TANNERY BAY (Steven Dunn, Katie Jean Shinkle)

A transcendent, collaborative new novel with a powerful #OwnVoices narrative of Black joy, Queer joy, and community

TANNERY BAY

by Steven Dunn and
Katie Jean Shinkle

FC2 · February 15, 2024
Paperback · $18.95 · 206 pages
ISBN: 9781573662055

“An exceptional exploration of how place shapes a person… Tannery Bay's fresh prose feels at once immediate and timeless while it unravels the enigmatic town's secrets."
—Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me and Gag Reflex

“As funny as it is haunting, with characters so rich and easy to love, you’ll miss them once you’ve finished… Tannery Bay is a book you’ll want to return to again and again.”
—Suzi Q. Smith, author of Poems For the End of the World

“Unforgettable… this unique and moving novel explores profound questions of inequality, the price of our dignity under capitalism, and the pulsating vibrancies of life.”
– Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Woman of Light

Enter a world where time stands still and summer never ends in TANNERY BAY (February 15, 2024), an ambitious and haunting new novel from celebrated writers Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle. Teaming up for the first time, Dunn and Shinkle collaborate to explore what it means to write from another’s subject positioning and possibilities to do so ethically. In doing so, they have created a unique, rich world of characters and story that will enthrall, delight, and challenge readers.

In the enchanted town of Tannery Bay, it’s July 37th, and then July 2nd again, but the year is a mystery. Held hostage in an eternal loop, the residents embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery, unity, and defiance against the forces that seek to divide them.

Intrepid siblings, Otis and Joy, work with their family and friends, who are separated geographically and economically from the other citizens, to oppose a formidable evil adversary: The Owners. These cunning and ruthless old men, driven by insatiable greed, hold the town hostage, exploiting its resources and dividing its people.

A powerful, collaborative #OwnVoices narrative, Tannery Bay encapsulates a Black and queer (and the overlaps therein) community who work together to fight the oppressive powers-that-be and reclaim their space. This is a captivating story of Black joy, Queer joy, and the ways in which family is both biological and chosen, where love transcends boundaries, and where art is a vehicle for change.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

STEVEN DUNN is a 2021 Whiting Award winner and the author of Potted Meat and water & power. He was born and raised in West Virginia and teaches in the MFA programs at Regis University and Stetson University.

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE is the author of five books of prose, most recently None of This Is an Invitation. A Lambda Literary fellow, she serves as co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing program at Sam Houston State University.

FINE DREAMS (Linda N. Masi)

The haunting and heartbreaking debut novel from
acclaimed Nigerian author, Linda N. Masi

FINE DREAMS

A NOVEL

by Linda N. Masi

University of Massachusetts Press
March 1, 2024
Paperback · $19.95 · 170 pages
ISBN: 9781625347923

Winner of the 2023 Juniper Prize for Fiction, Linda N. Masi’s debut novel, FINE DREAMS (March 1, 2024; University of Massachusetts Press), rewrites myth and history in a heart-wrenching story inspired by human resiliency in the face of unthinkable geopolitical horrors.

Framed by a ghost’s first-person narrative, the book centers on four young friends, the stars of their school’s track team. While studying for exams, they are kidnapped and taken to a terrorist encampment. Two are claimed as “wives” by their captors, one is forced to wear a suicide vest, and each is subjected to appalling violence and terror.

Like Persephone in Greek mythology, these young women are abducted and abused by men in power, forced to survive in the darkest imaginable places. But Masi offers these characters a sweeter ending than Persephone was given. In Masi’s telling, these resilient young women recover their dreams and hopes. They live in daylight once again, carrying newfound self-determination and strength to reclaim their dreams.

While this story centers on fictional characters in a fictional place, their stories reflect a reality that is all too familiar for the Nigerian people. In 2014, a widely publicized abduction in Chibok caught the world’s attention and brought this experience to light. Sadly, almost 100 of the nearly-300 girls kidnapped during that tragedy have not yet been recovered.

