historical digression, but for me, this song cannot be heard apart from this history, which reverberates throughout. I feel like I can hear it in the singer's voice, the knowledge of what's to come and the knowledge that they will not be heard. For they've seen what's come before, and they've seen how no one's listened then. And yet, they sing on, for all those who need to hear it.

** This episode was recorded on the traditional territory of the Ojibwe Anishinaabe people **

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 makes you feel: captivated, awestruck, and humbled.

It's natural, I believe, to describe this than as a religious experience, for listening to such music feels like an act of communion with a higher power, a revelation of a world beyond this one. And it's also no surprise that we should find such music being used for explicitly religious ends. For what better way to bring us to God than to bring God to us, in sound?

But there's something that generally doesn't get acknowledged about such music, which is that, as inspiring and moving as it may be, it is also always terrifying. For such music overwhelms us, and towers above us. We find ourselves at its mercy, and powerless in its face. The music will take us wherever it wants us to go, and even if that's for the moment a place of beauty and benediction, it could always in the next moment turn into a place of devastation and despair.

Which brings us to what I love most about this music, which is how it embraces this duality, juxtaposing moments of grace with moments of terror and, in many instances, weaving the two together into one. An angelic vocal melody is surrounded by a chorus of demonic howls. A piano's soft chord progression is laid on top of a harsh pulsating drone off in the infernal depths of the low end. Lyrics meant to inspire faith are placed alongside lyrics meant to induce fear. It's deeply unsettling, and utterly transfixing. It fills us with wonder at the same time it fills us with dread.

This is what the otherworldly truly feels like, simultaneously drawing us in and driving us away. It's the sound of the Lord who giveth and also taketh away. It's the sound of so much organized religion, which traffics in equal parts redemption and condemnation. It's the sound of any greater power, which offers the promise of salvation with one hand and, thereby, threatens annihilation with the other.

It's also the experience of beauty, which is never straightforwardly pleasant, but also always somewhat unnerving, a complicated flood of emotions, pregnant with possibility and brimming with anticipation. We never quite know all that awaits us, and so we find ourselves vulnerable, hoping for deliverance but bracing for the unknown. As Stendhal said, "beauty is only a promise of happiness", which is another way of saying, as Rilke did, that "beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror."

What I love about this music is how it holds us here, in this state of ambivalent captivation. We are but its subjects, here to behold its awesome power. The only thing left for us to do – the only thing we can do – is submit.

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 reverberations. Everything you ever hear is refracted through everything else you've ever heard.

Typically, we experience this as a recognition of an artist's influences, when we can hear in their music how they're building on prior work, expanding, remixing, and reimagining familiar sounds, rhythms, and textures. Occasionally, we experience this as an appreciation of what's to come, when we can hear in some music a nascent version of what other artists will go on to perfect.

And sometimes, we chance upon a piece of music from the past which had somehow escaped our notice but which was absolutely foundational to everything that came after it. Hearing such music for the first time is like a revelation, reorienting everything we thought we knew and took for granted. Suddenly, the familiar seems strange, and then becomes even more familiar. History is turned on its head, then comes into focus, and then clicks into place.

Before I heard this record I thought I knew something about rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Turns out, I knew nothing. Turns out, everything I'd always associated with the genre was a mere approximation of this music, which is the true and genuine article. Listening to it is like hearing the DNA, or essence, of rock and roll: the effortlessness of its swing and its groove, its overabundance of energy and verve, the soulfulness of its vocals, the vigorous yet plaintive counterpoint of its lead guitar. Everything is here, and it feels positively electric. It's enough to make "the walls come tumblin' down", like any great rock song should.

But this music is also nothing what you'd expect it to be. This song's protagonist is not Johnny B. Goode in Louisiana, but Joshua in Jericho. And that's enough to make you rethink not just the history of rock and roll but the genre itself and the meanings it contains.

This isn't music of the quotidian, the vulgar, or the mundane; its concerns are nothing less than biblical in nature. What we have here is not the devil's music, but the Lord's. It's a soundtrack not to rebellion or revolution, but to reverence and devotion. These rollicking jamborees are all ultimately spirituals. And yes, I know the interwoven history of gospel and blues and jazz in the twentieth century and how there's always been in all these forms a conversation between the sacred and the profane; and yet, I'm struck by how the two sides come together here, in what feels like the purest statement of rock and roll. For I hear no contradiction in this music. If anything, it feels like the proper expression of the form – rock and roll, as it was meant to be. For what could be more electrifying, more rousing, more ecstatic, than the revelation of a higher power? What better reason could there be to make everyone listening want to get off their feet and dance?

But this music doesn't just present us with a counterfactual alternate history. It also throws our actual history into relief. Because if this music has fallen through the cracks, it has done so in entirely predictable ways. Listening to this music, you can't help but notice that the person at the front of the band is a woman, and not only a woman, but a Black woman, and a Black woman who's not only a singer, but a bona fide guitarist (and damn fine one at that). So it's not exactly surprising that this is the musician that history has overlooked. If someone were going to be written out of the story of rock and roll, isn't this precisely who we'd expect it to be? Because what this music makes clear, listening to it now, is that there is nothing lacking in the music itself, which is as vibrant and dexterous and thrilling as any of its contemporaries or successors. But we never just hear the music itself. If this musician is not our image of a rock and roll frontman, if this music is not what we think of when we think of rock and roll, that's because we weren't actually hearing it, or weren't even listening. So let's listen. Let's hear it. Let's let it show us what rock and roll was always supposed to be.

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's sweating, he's weak, he can barely sit himself up. The diagnosis is food poisoning, presumably brought on by the pizza he had ordered the night before – a pizza that, legend has it, was spiked by the local Utah joint that had prepared it. But as the singer tells us, "it wasn't a pizza that poisoned him in Utah". Jordan had just been having a little too much of a good time that night. He wasn't poisoned; he was just hungover.

It's a peculiar subject matter for a song to take up. You might rightfully wonder where the singer is going with all this. But rest assured, the point of this song is not to advance some truther conspiracy theory, or even to set the record straight. Rather, the singer is dwelling on this incident because they find in it a moment of recognition. In this brief window, Michael Jordan, for all his phenomenal prowess, wasn't so different from you or me. As the singer puts it, "I love drinking too / I love drinking too".

It's a wry and not overly serious song, but still I marvel at it, for the economy of its lyrics and how easily they're fitted to its tune. And I love how, at bottom, it's a song about seeing yourself in one of your idols, because that seems to me to get at something of the song's own appeal, and of the appeal of indie music more generally: its ability to close the distance between artist and audience and make greatness feel within our reach.

Though to be honest, I'm not even sure this is indie music, as I've never quite been sure what indie music itself is. In its original meaning, circa 1980, the term was descriptive and literal, signifying an artist's independence from the major labels, which dominated the industry at the time. But this was always an awkward designation, since no artistic genre can truly be defined simply by the socioeconomic standing of its production company. And so, almost immediately, indie music was taken to refer to the kind of music that such independent record labels tended to put out: music with a certain lo-fi, DIY aesthetic, free from the slickness and high production values of commercial pop and rock. But this, too, has always been an illusory definition, since it belies the fact that indie music is no less carefully produced, and that it takes great artistry to create and capture a sound so rough, spontaneous, and free.

Nonetheless, no better definition has ever been forthcoming, and so indie music has remained a nebulous and contested classification. But to my mind, what defines indie music is not a sound or an ethos but what the music represents to the listener, and what it represents is a sense of possibility, the feeling that this music could be made by you and your buddies, and thus that you too could be a rockstar someday. There's no razzle-dazzle, there's no in-your-face virtuosity, and precisely because of this the music feels relatable. Whereas other music makes you want to sit back in awe and listen, indie music makes you want to pick up a guitar and wail.

The irony, of course, is that this isn't some music that could be made by you and your buddies, unless you and your buddies happen to be talented and practiced musicians. For as coarse and carefree as this music may sound, it's all the result of great skill. Every little detail, from the tone of the guitars, to the phrasing of the melodies, to the whimsy of the lyrics, to the snarl and croak of the vocals – it's all been fine-tuned to achieve just this effect. No music just comes out sounding this way. You have to work hard to sound this unpolished.

But like all great art, this music hides its artifice well. What I hear is not the gulf that actually exists between me and this band; what I hear is the potential that exists within all of us to create something moving and memorable. The feeling I get when I listen to this music is the feeling that I, too, could write a song; that I, too, could start a band; that I, too, could make music like this. And maybe that isn't exactly true. Maybe that's not my lot in life. But maybe there should exist a label for music that makes you feel this way. And maybe that's what indie music is really all about.

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. And the fact is, everyone would be talking about this record regardless of whether it were good or bad. It's enough simply that it's Beyoncé, because you can't not talk about Beyoncé. She's at that level. She's "that girl".

But as it turns out, this record is good, and not just good – it's fantastic. This record is indeed something to talk about, and it's not just people who are talking, but critics, too, and maybe, I should say, critics especially, since the record is so amenable to critical exegesis. It's the kind of record that is so densely layered with musical references and allusions that one would seem to need footnotes to follow everything that is going on. For this record, through its many samples, quotations, and interpolations, is weaving a tapestry of musical history and serving as tribute and testament to the Black queer imprint on late twentieth-century dance music, tracing its movements through house, disco, ballroom, dancehall, and beyond. You could write a dissertation about this record, and given that it's Beyoncé, someone someday probably will.

Or perhaps we've already said enough. Perhaps we've even said too much. For even though I myself am in the act of talking about this record, at the end of the day I feel like the most important thing to say about it is just that it slaps. This music hits you at an almost instinctual level, putting your body into motion without you even realizing it. Every single beat is a banger, impeccably punctuated to keep you on your toes. This is dance music at its purest and most aggressive. These songs don't just want you to dance; they demand it.

The vocals, meanwhile, swirl above the low-end like sirens. At times they feel more rhythmic than melodic, playing off the drums and the bass and further accentuating the propulsive heartbeat of these songs. More frequently, though, the vocals seem to be playing off of themselves. Beyoncé is constantly switching between different voices and vocal textures on this record, going from sultry to soft to spoken to snarl, often all within the same song. Never has her voice felt so much like an instrument that she is playing with, exploring all its possibilities and putting its full polyphonic range on display.

Plus, this record never keeps you in one place for too long. As soon as we're feeling settled into one groove, the groove is switched up on us, and we're set down in another. And not just a groove in another tempo and key, but a groove in a whole other genre and style. The sheer number of ideas here is astonishing, and a feast for the ears. It's a consistently surprising soundscape, yet also one that, for all its variety, is utterly seamless. It's like the tightest DJ set you could ever imagine, unwavering in its commitment to keep you guessing, and unrelenting in its imperative to make you move.

And here's where I could just mute the microphone and let this record speak for itself. For this record doesn't need anyone to explain its appeal. The music itself tells you everything you need to know, viscerally, in how it's been made to make you feel. This is music that wants to be listened to, not talked about, and the more we talk about this record, the more we risk taking attention away from that basic fact.

But with that caveat in place, let me say something further, about what I really love about this record. Because this record isn't just sonically surprising. It's artistically surprising, too. It's not the record I expected from Beyoncé. It's not the record I'd expect from any star at this stage in their career. For although Beyoncé is singing in the first person throughout, she's not really singing about herself.

What I expected, I suppose, was much more narcissism. And I don't mean that derisively. It just seems like what comes with pop stardom these days. When you reach a pop star's level of fame, it is legitimately hard to relate to the rest of the world, and this threatens your ability to connect with your fans – and what's a pop star without their fans? And so, when such artists go to record new music, they typically turn inwards. Their songs become confessionals, moments of honesty, intimacy, and authenticity. They don't just give us more music; they give us more of themselves.

But that's not what I hear on this record. Yes, there are flashes of braggadocio; yes, Beyoncé does not hesitate to remind us of how rich and unrivalled she is. But we're not getting a window into her thoughts or experiences. Instead, she's giving expression to a more universal set of feelings: those of empowerment, desire, and liberation. And granted, Beyoncé can give voice to these feelings like no one else can. Her artistic identity is practically built upon her being the embodiment of these feelings. But still, when she expresses them here, it feels like she isn't just flexing, isn't just doing so to establish her preeminence and superiority; it feels like she's singing them for us, so that we can feel them too.

And sure, it's kind of ludicrous to hear Beyoncé of all people sing "I just quit my job". But it's also kind of amazing. Who else's voice do you want to hear in your head when you quit your job? Who else can make that act of resignation actually feel freeing instead of terrifying? And that's the marvellous trick of this record: it's not concerned with bringing us closer to Beyoncé, but with bringing Beyoncé closer to us.

This relates to another marvellous trick of this record: how it manages to avoid being appropriative while borrowing so heavily from queer dance music traditions, despite the fact that Beyoncé herself is about the furthest thing from queer you can imagine. You might think that it's just about giving credit where credit is due, and this record certainly does that, not just by citing all the artists it's sampled or even just been influenced by, but also by literally cutting them into the songs' royalties. Yet more deeply, this record just doesn't appropriate these artists' music, because while Beyoncé is drawing from their sounds and their styles, she's not taking them for her own. This record is not about what Beyoncé can do with this music; it's not even about what this music has meant to Beyoncé. It's about what Beyoncé can be for this music. If anything, the music is appropriating her.

What all this amounts to is a record where Beyoncé is fully inhabiting the artist she's become. Because her appeal has never been about who she as a person is; it's always been about what she as an artist represents. That's literally just what it means to be an icon. You're not an individual; you're a symbol. And this record is Beyoncé at her most symbolic. It's Beyoncé allowing herself to be what she's always been to her fans – a totem of power, of sex, of freedom. And it's Beyoncé recognizing that she can be all these things without detailing her own personal experiences of them. It's Beyoncé at her least egotistic, which is to say, at her most universal. It's a Beyoncé for the people. It's the Beyoncé that exists within all of us. And that's this record's greatest gift: by leaving her self behind, Beyoncé has given us the truest, purest expression of the artist that she is.

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 does, and often in surprising ways. But that's not how pop music wants to be understood or experienced. Rather, it wants to engage us at a deeper, more emotional level. It doesn't want us to analyze; it wants us to feel. It wants us to let go – of our thinking minds, of our inhibitions, of everything that normally stands in the way of feeling and emotion. It wants us to surrender.

This might seem to make it impossible to talk about pop music, but really all it means is that we have to talk about pop music in a different way. To paraphrase Susan Sontag, in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of pop music. We need to make clear its rush, its electricity, its ecstasy. And no artist exemplifies these qualities better than pop music's queen, Carly Rae Jepsen.

What's so great about Jepsen is that she fully commits to pop music's fundamental premise. Here is music that is pure feeling, in all its intensity, thrill, and exhilaration. Its heart is racing; its pulse is up. It's throwing everything it has behind this emotion. It's an expression and depiction of desire, and like desire itself, it overpowers everything else.

But let's be honest: For most of us, this is not how our feelings actually feel. Or at least that's how it is for me. If you can't already tell from my general demeanor on this show, I'm a pretty calm and stoic guy – so what am I doing crushing on such hyperactive and hyperbolic pop music? But that's precisely the point: I don't listen to this music to be reminded of what my feelings actually feel like; I listen to experience what they could feel like, if I were less inhibited, less reticent, more carefree.

That's why it's so fitting that pop music in general, and Jepsen's music in particular, is chiefly concerned with feelings of desire and longing. Because desire, like pop music, is aspirational. It's not about what we already have and possess; it's about what we don't have and wish to attain. The object of our desire is always just out of reach, which is why the feeling of desire always pulls us out of ourselves – and the genius of this music is that it mirrors that transportive quality and in this way acts as a simulacrum of desire, a musical facsimile of what it feels like to be swept away by emotion.

Which is all just to say that pop music, at its best, is more vicarious than cathartic. It's more performance than portrayal. We respond to it not because we recognize ourselves in the music, but because the music frees us to feel like someone else. Pop music is a karaoke of the emotions, it's a cosplay, it's a larp. And that brings us to what I believe is the real secret behind Carly Rae Jepsen's appeal: She's larping with us.

Unlike most other pop stars, Jepsen's songs are not a demonstration of her virtuosity as a performer, or her desirability as an idol. Rather, they're a demonstration of just how fun it is to sing these songs. She sings them like we sing them, in those moments of solitude when no one else is watching and we crank up the volume, start moving and grooving, let ourselves go, and sing along at the top of our lungs. It's as if she's karaokeing to her own music – and what better way to show how this music is to be enjoyed?

This isn't music to be observed or appreciated at a distance; this is music to inhabit and become immersed in. And what I love about Carly Rae Jepsen is that she never lets us forget this: she's always there, inviting us to get lost, run away with her, and see all that we could do with this emotion.