The four young women in FINE DREAMS could have been taken in any of the many similar incidents that have plagued the Nigerian people for years. Their stories give the gift of hope and strength that is so palpable it could reach off the page and touch the hearts of the true life victims around the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LINDA N. MASI is the winner of the 2023 Juniper Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, Fine Dreams, a Finalist in the Cascade Writing Contest 2021, OCW, Longlisted in the Voyage YA's Summer 2021 First Chapters Contest, and a 2018 Longleaf Writers' Conference Scholar. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, BlackBerry: A Magazine, and elsewhere, and she is the author of a play, The Price of Peace (Longerlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, NLNG, 2010), a book of poetry, The Talking Drum Hums (2013), and a children's book series, The Necklace of Relur: The Kagim Chronicles, Volume I & II (2018, winner of the lantern-Books/ Literamed Publishers 'Book of the Week').

Originally from Nigeria, Masi holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Mississippi, where she won the 2020 Bondurant Prize for Fiction, and is completing a PhD in English (creative writing focus) at Texas Tech University.

SCHOOL (Ray Levy)

“SCHOOL is a tour de force of deadpan wit, a delicious détournement in which Levy amusingly mingles (and mangles) various scholarly and cultural archives… This is cutting-edge academic satire of the highest order.”
—Michael Leong, author of Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry

SCHOOL

A NOVEL

by Ray Levy

FC2 | October 12, 2023
$16.95 | 174 Pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978-1573662024

In his blistering new novel, SCHOOL (Oct. 12), Ray Levy doesn’t kiss the ring—he chews the damn finger off. Both an exorcism of contemporary academia, and a comedic portrait of an artist seeking the means to survive, School incorporates a variety of forms, including conversations, interviews, a dissertation manuscript possessed by the spirit of Marquis de Sade, a lecture on queer theory transcribed by a dysphoric PhD student, a movie review of a YouTube video of a conference presentation on deconstruction, and more.

“I learned that gender dysphoria and academic dysphoria can overlap in ways that make them difficult to separate and name,” Levy writes, describing the book’s genesis. “I produced an initial draft before I was consciously aware that I wanted to become another gender; and I engaged the process of development and revision after I became conscious of my desire and had started to transition; the question of what to do with a pre-transition manuscript became a craft problem for me to solve, and an integral component of what the novel is about.”

The whole of SCHOOL then functions as a caustic ritual—a demonic attack that’s also slapstick satire. More specifically, it’s a sadistic text about the masochism enforced by the seminar room’s coercive seduction rites, about power and possession, about academic humiliation, and about using the material of one’s humbling to build a new vessel for capacious creative selfhood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RAY LEVY is also the author of Negative Space (Spiral Editions), A Book So Red (Caketrain), and Necessary Objects (Tree Light Books). Short fictions appear or are forthcoming in ANMLY, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, Territory, SPORAZINE, Western Humanities Review, and others. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Prose, Levy is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington and a founding editor at Dreginald. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

THERE IS ONLY ONE GHOST IN THE WORLD (Sophie Klahr, Corey Zeller)

“Edgy and gripping… episodic miniatures of loss and absence, first and last things, the guises of love… Sequencing is essential in a work like this—Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller have the prose equivalent of perfect pitch.”

– Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again

THERE IS ONLY ONE
GHOST IN THE WORLD

by Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller

FC2 | October 17, 2023
$16.95 | 124 Pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978-1573662031

Winner of the 2022 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, as selected by Marream Krollos, THERE IS ONLY ONE GHOST IN THE WORLD (October 2023) is a kaleidoscopic investigation into the loneliness of modern American life. Co-authored by Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller, this book collages fragmented meditations in multiple voices—as if catching glimpses of life from a moving vehicle, or searching faulty memories in a family photo album.

Klahr and Zeller’s intimate and visceral narratives explore the truths and lies that families tell one another, contemplating the raw nerves of gender and identity, the lessons of heartbreak, and the legacies of art. This daring, disruptive prose acts as a tender witness, revealing the best and the worst in all of us as it unspools through incompletable Venn diagrams of spiritual longings, addiction and climate change, shootings and stolen x-rays, the lyrics of disco and earworm etymologies, fake news and 99-cent stores, last meals and unearthed mummies. THERE IS ONLY ONE GHOST IN THE WORLD is a book about what happened just before you woke up, and what happened just after.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

SOPHIE KLAHR and COREY ZELLER have been writing together for over a decade, and have had their collaborative work published in Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Shallow Ends, Four Way Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. Klahr is also the author of Meet Me Here at Dawn (2016, YesYes Books) and Two Open Doors in a Field (2023, Backwaters Press). Zeller is the author of Man vs. Sky (2013, YesYes Books) and You and Other Pieces (2015, Civil Coping Mechanisms).