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

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 couple months ago, I had never heard any of their songs. And boy, was I ever missing out.

I've listened to plenty of other great singer-songwriters before, but still, right away, this one seemed special. There are familiar notes of folk and country here, to be sure, but it all comes together in a way that feels distinctive and refreshing. The lyrics are plainspoken but also whimsical; the vocals have a rough but also delicate edge; the arrangement is soft but also incredibly tight. Overall, the feeling I get is one of confidence and maturity. This is a songwriter who knows exactly what they're doing, and are doing it.

So what is this songwriter doing? Well, like any great songwriter (or novelist, or storyteller), they're looking at life and telling it like they see it. That's all this song is, at bottom: a couple slice of life stories, capped off with the moral that "that's the way that the world goes 'round". But the simplicity of this song's design belies the difficulty of actually executing on it. To look at life and see it clearly, and to depict it without sentimentality or cynicism, without preachiness or pretention, well, that's no easy thing. Yet somehow, this songwriter, great talent that they are, makes it seem like the most natural thing in the world.

But this songwriter is nothing if not deceptive. And it's not just the artistry that lies behind their simple song structures, or the poetry that lies within their homespun lyrics, or the depths of emotion that lie beneath their folksy vocal delivery. What stands out most to me is how you have all these songs that sound uplifting, jolly even, and yet they're dwelling on some of life's darkest stuff: episodes of domestic abuse, suicidal ideation, tragic death. And despite all that, there's still a warmth to this music, and often even joy and humour. How does the songwriter get away with it? How do they pull it off?

As I see it, the secret to these songs is their honesty. You can't philosophize about life unless you take it all in, the good and the bad, the easy and the hard. You need to have both if you want to have either. Messages of hope have no weight if they shy away from what makes us doubtful. And stories of tragedy serve no purpose if they're only meant as occasions for despair.

If you were only to listen to the chorus of this song, you might write it off as a series of feel-good bromides, like "it don't go no good to get angry". But to do so would be to miss out on how the message of the chorus is deepened by what we're told about in the verses: the tragic incident, witnessed by the songwriter, of when an altar boy was hit by a local commuter train; and the songwriter's recollection of their own personal experience with heartbreak. It's this specificity that saves the song from being a string of empty platitudes, and earns the songwriter the right to tell us something hopeful about life.

What I hear in these songs is a songwriter who's looked squarely at the brutality of life, and yet hasn't fallen into a state of desolation. Or more likely, they have, at times in the past, but they know that's not the right or only reaction you can have to life's sorrows, and they want their songs to go somewhere different: to lift us up, while not losing sight of what brings us down.

The name of this song, and the album on which it appears, is "Bruised Orange". It's an indelible image that never actually appears anywhere in the lyrics, and yet, once you know about it, you see it everywhere in these songs. It's an image that doubles as a metaphor for the delicacy of the human heart, and as a warning about the ill effects that such bruising can have, when one rotten orange spoils the whole bunch. It's an image that makes us feel the hurt of life, but also reminds us not to make it any worse than it already is. That's the songwriter's parting message for us, and in their hands it feels like a gift.

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 just one volume and just one speed; but what it lacks in dynamic contrast it makes up for with its total commitment. This music leaves no doubt as to where it stands or how it wants us to feel. It's a soundtrack to the extremities of emotion, the severity of living, those moments when everything around us seems to be spiralling out of control.

It'd be natural to describe this music as "heavy", with all its thrashing and pounding and wailing. But what I'm most struck by in this music is just how weightless it all feels. Everything seems to be floating on air: the effortlessly breakneck drumbeat, the bright and soaring guitar riffs, and the measured vocal melodies that drift and hover above all the chaos below.

I'll admit, I don't listen to a lot of punk these days, and I never really did, and perhaps what makes this music land with me is precisely how it veers away from the stereotypical punk sound, offering something more melodic and less abrasive. But in its essence and its ethos, it's as punk as they come. What this music really is is an attitude: the refusal to shy away from your fiercest emotions; the confidence to express them without hesitation or restraint; and the rejection of everything that stands in your way.

But if sonically this music is punk without its rougher edges, lyrically it's punk without its headline emotion: it's punk divorced from anger. This music recognizes that the power of this sound needn't only be used as an expression of our rage. Punk music can be used to represent so much more of what we feel, because anger is far from the only emotion that overpowers us, overwhelms us, and makes us want to scream. And what I love about this music is that it takes the punk sound, with all its clamouring intensity, and uses it to channel feelings of maternal love.

Because honestly, what could be more terrifying, more maddening, and more world-upending than newfound motherhood? If any experience is inherently worthy of the punk treatment, this is it. Because at bottom, punk is for those emotions that can't be contained, and there's no greater cascade of emotions than a parent's feelings towards their newborn child.

What this music shows is that punk, though it may seem like such a youthful genre, isn't a music you age out of. Life will always find ways to make us feel outsize emotions, and we will always need music to give those emotions voice.

Fittingly for a song this powerful, it ends with the singer laying down their strongest fears and convictions:

One day, we won't be here...
You'll hate me, you'll move on...
But I won't unlove you...

Music may never be able to express these feelings fully, but it can make clear how fully they are felt.

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 if any music has universal appeal. But for me, this music immediately brings me back to the music of my youth, to those formative works that, for better or worse, first shaped my taste.

All the essential elements are here: the hooky melodies, the narrative lyricism, the yearning vocals, the distorted power chords, and an absolute headbanger of a chorus. This just does it for me. I feel like I'm sixteen again, and loving it.

And the funny thing is, I didn't even think I liked emo pop anymore. For years I've been thinking of it as a genre I had grown out of: once important, but since surpassed; a guilty pleasure if there ever was one. I don't even much go back to those favourite records of my teenage years, and when I have they've landed differently.

Because here's the thing about the emo pop of the late 90s and early 2000s: it's kind of cringe. And that's what I really love about this record: it doesn't just take me back to the glory days of emo pop; it takes what was best about the genre and leaves behind what was worst. It's emo decoupled from the male gaze, from the whiny entitlement, from all the melodrama. But it's still emo through and through: raw but melodic, confessional but anthemic, a cathartic soundtrack to outsize feelings of longing and melancholy.

But this music is more than just a throwback. Its version of emo pop is not just more palatable than the emo pop of the past, but also more mature and contemporary. It wasn't just a coincidence that emo pop's original fanbase was awkward teenagers like me. Its emotional preoccupations were those quintessential teenage feelings of unbelonging and unrequited infatuation. And so, what I feel like I've outgrown is not so much emo's musical stylings as its lyrical concerns. The music still speaks to me, but I can no longer relate. And I feel like this band somehow recognized this, and found a way to age emo up by ten or fifteen years, transposing its emotional contours into a more adult, and more millennial, key.

Here the emo pop sound is used to chronicle the malaise of early adulthood and its ever-present ennui. Gone are the high dramatics of failed romances and relationships, and in their place are the quotidian struggles of just getting through another day. The tone is still emotional, but the stakes feel more real. These are songs about the hollow allure of self-medication, and the self-destructive tendencies that so often stand in the way of our own mental well-being. These are songs built around lines like "I did nothing but skip another meal and walk around a Target" – because these songs recognize that, at a certain stage of life, this may very well be the most you can say about your day.

And the funny thing is, I don't presently relate to these concerns, either. But I can recognize their veracity. What I hear in these songs is that feeling of disillusion that comes with growing up and seeing that this is what adult life looks like. And what I love about these songs is that they serve as a reminder that this experience is just as much a site of emotional intensity as anything we experienced in our youth. And in so doing, these songs expand the emo pop sound and show that it isn't just a teenage phase. If life can still make us feel this way, then music should too.

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 thumping kick drum, a twitchy hi-hat, and a shimmering, diaphanous voice. And because there's so little else here, we might easily miss that that voice is all over the place. This is no typical melody it's singing; each phrase is different from the last. Musically, this "verse" is more like a jazz solo, a cadenza of virtuosity and melodic inventiveness. And remarkably, this is how the song welcomes us, throwing us head first into its singular, dizzying world.

And then, just as quickly, we're thrown back into the conventional world of pop music, back into the easy comfort of a singsong melody, back into the doot-doot-doot of it all. But not for long.

For here's yet another variation on our original theme, now adding harmony into the mix. But after a couple of bars that's already enough of that, and we're off to the next variation. For if melody is a series of phrases, which together form the contours of a thought, this melody is a stream of consciousness, jumping from one idea to another, but somehow never losing the conversational thread, and always holding our attention and keeping it rapt.

And here now is the closest the song comes to a refrain. And all it is is a single melismatic syllable, followed by a single enigmatic lyric. This isn't the climax you'd expect from a pop song. Which makes it the perfect climax for a song that is never what you expect it to be.

Yet for all its unconventionality, this song is still eminently listenable. And for all its melodic gymnastics, it's still melodious and catchy and even, at moments, singable. It truly is a song about possibility: about what it is possible for a pop song to be, and the freedom and the wonder and, indeed, the prettiness that lies in that possibility.

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 cooing baby, a smoky alto, a menacing guttural rattle. Then the voices start to swirl together, coalescing into an uneasy unison. The reverb feels endless, as the voices envelop us in their echoing chorus.

It's a sound that's like a dream, or rather, like the liminal space between sleep and waking, or the hazy hours at the end of a long night, those times when our thoughts begin to flicker in and out of consciousness and our sense of self starts to dissolve into the world around us.

If we've stepped inside the artist's mind, that mind has thus far only proven to be elusive, and we still have no idea of who this artist is.

And in case there were any question, this next song will not make the matter any clearer. Now the vocals themselves are warped and twisted, transformed into an unsteady warble. Instead of a kaleidoscopic medley of different voices, we have a single voice that's been splintered and shattered – like a broken mirror, providing only glimpses of the singer looking back at us. The singer even shifts between different kinds of vocal delivery, leaving us guessing as to whether they are singing or rapping or just whispering in our ear. Or maybe the point is that, with this artist, it's always all of the above.

What all this creates is a portrait of the artist that is, in effect, a blurry image – which is the perfect, and perhaps the only, way to portray an artist who is constantly shape-shifting and who has no single, stable identity to present.

And the music isn't always this same dark tone, either. If only to offer up more complexities and contradictions, the singer shows us that they can also go full-on pop. Here is a melody that is infectiously catchy, bouncy, and upbeat – but to keep us on our toes, it's laid on top of a beat that is punchy, glitchy, and frenetic. And to keep us even more on our toes, the song then turns on a dime, jettisoning everything but the low-end and letting the singer's voice reverberate in the newly open space. But before long, we're glitching back into the matrix, returning to the song's hyperpop chorus yet again. And even though the main vocal is now front and centre and crisp and clear, it is still surrounded by a whirlwind of other voices: high-pitched harmonizations, down-pitched repetitions, chopped up moans and exhalations – little reminders that, even at their poppiest, this singer is never just one thing.

And as if to prove the point, the singer shows us that they can also go full-on bubblegum. But of course, the singer is going to subvert these expectations, too, presenting us with a sugary sweet song about, well...

Leave it to this artist to take the most carnal of desires and turn it into something that could reasonably pass for a preschool sing-a-long. Leave it to this artist to compose an ode to the female body that is neither lewd nor inane nor even poetic but just fun. And even though you can practically hear the singer winking at us, you also get the impression that they're being completely earnest.

Because that's what you get with this artist – a polyphonic persona that's always presenting another side of itself, creating a playground for all the different voices inside their head and showing us, in all their multiplicity, just who they are.

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 it'd be a nonstarter for me. But of course it isn't; for how could you pass up music like this?

Though actually, maybe hip-hop is an easy sell for a listener like me, because hip-hop is about so much more than the literal words. Even before you can make out a single lyric, you can feel what this music is expressing. It's in the MC's voice, with its sure-footed delivery and breathless flow. It's in the DJ's production, with its languid boom-bap and far-off horns like sirens. It's tuned every aspect of its sound to create a feeling that is at once laid-back and confident and filled with a sense of underlying dread. And what could be more musical than that?

But this isn't just music that you can vibe to. This is lyrical music at the end of the day, and it's in its words that it truly distinguishes itself. Its verses are densely packed poetry, and even before you can start parsing their content, you can luxuriate in the pure sound of the language – the effortless flurry of assonant syllables ricocheting off each other in syncopated slant rhymes and the way each phrase seems to fall out in a natural rhythm as it rolls off the tongue. The words just sound good, independent of what they mean or what they're being used to say, showcasing the musicality that's always there in language, just waiting for someone to coax it out.

Or maybe this is just me, continuing to avoid actually hearing the lyrics, and picking up on every other musical element instead. Not that the MC makes it easy to follow along. Even with a lyric sheet out in front of you, it can be hard to decipher what's being said. Lines shift between perspectives and timeframes and locales, feeling less like a sequential narrative and more like a stream of consciousness, a pastiche of vivid images flashing before the mind's eye:

The sunset in the desert...
I sip Mexico's best slow...
Unbroken wild ponies...
Only the lonely big tree like a sundial

But the fragmentary quality of the lyrics is by design. Because if this record is about anything, it's about being on the road – and not just in the sense of living an itinerant lifestyle, but more deeply in the sense of the state of mind that that life puts you in: how the continuous bombardment of unfamiliar sights and sounds can make you turn inward and how the constant movement from one place to another can end up grounding you in where you're from. That's why we find the MC, in the middle of a crowded party...

Smoking alone in a cardigan
Thinking of home

It's that feeling of double consciousness, of being physically in one place while being mentally in another, of being uncommonly receptive to the world around you while being trapped in your own thoughts and interiority, of being on the road while feeling like you've never left.

It's a vibe, to be sure, but more than its particular vibe, what I appreciate most about this music is the power of its language: its specificity, its creativity, its evocative nature. Even when I'm only catching passing glances of the lyrics as they zip by, I feel transported by the potency of the imagery. These are words that you can see, taste, and smell. The MC isn't just telling us about being on the road; they're bringing us along for the ride.

But all odysseys must come to an end. And so, in this last song, the MC returns home – but as they take in the sights of their New York City streets, nothing is how they remember it. All they see are new people, new buildings, new shops, new goods – and all they can think of is how things used to be. As they say, "I'm home, but my mind be wandering off." Because home isn't a place you can actually go back to, or rather, home is only a place you can go back to in your mind. And really, this is how we've been travelling all along. It's not about the places we go; it's about where those places take us – the thoughts they occasion, the memories they bring up, the way they direct and divert our attention, and the poetry they help us see in the world around us.

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 I'll admit, I can't quite say what it is about this music that enthralled me so immediately, or what strange magic flows within these sounds, but I knew, instinctively, from the moment I heard it, that this would be music like nothing I'd ever heard before.

This song throws so much at you all at once, it's hard to know where to begin, but let's start with the rhythm. The beat is all syncopation, hitting hard on the one and then subdividing the rest of each measure in a mix of threes and fours. It's urgent and aggressive and unrelenting, like waves crashing down on you while you try to gasp for air.

Then there's the percussion, which forgoes the typical pop and sizzle of snares and hi-hats in favour of an ensemble of pitched drums and rimshots, lending an acoustic warmth and energy to a song that is otherwise a club banger.

But what we really need to talk about is this voice: this whispery soprano that, for all its delicacy, stands toe to toe with the drumline and somehow commands the whole performance. It's not at all what you'd expect, especially for a song that's so raw and raunchy, with such memorable lines as "I want to fuck a puddle" and "I'll Lindsay a Lohan".

But that's the beauty and the genius of this song. It's absolutely singular in its sound, and it all works because it says it works, because it fully commits to being fully itself, and because it knows that it's an unstoppable force of nature.

And like nature itself, it can change in a flash, turning from a downpour into a drizzle, as light as raindrops bouncing off your skin. Now, everything feels playful and buoyant, as bouncy as the bass synth and as feathery as the harp's arpeggios. The music has metamorphosed from a heavy rain into a misty vapour, while somehow remaining, in its essence, the same. This is a multitudinous music – music that can, at one moment, inundate and overpower, and then, in the next, refresh and rejuvenate.

And that's why it's so fitting that the overarching metaphor of this record is water, in all its elemental guises. It floods and it cools. It drowns and it hydrates. It makes waves and cuts canyons. It gives life and brings death. It's the sweat on your chest and the shower on your face. It's a symbol of tranquility and a symbol of devastation. It's a symbol of arousal and a symbol of rebirth. And all the same could be said about this music. It overwhelms, it revitalizes, it makes us wet. It's an unending stream of musical styles and ideas, cycling between countless different forms and textures, swelling and receding, ebbing and flowing, spilling over in abundance, and ultimately leaving us to float on its endless fathomless sea.