WOMEN ON THE MOON (Debora Kuan)

“This is a book of motherhood, of birthing, of tenderness, of the domestic, a book of ‘animal attention’ … Women on the Moon is about mothering a child and a child of color in America, in an era of gunfire and wildfire smoke, at a moment when any tenderness cannot help but be ‘its own pleat of grief.’”
– Tess Taylor, author of Work & Days and Rift Zone

WOMEN ON THE MOON

POEMS BY
DEBORA KUAN

September 15, 2023 · The Word Works
9781944585761 · Paperback · $19.00 · 104pp

In her third and most intimate collection yet, WOMEN ON THE MOON (October 2023; The Word Works), celebrated poet Debora Kuan interrogates what it means to be a woman of color who is both a captive of and captivated by the gravitational pull of a man’s world. Deploying the figure of the moon goddess Chang-E of Chinese legend as a proxy, Kuan explores the experiences of internalized racism, misogyny, and invisibility that arise from a decentered, alien status.

With raw vulnerability and sharp consideration, Kuan investigates the female experience in all its multifaceted fullness and complexity. Throughout her varied yet cohesive collection, Kuan exemplifies the tension between the expectations on women and the reality of all that a woman carries. Women today, especially in America, must navigate personal wants and fears amid a dangerous society, while also being nurturing, patient, and gracious mothers.

In rewritten fairy tales, word finds, Mad Libs, chess matches, magic lessons, rhyming tercets and quatrains, prose poems, and still lifes—cultural artifacts of an American childhood and the white hegemony—Kuan charts the journey from girlhood to motherhood, each stage marked by a phase of the moon. Or rather, as Kuan puts it, “in retrograde: from motherhood, to womanhood, to childhood, and then, finally, to being.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEBORA KUAN is the author of two previous poetry collections XING (Saturnalia) and Lunch Portraits (Brooklyn Arts Press). She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Boston Review, The Baffler, Fence, The Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, and other publications. She has been anthologized in publications such as the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Advanced Language and Literature, What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People, and the forthcoming Poetry Studio: Prompts for Poets. She is the current poet laureate of Wallingford, CT, where she lives with her family and works remotely for the MIT Press.

WAYS TO DISAPPEAR (Victoria Lancelotta)

“[A] wondrous book….the shimmering stories included in Ways to Disappear remind us that experience remains, relentlessly and materially, embedded within ourselves, and without.”

—Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Iliac Crest and The Taiga Syndrome

WAYS TO DISAPPEAR

A Collection of Short Stories
by Victoria Lancelotta

FC2 | August 2023
$18.95 | 262 Pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-573662-01-7

Winner of the 2022 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize, as selected by Cristina Rivera Garza, Victoria Lancelotta’s collection WAYS TO DISAPPEAR channels the best of Mary Gaitskill and Amy Hempel, excavating the unexamined places between dread and desire, promise and threat, where the body is both prison and salvation.

Lancelotta’s characters—withdrawn teenagers, vulnerable brothers and sisters, stray husbands, fearful mothers, girls who barely have a chance to be anything at all—are driven by the irresistible need to be a bigger part of the worlds they inhabit. From dimly lit motel rooms to 24-hour supermarkets, WAYS TO DISAPPEAR illuminates the exhaustion and enchantment of the quotidian, with language lush and jagged, never sentimental.

Featuring a powerful narrative voice, WAYS TO DISAPPEAR brilliantly showcases Lancelotta’s short fiction, which has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Through vivid depictions of the broken, yet beautiful, Lancelotta understands that sometimes people check their wounds not to see if they’ve healed, but to be sure they’re still there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VICTORIA LANCELOTTA is author of Here in the World: 13 Stories, and the novels Far and Coeurs Blesses. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Fellowship, multiple Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grants, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in Frederick MD.

SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE (Carol Guess)

“Carol Guess builds the most wondrous word-nests, each one holding something precious, each one surrounded by the world-at-large, afire. In remarkable lyrical fiction after another, Carol Guess writes her heart out.”

—Randall Brown, author of Mad to Live, founder of Matter Press

SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE

A Collection of Short Stories
by Carol Guess

Tupelo Press
October 2023
978-1-946482-90-7 | $21.95 | Paperback

The concept of a chosen family is not new, especially to the queer community, but as forces in our society continue to ostracize and harm individuals, groups of like-minded people find solace, support, and strength among their friends. This connection is uniquely different from a family of origin or a community at large, and is often what allows individuals to survive and thrive.