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 with an old friend, or revisiting an old home, or catching sight of an old lover, or recalling a loved one now lost – a resurgence of suppressed feelings and memories, suddenly foisted upon you. I've been listening to this songwriter for nearly twenty years; I can no longer imagine what it's like to hear them for the first time. I can only experience this music as a return, to a place of unbridled emotional vulnerability, that place this songwriter has brought me to so many times before. Though I'll admit, it is not somewhere I always wish to return. The thing about these songs is that they can almost be too tender, too fragile; and a heart can only endure so much ache. Listening to this music is like staring at the sun, a direct confrontation with the strongest and rawest of our feelings, feelings we typically don't dare to express. It can be tempting to avert one's eyes. But it can also be gratifying to be reminded of this capacity within us to hurt and to long deeply. In a way, this music is more honest with ourselves than we are, letting us feel what we so often don't allow ourselves to feel. Every time this songwriter comes to us with more of these songs, it's like a reaffirmation of life's true emotional weight – how it can wreck us, how it can humble us, and how it can, occasionally, show us grace. It is not a place we can bear to remain for too long, but it is comforting to allow ourselves to be held here for a moment, in the songwriter's delicate embrace.

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, every harmony, every resonance, all at once.

We are abruptly thrown into a swirling cosmos of sound, surrounded by an unfamiliar polyphony. We are momentarily lost in a foreign musical landscape, unmoored from the customary landmarks of melody, rhythm, and thematic development. And then, with time, we are gradually transformed, as this music works its magic upon us, bringing us into its mesmerizing world, inducting us into its greater mysteries, elevating us to its astral plane, and allowing us to come in contact with its musica universalis, the harmony of the spheres.

In the common parlance of musical typology, this piece would most commonly be labelled as "minimalist", for how it eschews music's conventional variety of timbres, textures, dynamics, and themes. But for all its minimalism, this piece feels like it contains everything within it and encompasses the totality of harmonic space. It would seem just as appropriate to label it "maximalist".

And fittingly, for all that this music feels utterly unique, it was not in fact fashioned ex nihilo. It speaks a new, distinctive vernacular, but it's a vernacular in conversation with other, well established traditions, like the Indian raga and the Arabic maqam. It is played on a new, synthetic instrument, but it's an instrument that was constructed entirely out of other, acoustic instruments, meticulously sampled so that they could be reworked, recombined, and replayed. It's like this music was already there, in potentia, in these other sounds, just waiting to be discovered, a shimmering universe hidden within.

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but seventy-eight minutes doesn't feel like its true length. It doesn't really have a beginning, middle, and end. It fades in at its start and fades out at its close, as if the piece in fact goes on forever, and we are just catching a glimpse as it passes us by, like a satellite crossing the heavens. And so it continues, slowly unspooling and imperceptibly changing, deepening and expanding but staying fundamentally the same.

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but what strikes me most about this music is how it seems in every instant to be self-contained, as if it doesn't need to play out over time at all, as if every moment holds within it the potentiality of every other moment, like a musical fractal geometry, infinitely repeating no matter how far you go in. It is music that is in time, but not of it; music without any essential duration; music that transcends the temporal dimension; and music that lifts us out of time as well, to share in its eternal present. It is music that recalls that line from William Blake, showing us what it's like to:

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

The piece will go on like this for seventy-eight minutes, but by the time we finally reach that point that number will lose its meaning. It will feel like we've been listening for all of time and for no time at all. Because infinity cannot be contained in any length of time, and thus is equally imperfectly contained in all of them. We may never be able to truly comprehend this music; like infinity, it's too much for us finite beings to take in. But we can listen and allow ourselves to be in its presence, to let our sense of time dilate and our consciousness expand as everything else evaporates into the ether and only this music, in its limitless potential, remains.

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 is always everywhere all around us, if only we learn to listen, even if we don't understand.

And so begins the music proper, which feels like an invocation of a different kind, an invocation of the magical power inherent in sound, that's always there just waiting for a maestro to pick up the right threads and weave them together and make something beautiful that shakes us to the core.

It's often said that music transcends language, and that's certainly the case here. I, at least, do not understand this music's lyrics, but that does not at all stop me from recognizing the pathos in these words. Yet something deeper is also going on. It must be said that this music is sung in a language whose living speakers number only in the hundreds – an "endangered" language, which is to say, a language that has historically been persecuted and suppressed and is now being intentionally revived and carried forward. In singing in this language, the artist isn't just translating it into a medium that all can understand and feel; they are breathing life into the language itself.

And just as the language is animated by this music, the music is animated by this language, giving birth to a musical idiom all its own, melding the contemporary with the classical, the anthemic with the intimate, and the rousing with the hypnotic. It's a performance that's positively brimming with life, leaving us to wonder at what other music there must be in sounds yet unheard, in songs yet unsung, in words yet unspoken, and in acts yet undone.

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.

This song's pleasures are immediate and undeniable. But like the last time I talked about this artist, we must be careful not to overthink this music. Because what it's really about is that feeling that it stirs up inside us – that euphoria, that release, that palpable satisfaction. This isn't music to analyze; it's music that's here to make us dance and laugh and throw all our other cares away.

But there is, I believe, a little more to this song, and so at the risk of flouting my own advice, I'm going to overthink it a bit. Because I do think this song is telling us something, or at least discloses it by the by amidst its revelry and exuberance.

On its surface, this is a song about the transformative power of love: its capacity to act as a "psychedelic switch", to flip our minds into a new mode and change the very way we see the world, such that all our prior worries dissipate in the face of this new feeling. But this song is also unmistakeably a song about the transformative power of music, and its capacity to act upon us in precisely the same way. More than any other art form, music has the ability to lift our spirits in an instant. More than any other art form, the experience of music can be as euphoric and intoxicating as the experience of love. More than any other art form, music can even be indistinguishable from our emotions themselves. Like the singer says, they were "a sad, sad song" before. But now, with this song, it's like a psychedelic switch.

And what is it like to be in such a beatific state? The singer sums it up in a single lyric: they'd be "satisfied forever with a couple of years of this". Like love, music doesn't need to be timeless to be worthwhile or meaningful or even life-changing. Some of the most important pleasures we feel are ephemeral ones. And music doesn't let us forget that, because music, in the best cases, makes us feel it. So here's to my song of the year, which even if it's just for this year and no others, is more than enough to keep me satisfied forever.

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 and take this as an opportunity to reminisce on Christmases past, on better and worse years, and on dreams once held.

If you, like me, are new to this song, it's a parable in three acts, the story of a couple of immigrant kids finding their way to New York City and each other. And it begins here, in the way young love often does, with tenderness and hope, a feeling that makes everything seem ready to burst open with excitement and anticipation.

The song seems to understand so much about life, like how falling in love with a person often coincides with falling in love with a place. Or how nothing makes a new place feel more like home than coming across a piece of where you came from, like seeing the local police choir singing an old Irish tune.

But the song also understands that new love never stays so pretty, and in its second act it shows how quickly those initial feelings of jubilation can sour, as the young lovers viciously bicker back and forth. And there it is again, that reminder of where they came from, now seeming like a symbol of the inescapability of who they were and still are.

So how does it all end? In a word, ambivalently. Our lovers are civil again, but not without grievance. Because the song understands that the most powerful relationships in our lives are never simply one thing, but those where tenderness exists alongside bitterness, where the things we cherish most dearly are also those that break our heart.

It's no fairytale romance, but it's all the more poignant because of that. It's no cheery Christmas carol, but it's none the lesser for it. And the song itself is no pristine composition, either; it's imperfect, and weird, and rough around the edges. But that's precisely what makes it so affecting. It's a celebration of life in all its messiness and complexity, and what better to celebrate on Christmas Day than that.

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 pretty – but hey, life isn't always a walk in the park now, is it?

What a perfect opening couplet. Someone in the singer's life just "got a new tattoo of an old tattoo". A friend, or an acquaintance, or maybe a stranger – but at any rate, someone wanting more of the same, or perhaps nostalgic for the past. The singer, meanwhile, and in contrast, has been restless, as they've "hunted and hunted for the dreams [they] thought [they] wanted". It may seem like no more than an offhand observation, but it sets the stage for the rest of the song, which finds the singer again and again sitting on the edge of their community and wondering if now might be the time to jump off.