In Carol Guess’s innovative collection of short stories, SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE (October 2023), interlinked queer characters face the all too familiar challenges that have erupted in the United States in the past seven years. While these stories center around the fight for survival during Trump-era politics and the Covid-19 pandemic, readers see how the intuition of these characters was honed long before these recent barriers.

The friends and lovers in SLEEP TIGHT SATELLITE reject the violent pseudo-communities that have formed all around them. A white woman’s lover, a white police officer, may have committed a violent crime. A woman leaves her lovers behind and travels to a seaside town to help an abandoned child. A scientist tries to escape the state surveillance that comes with their job as a satellite engineer.

Told with humor and lyrical language, these stories invite readers to linger with characters they feel as if they’ve always known.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CAROL GUESS is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Doll Studies: Forensics and Tinderbox Lawn. A frequent collaborator, she writes across genres and illuminates historically marginalized material. In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Queer Studies and Creative Writing. She lives in Bellingham, WA.

Justin's 2022 Albums of the Year

I’m thrilled to deliver my third annual musical digest in time for us to begin the new year. This year’s curation has taken a bit more of a concerted effort because all nine pounds and four ounces of Louise Powell Hargett arrived on the afternoon of August 10th, and single-handedly turned the rest of 2022 into a steady blur of sleeplessness and vegetation.

Alex and I have been playing Lou our favorite songs everyday—on a new integrated Sonos and vinyl stereo system—but clearly the last four months have been hard to keep up with new releases. Still, I’m proud to be raising our daughter in a house full of lovely and strange music, and so far, I like to think that Lou’s favorite song is They Might Be Giants’ “Doctor Worm.” She’s also heard these top ten albums a lot, and doesn’t object to any.

As tradition insists, let me clarify that, “This isn't all-encompassing, or intended to be definitive of anything. They're just the year's new records that made me happiest when I put them on, and are permanently staying in the rotation.” There are a couple albums that would probably be on this list if I’d heard them sooner, and a few I’ll eventually get around to trying out.

Fuzzed out blissful guitar rock got me in 2022. I think you’ll find that through-line connects most of these records. I’m an old punk now at 37, and while I can still get up for a mosh pit here and there, you’re more likely to find me searching for a melodic mid-tempo rocker while I’m cruising the Valley buying diapers, or pleasantly surprised to be at a seated concert. And these ten records hit that vibe for me perfectly.

Top (10) Albums of the Year - Listen Here on Spotify!
*Featuring 3-4 songs from each, sequenced for maximum pleasure

Wet Leg - Wet Leg
While I don’t rank this list, Wet Leg’s buzzed-about debut hits with such a punch I had to put it first. I’m wary of hyped bands these days, but this was a thrilling discovery rife with a propulsive rhythm section, fuzzy leads, and delightfully wry, sardonic lyrics. It’s a true jam.

2nd Grade - Easy Listening
A nearly perfect power-pop record that channels Alex Chilton, Paul Westerberg, and Robert Pollard (which, now that I type that, might actually be my personal Holy Trinity). It was incredibly difficult to narrow this record down to just three favorite tracks, so if you dig it, keep going and get lost.

SASAMI - Squeeze
The first time I heard this record, I knew it had secured a place in this email. If Sylvia Massy replaced the pop music producers on Liz Phair’s 2003 major label debut, Squeeze would be the resultant masterpiece. The songs I’ve selected for this playlist are my three favorites, but to get the full experience of SASAMI’s Millenium metal influences then start at “Skin a Rat” and hold on.

Wednesday - Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up
A number of great covers albums came out this year, including records that I loved from Cat Power and Steve Earle, but Wednesday’s faithful country (ish) selections were so phenomenal they earned their place in my permanent rotation. I’ve even got the cassette to prove it. Washed in a hazy fuzz, and covered in a sheen of bright feedback, this album will make you pour yourself a bourbon and sulk. You know, in a good way.

PUP - THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND
Alright, here’s the pick-me-up. Ostensibly a concept record about the Canadian punks breaking up in real time, it’s full of cathartic sing-along anthems, some charming piano interludes, and the perfect, heartbreaking ode to the guitar you don’t play anymore, “Matilda.” Getcher tissues out, man.