The song is filled with these gem-like, off-kilter aphorisms – wry turns of phrase that always get at something deeper, in the way that only metaphor can, like "we are busted stitches in the patchwork of the flag" or "I'm doing 25-to-life just waiting on a friend to get back from a piss". How better to encapsulate those twin feelings of unbelonging and captivity, of alienation and familiarity? You can almost see the singer leaning over a bar, looking out at the crowd and contemplating that next round, wishing for something different, while for the moment having nowhere else to be.

But I don't want to be too reductive here. I don't want to suggest that these lyrics mean any one thing. The language is figurative, not literal, and that means it's less about what the lyrics are saying and more about all the things they bring to mind. It's about that free play of the imagination that such imagery stirs up inside us. And that's why, I suppose, the song feels to me at its best when it's at its most enigmatic and gnomic. Like what does that mean – "a negligible fraction of the holy trinity"? I love it, but not because I can decipher it. I love it for all the associations it conjures up – of cosmic insignificance, of a fall from grace, but also of the divinity still within us. In a word, it's poetry.

And that brings us to the song's leading image: "to be free from the guillotine" – another resonant metaphor, suggestive of so much: the sharp bite of social ostracism, the spectre of retribution, and the shining promise of liberation on the other side.

But the singer is always quick to undercut their own triumphalism. They're breaking free, sure, but they're not quite there yet. As they put it:

I'm here halfway through at best
With no clear pathway through the rest
Playing contract tambourine in a shipyard plumber's band

The singer doesn't know where they're headed; they just know that they've gotta go, and that they're gonna ruffle some feathers along the way, becoming "a willingly endangered bird of prey".

It all feels so relatable, even if I'd never think to put it in precisely these words. It's that feeling you get when you recognize that you need to get out, to turn your back on the world you've known and make a better life for yourself, even though you have no idea what that life will be.

And it's here that the song's persistent specificity starts to dilate and expand. The singer isn't just singing about themselves; they're singing about all of us – about the fixes we've all been in, the doubts that've held us there, and the dreams we're all hunting of finally being free.

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 rest of the album. It's nothing like the songs I actually want to talk about. Then again, no song on this album is like the rest of the album. If there's one constant to this music, it's a refusal to stay in any one place. So maybe this, a sumptuous orchestral overture, is the most fitting introduction to an album that never ceases to subvert our expectations – like this. 

See what I mean when I said that this music seemed like too much? What do you even do with a riff like this? It's so intense and sludgy and just kind of dumb, that it's hard to know whether it's meant in earnest or in jest. But one thing's for sure: the band is playing the heck out of it. And then the song flips on its head, opening up into these bright jazzy harmonies and pillowy synth pads, layered on top of an absolutely killer bass line. 

It's so ridiculously groovy, it almost feels like a joke, like a spoof of a jam band. And the lyrics don't make things seem any the more serious, being just a list of things that the singer "[is] thinking while you are talking", like "does purgatory have snacks?" and "do hot girls like chords?". 

But just as the band has us thinking that they're just goofing around, out comes this explosive solo, which is no joke. This is some seriously sick shredding. It's moving faster than I can even hear it. It's the sort of virtuosity that puts a grimace on your face, that feels like it's bringing us to the bleeding edge of what music can be. 

This is music on overdrive, music that exists to be over the top, music that wants to show us that it can do anything. 

So perhaps it's no surprise that this next song is something totally different, a sweet, singsong melody addressed to none other than Death. "Hey Grim Reap", sings the singer, as the keys chime in with a syncopated house rhythm and the band gets ready to move. 

And then, with the verse, the band pulls back, the drums subdividing the beat into almost infinitesimal segments, with the keys and the bass interjecting in a playful unison. I don't know if this is the band doing hyperpop or glitch or chiptune, but whatever it is, it's never grooved so hard. 

This is music that relishes in being stylistically all over the map, but if it has one consistent quality, it's an aesthetic of flexing, of showing that it can take any musical idea, no matter how wacky or crude, and make it sound like the coolest thing you've ever heard, just by sheer force of musical will. 

But let's go even bigger. And what's bigger than a punchy bass line? How about a bass line played by a full brass section? How about a song about what it's like to be the President? 

Yet again, this music is a ludicrous mash-up. The singer's mellifluous voice is paired with impish lyrics, as funky rhythms are punctuated by grandiose fanfares. And then, without missing a beat, the band transitions into this harmonically dense pre-chorus. Has anything this tongue-in-cheek ever sounded so nice? 

This is the band at their purest and most irreverent. It's audacious and bombastic and larger than life – kind of like a certain you-know-who. 

This band feels to me like the trickster gods of acid jazz, using their musical omnipotence not for good nor evil but rather for play – to shake us out of our musical conventions and show us that true virtuosity knows no bounds. After all, if you're this talented as musicians, why not use your powers to have a little fun? 

So let's all rise and hail these musicians and send them off with one final, epic salute.

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 that's the grace of honesty that only a clear-eyed observer of life can bring. So let's pull up a chair and hear what this singer has to say. 

This song, like so many of the singer's others, traces out a relational dynamic, here between a "you" who is selfish and self-centered, to the neglect of others' feelings, and an "I" who has been burned one too many times, and describes their relationship this way: "All my life I've been running from what you want". It's an all too familiar situation, one person taking everything except for responsibility for their actions, while the other is left questioning their complicity as they struggle to break free. We don't know if the "you" of this song is a lover, or a friend, or a parent, or a sibling. But that's kind of the point, as we can see them all in its story and in the beautifully enigmatic imagery that it uses to get at this feeling, with lines like "am I your moat or your drawbridge?" or "it plays on my mind how the time passing holds you like pocket change". 

Yet what I find most remarkable about this song is not its truthfulness or its poetry, but how the singer doesn't sound at all jilted, or heartbroken, or even just fed up. They're not giving voice to the anger and frustration and sadness that's surely there. Rather, the song feels like it's coming from a place of understanding, of knowing yourself and knowing others, and of finally being able to see a relationship for what it is. And that feels special. It's rare enough to reach a place like that in our own relationships; rarer still for a piece of music to commemorate that achievement, and to encapsulate a glimmer of how it feels. 

But now let me be honest for a minute. Because as extraordinary as I believe this music to be, I do have to admit that it is just folk music at the end of the day. At first blush you might think that you've heard it all before: the common chord progressions, the easy melodies, that familiar country lilt. So why, then, is this the most affecting song I've heard all year? 

First, to state the obvious, music doesn't need to be original to move us. And second, it's all in the details: that pristine voice; the perfectly tuned guitar tones; the uncanny harmonization of its chorus duet; and these gemlike lyrics that are like poems unto themselves, like "you just settle in like a song with no end". Other songs may be similar, but no song is just like this. 

But there's another reason that this song is so affecting, at least to my ears. For me, this music has the special, ineffable quality that comes from an artist making exactly the kind of art they're on this earth to make. What I hear in this music is an artist who has found their voice, an artist who is less interested in writing the "best" songs and more concerned to write the songs that only they can sing. Because, in the end, that's all an artist can really ever do. It just takes some artists longer to get there. Every sound on this record just feels like it's in its right place. And there's nothing quite like that feeling. 

This is an artist who knows exactly who they are. They've found their song, and now they're just settling in, with no end in sight. And their music is an invitation for us to settle in with them and hear what they have to say.

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. But underneath it's playing wildly with rhythm, shifting between measures of 5, then 4, then 4 again, then 3 – quietly destabilizing us, but all the while still sounding like a pop song. 

And then the whole song opens up into billowy synth pads and ascending arpeggios and a new, dilated half-time feel, as if everything we'd heard before has evaporated and we're now floating on top of it. 

And then, just as quickly, we snap back down to earth, and fall back into the stumbling staccato of the verse. And in fact, this back and forth is what the song's about: the experience of shifting between two different modes of moving through life – on the one hand, the struggle of mundane existence, with all its discomfort, doubt, and pain; and on the other, this ethereal vision of a different way of being, without worry or care – though not necessarily a better way of being, for it only achieves its lightness by, as the singer says, "quietly hiding from reality". 

But as the singer continues, "There's a greatness in our view." Neither vision tells the whole story or offers a full perspective on life. Rather, the truth lies in holding these two different visions together, side by side, as only our minds, or this song itself, can do. 

But let's not stop there. Let's jump into another song, another feeling, and yet another inventive riff – this jaunty, popcorning, syncopated duet between the keys and the drums. It's not revolutionary, but man, does it ever groove. And then, yet another left turn into the chorus, which reverberates with new sounds of open chords and spectral harmonies. And then, the song starts to tear itself apart, disintegrating into a heap of distortion and halting rhythms. 

It's all so perfect for a song that's about the incommunicability of one's own pain. It's like the music itself is reaching out for a new language, to express something that mere words cannot. And maybe music can't really express it either; maybe nothing is sufficient to "ever really feel it for you". But music like this is at least enough to make anyone take notice and listen up. 

So let's do one more. The piano part is now an inversion of the previous two songs, rhythmically simple but harmonically dense, counting out the downbeats with a jazzy chromatic figure. The rhythm section fills things out with a punchy backbeat on the drums and a funky melodic counterpoint on the bass. And as things go on, the sounds get fuzzier, more raucous and resonant, a euphonious cacophony of instruments and effects blending into one. 

And that brings us to the song's central metaphor: "Cause I'm still picking up the racket / And I hit the ball". Except the song's central metaphor is not actually a metaphor. The singer is quite literally describing their own process of physical therapy after a debilitating illness, which turned the simple act of tennis into a momentous achievement. But of course, nothing in a song can not be a metaphor. And so the racket becomes a symbol of the singer's resilience, a sign of hope in trying times. And at the same time, the "racket" also conjures up the din and clatter of life, the chaos and unpredictability that we must stand resilient against. And that casts the song's own rackety quality in a new light, and gives deeper meaning to the anarchy of its arrangement, with all its glitchiness and overdrive and rhythmical hiccups. The artist is making a racket, if only to express the turmoil that they've been through, and to show us that they can pick up this racket, too, make it their own, and hit that ball.

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 music in on its own terms, simply for what it itself presents: its sounds, its warmth, its hypnotic repetition. 

There are only four instruments at play, as the song's title tells us: clarinets, in interwoven harmony; vibraphone, with its single well-timed chime; cello, providing a low ostinato drone; and percussion, in the form of a lone thumping downbeat and a persistent background hiss. Listen closely, and you can pry the different instruments apart; but listen more sensuously, less mediated by thought, and all the instruments blend together into one: a single, breathing organism, pulsating with life. 

I'm no stranger to ambient, minimalist music. And so, I find it difficult to explain its appeal to someone who doesn't already see it. It is, at first blush, music that is stripped of so much of what we typically appreciate in music: dynamism and contrast, thematic development, the individual expression of emotion. But in fact, all that is still here, but just in miniature. This is music that makes us hear the slightest shifts in pitch and tempo as momentous; music that develops gradually, almost imperceptibly, across time; music that is still expressive of emotion but an emotion that is a cool, contemplative mood. It is music whose drama unfolds over the smallest intricacies of sound, and so makes us newly alive to all those details – to the way that even the simplest sounds contain within them a symphony of ideas. 

We could, at this point, continue to appreciate this music for what it is – how its original loop is now starting to phase, as the clarinets bend and the chimes recur more rapidly. But like I said at the top, there's a story behind this music, and I can't neglect to mention it. Because this music is not, in fact, an original composition, but rather a reimagining of an earlier work by the same artist – an acoustic rendition of resolutely electronic music. So let us momentarily break the spell of this piece and flip to hear its original counterpart. 

What a strange and familiar new world, like a parallel universe to what we were hearing before. Sonically, all the same elements are here, but the winds and strings and chimes are now all synthesizers, and the "percussion" is the glitchy crackle of mechanically looped tape. Yet the overall effect of this change in ensemble is a radically altered soundscape that I can only describe as subaquatic, as if the first performance we heard has been submerged underwater, and what we're hearing now is a distant echo ringing out across the ocean's depths. But of course, this piece is not the echo but the original, and what we originally heard is the echo of this, but an echo that brings it into sharper focus and breathes into it new life. So let's snap back. 

At this point, you may rightly be asking yourself, Why do this? Why painstakingly work to acoustically recreate music that was, in its original conception, so essentially digital and defined by coincidence? No answer, of course, can fully satisfy this question; there is no sense in which this piece needs to exist. The only answer that can be given is the same answer that must be given to justify the existence of any work of art: Why do anything? Why not? 

All music, I suppose, is about disclosing the beauty in arranged sound. In the original version of this piece, that beauty was an emergent phenomenon, the result of the chance encounters of sound produced by a process of mechanical repetition. In this reconstructed version, that beauty is treated as if every movement of the original was an intentional choice. Because beauty, when revealed to us, never seems accidental. Every detail of the original must be replicated, because that's how everything was meant to be. This performance makes us hear that. In listening to these musicians, we are awed in equal parts by their ability to be so precise and by the beauty of this particular arrangement of sound. What may originally have seemed a serendipitous assemblage now appears as a meticulously orchestrated ensemble. 

All art is imitation, according to a classic line. Perhaps all art is even, at some level, imitation of other art. But imitation needn't always be thought of as diminution, a pale facsimile of the genuine article. Sometimes, as this piece demonstrates, an imitation of an imitation can become its own original: fuller, clearer, more real, making manifest the beauty that was there all along.

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 tiny and distant, dwarfed by the enormity around it, as if singing into the void. And then the voice modulates and duplicates, in the first of many transformations. Quickly the voice mutates even further, pitched up to new heights, until it starts to deteriorate. And then it is distorted beyond all recognition, right as it is delivering its most soulful plea. 

It's like the song is trying to discover the limits of what music can be. How much can a melody be manipulated before it loses its tune? How much can a sound be bent before it breaks? And what's remarkable about this song is that, despite all its sonic chaos and distortion, it remains a thing of beauty – sparkling, shimmering, and diaphanous. These voices should seem terrifying, like a demonic cabal, and yet, they feel like an angelic chorus, delivering us to another world. 

And this is only the beginning. The artist is about to push things even further, packing as much as possible into a single sonic moment, producing an experience that's somewhere in between ecstasy and obliteration. 

It's like this music wants to bring its ensemble of sounds to the brink of annihilation, distorted almost to the point of incomprehension – but not quite. Throughout it all, it remains a thing of beauty. And maybe that's why the music can seamlessly shift between its opening cacophony and these interstitial moments of delicacy, as if a whisper is not the opposite of a wall of sound but just another way of revealing the divine. 

It's like the song is trying to become as noisy as possible without ever falling into atonality or darkness. It's like a brilliant beam of light, so brilliant that it blinds our vision, without ever making us wish to avert our gaze. 

And just when you thought nothing more could be added, there are drums. And not just drums, but a stampede of percussion. It's like the Rapture, leaving us guessing as to whether we are being destroyed or saved. 

It's like every sound that has ever been heard is here in this one moment, and it's beautiful – irresistibly, oppressively beautiful.

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 song about the singer's own preeminence and ubiquity. It's a song about how the singer is "everywhere". If this song makes us feel anything, it's the vicarious satisfaction of a self-fulfilling prophecy or a self-evident proof. 

And you know what else is so great about this song? It's a total bop, even though it has no right to be. Like, what is this beat? There are hand claps and a bass line that's both rhythmically and harmonically jolting – and that's about it. But by some kind of magic, it works, and worms its way into your head, forever on repeat, drowning out all other musical memories until it becomes the only song you ever hear, the only song you've ever heard, the only song you'll ever need – until we're all just "bumpin' that", as indeed we are. 

But this song isn't done with us just yet. Really, it's just getting started. It's time for the remix. 

That same jerky beat is back once again, but pitched up and sped up, and somehow that makes it a good beat for the singer to now rap over. It all makes even less sense than it did before, and that's kind of the point. This is music that revels in its own irreverence, music that's high on its own supply, music that is unafraid of doing something dumb, on the off chance that it may end up being something brilliant. 

Like, what if it went all techno on us? To which the only reasonable response is: What if went even more techno? 

Another way to say all this is that the artist is treating their own music like a meme, something to be repeatedly twisted and warped and transformed into increasingly unexpected and ridiculous shapes. And we are being treated to the artist's infinite scroll, an endlessly unfurling mess of musical ideas, a nonstop party that we can only hope will never end.

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 like it, though there is a surprising amount of French in the lyrics. But I'll come back to what's surprising; for now I want to focus on how the music sounds and how it's doing everything just right. 

What I love about this music is the soft-spoken emotion that runs through every beat and measure. You can hear it in the singing, in the way each word is delicately phrased and the whole song is practically whispered. You can hear it in the instrumentation, with its bending guitars and warbling organ, weepy pedal steel and fluttering mandolin. Even that weird accordion from the beginning doesn't sound so out of place, in this context. 

Which is just to say that this music, like so much country music, is music of the heart, giving voice to its quiet aches and pains. If it doesn't reach the histrionic heights of other styles of music, that's because it's expressing an ordinary kind of heartbreak, the kind to which we can all, sadly, relate. 

And that's why the vocal delivery here is so essential. When done right, we can hear in it the singer's honesty, sincerity, and conviction. They're not trying to impress us, they're trying to tell it like it is. 

But then here's the irony: For all its straight talk and musical swagger, this is a song about the singer's own confusion, isolation, and instability. It's a song about the distorting effects of temptation and the "sirens" that keep luring the singer out to sea. It's a song that sees the singer likening themself to Odysseus, that wily man of many turns, the sort of shapeshifting persona that would seem antithetical to country music. 

But that's the beauty of this song. The singer takes this plain-spoken style and uses it to tell a different, deeper kind of truth, which might run counter to what we expect to hear from a song like this, but is in fact an even more honest statement of what it's really like to exist in this world. 

So what do you think the singer is gonna have to say in a song called "Who I Am"? Well, the first thing the singer tells us is that they've "lost everything I am, even my name". In an even more stripped down and straight-ahead style than before, they remind us of the wisdom that "nothing ever stays the same". Or, putting it more starkly, "they don't tell you until you die it's all a sham". And the singer shares their relief that God doesn't ask your name when you arrive at those pearly gates, since, as they say, "I couldn't tell Her if I had to who I am". 

That's this singer's self-introduction. That's what they have to say about who they are. It may seem like a rebuttal of the question, a rejection of its very premise. But a better way to look at it is as the only answer they know how to give. 

Because what this song really is is a song about aging, and how, as one gets older, it only becomes harder to know oneself, in part because of the traumas and tragedies we all suffer, and in part because of our own avoidance. It's about reaching that age where therapy can't reach us. It's about being left behind. And here's the best line, am I right? "Life ain't fair and God is cruel, but at least She ain't the man." 

What I hear in this song is a message, that even in the face of the existential meaninglessness of it all, it still feels good to be your own person, even if you don't know who that person is anymore – and that maybe the true wisdom of age is that you don't need to know, and that maybe life is better if you don'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 floating above us and gracing us with its presence. 

What we are hearing is arguably the genesis of music as we know it, one of the earliest known pieces of polyphonic music in the Western musical tradition. It may in many ways appear rudimentary, its harmony of the simplest kind: a sustained drone in one voice while other voices bob and weave around it, producing a series of resonant intervals circling round their tonal center, and creating an utterly hypnotic harmonic soundscape. Simple, perhaps, but what majesty there is even in this. 

This music is captivating precisely because it doesn't seem like it should be possible, to pull such beauty out of thin air. How wondrous, that the mere arrangement of sound waves is sufficient to create something like this, so awesome and astonishing, as if it were always there, just waiting for us to tune into its frequency. It's like a tear in the fabric of the universe has been discovered, offering a glimpse into another world. 

Of course, this is all apropos to this music's raison d'être, seeing as it is literally sacred music – music of worship, music of the church, music designed to exalt an otherworldly being. But what I hear in this music does not seem tethered or limited to any particular religious tradition or faith. What I hear is music that is putting us in touch with the divine in the most universal sense – a divinity that is revealed to us through sound. 

And the most remarkable thing is that this divine revelation emerges from the most mundane elements. In other contexts, it may arise out of strings of catgut or rawhide skins; here, it comes about simply from the human voice. And to be sure, these are exceptionally beautiful voices, a paradigm of purity and discipline, moving in perfect coordination, and reverberating in an exquisitely sonorous space. But still, there is nothing supernatural in the mix; everything we hear is the product of human vocal cords and human vocal cords alone. The same instruments we use to talk and yell and argue and curse can also produce this. And that feels like magic. That feels like something that shouldn't be. 

How incredible that all of this would be present in music this primeval. But take that as a lesson, that music's revelatory powers have been there from the very start – that for as long as there's been music, it's had the capacity to fill us with wonder in this way. And the history of music is not some long march towards the perfection of this capacity, but rather an eclectic chorus of voices, all realizing this capacity to the fullest, but in new and singular ways. Which is to say, the history of music is like a series of worlds revealed to us, a sequence of curtains drawn back, none inherently better or truer than any other one, and all equally sublime. This piece of music may be one of the oldest extant examples of the art form, but its sound is timeless. 

Timeless, and also strange: the haunting swirls of voices, the glacial harmonic movements, the uncanny synchronicity. But this strangeness is precisely what makes the music so captivating, as if by holding it in our gaze we will spot how it works its conjuring trick. But of course the music resists our efforts and remains inscrutable. We can't ever truly explain it; all we can do is take it in. But that's why we listen. That's why we can't look away. And if this piece teaches us anything, it's that music has always been this way, and always will. 

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 that music can so readily bring us into a certain feeling or state of mind or situation? Surely, such music must be said to be conveying something – something ineffable perhaps, but not void of sense. 

Even this music, what's playing right now, seems rich in significance, despite its minimal elements. I hear in it an unsteady serenity, a momentary peace, an eerie quiet, the calm before the storm, electricity in the air, bristling, quivering, full of foreboding. And then, the sky begins to rain down. 

The opening salvo is a simple motif on guitar, made jagged through layers of distortion and delay. But it is quickly joined by a cascade of supporting artillery: an unrelenting beat pounded out by the bass and the drums, a second guitar doubling the motif in a higher register, a counterpoint from a violin (or is it spiraling out of control?), the beat now hammered out by cymbals, propelling it on even further, and a third guitar, slicing through the burning sky. 

At last, the full cannonade arrives, and it's immediately disorienting, as the downbeat shifts below our feet, the two becomes the one and the one becomes the four: one last cataclysm in a whirlwind of chaos. 

Can there be any doubt as to what this music is trying to convey? It's hard to hear it as anything but a violent attack, a relentless assault, an inescapable blitz. Sounds howl through the air like missiles, made all the more terrifying by their patent coordination. The song's title describes it bluntly: "raindrops cast in lead". But there's another sound that can be heard, nestled deep within the maelstrom, an uncanny brightness amidst the unending destruction. I hesitate to try to say what it is. Some awful beauty? Some glimmer of hope? 

And then, a reprieve; and then, a disorientation of a different kind; and then, a voice – something rarely heard in this band's almost exclusively instrumental oeuvre. And it's not the voice of one of the band's members; it's not even in their, or my, mother tongue. So let me translate: 

Raindrops cast in lead 
Our side illuminated 
And then extinguished and buried and finished 
Under the perfect sun 
Under the body falling from the sky 
They were martyrs who fell 
Because on our side they are martyrs since before we were even born 
Those who tried and were killed for trying 
Those who died young, angry or old, and never saw the dawn 
Innocents and children and the tiny bodies who laughed and then fell asleep forever 
And never saw the beauty of the dawn 

"The beauty of the dawn" – is that what we were hearing earlier, barely audible beneath the barrage? Is that what we were hearing just before this, breaking through for a moment of interstitial tranquility? Is that what is now again being occluded, as the devastation starts anew? As we move into the song's second figure, a simple back and forth between two chords, between suspension and resolution, between tension and release, between uncertain possibility and brutal fact. 

And we're just getting started. This onslaught will continue for another three minutes – screeching, sundering, spinning out, filling the sky till there's nothing else, nothing but its program of annihilation. And there will always be more. Just when you think it's reached the height of its aggression, it gets even louder, even heavier, even noisier, even more wild and fierce. 

You may, at this juncture, very well be wondering, What's the point of all this? Sure, it's impressive, and unnerving, how this music can bring such a horrific scene to life. But it is, in the end, a representation, not to be confused with the reality, which is, of course, unspeakably worse. But representations can also show us aspects of reality that reality itself obscures. And so I come back to that note of awful beauty, the silver lining in the thundercloud, an indomitable spirit that can be heard beneath everything, despite everything, amidst the blistering violence an invincible glimmer of radical hope. 

But this music is not meant to be triumphant. It will present us with the possibility of resilience, but not its realization. Instead, it leaves us here, in haunting suspension, for there are many who will never see the beauty of the dawn.