Kurt Vile - (watch my moves)
It was at Kurt’s show supporting this record in March that I was subsumed into the plushy embrace of the Ace Hotel Theater’s orchestra seating, entranced by the record’s new melodies and expansive guitarscapes. If that concert was two hours, it was too short, but I couldn’t tell you because that night was wonderfully and appropriately hazy.

Bartees Strange - Farm to Table
The follow-up to Strange’s incredible 2020 debut (and the bumping single “Boomer”), Farm to Table expands on his sound with lush verses and loud, dynamic choruses, track after track. My favorite hook of the year is the fist-pumping chorus in “Wretched.”

Built to Spill - When the Wind Forgets Your Name
Doug Martsch’s new album is the epitome of the blissful fuzz rock I loved all year. If you ever wanted to hear what J Mascis might sound like backing up Neil Young, here ya go. 

The Mountain Goats - Bleed Out
It wouldn’t be my year-end list if John Darnielle didn’t have a place on it, so here we are again with another new one from the prolific troubadour (and first rate novelist). Bleed Out hits harder than either of the last two records, and is a refreshing change from some of the jazzier ponderings of recent live sets. “Wage wars, get rich, die handsome”—what more can you say.

Titus Andronicus - The Will to Live
If 2nd Grade’s Easy Listening channeled the sweeter side of classic rock radio, Titus Andronicus have recorded a tribute to the era’s arena-rocking giants, but replaced the lyrics with their usual blend of terrible visions and gothic haunts. The best Iron Maiden guitar solo this side of Adrian Smith and Dave Murray can be found on “An Anomaly.”

***

I have also put together another four-plus hour “Honorable Mentions and Miscellany 2022” playlist—listen here in Spotify! It’s full of more goodies and fantastic singles (Guided by Voices of course! The Young Fresh Fellows…in 2022! The one song from the new Joyce Manor record that bangs!). This list is essentially the rest of what I've been listening to for the last twelve months, so I hope you dig it too.

I also want to call out two records that I loved this year but don’t fall under my usual rubric. Idle Ray, the latest project from Saturday Looks Good to Me’s Fred Thomas, is a magical little thing but technically released in 2021 (I think). Also, the new “Super Deluxe” remastered edition of The Beatles’ Revolver is a technological marvel and highly worthy of a revisit. To hear more about that process check out this interview with Giles Martin.

And while I have you, for those reading inclined I would also like to recommend a couple of new music books. My friend Jim Ruland’s Corporate Rock Sucks is a fantastic history of SST Records, the former home of punk rock stalwarts Black Flag, Descendents, Husker Du, etc. Dan Ozzi’s thoroughly enjoyable Sellout is about your favorite turn of the century punk bands jumping ship for their major label debuts. And a book I worked on this fall chronicling the history of New Zealand’s influential indie label Flying Nun Records, Needles & Plastic. Tally ho!

Happy New Year. May it be filled with beautiful sound. I hope you'll share your favorites with me too.

Big hugs,
justin

Justin's 2021 Albums of the Year

This time around I kept track of 2021’s new music as the year happened instead of staying up until some ungodly December hour scouring a million year-end lists.

That process has had a unique effect on the end result. As I said last time around: “This isn't all-encompassing, or intended to be definitive of anything. They're just the year's new records that made me happiest when I put them on, and are permanently staying in the rotation.”

That sentiment is just as true today, but this year’s edition is a more autobiographical endeavor than its predecessor. I’ve listened to the same songs and albums for months, and even some since I set about the chronicle during that first week of January.

Ostensibly I was “evaluating” a running list of new songs, which I dubbed “Keeping Track of 2021” in Spotify, but I think “collecting” is the more accurate term. It turns out that if you spend six-months to a year listening to the same new songs and records while you work, clean the house, or drive to Santa Barbara to visit your nieces, then you might be extremely biased toward selecting the songs you’ve returned to again and again all year long.

Looking at them now, this list of mostly mid-tempo, melodic, feel-good* tunes is probably more revealing of my state-of-mind in the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty-fucking-one than I neccessarily intended it to be. But there you go, 2021 was—for me at least—much more enjoyable than the last one. Obviously the vaccines had something to do with it, as well as the removal of the detestable shit-lord from the Oval Office. Which is not to say that bad things didn’t happen (of course they did and will ad infinitum) but a weight was lifted and I was able to finally hug some people I love mask-free, hear live music again, see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon, and spend six weeks working from Europe. I didn’t feel like screaming into a void most days, which was really nice and obviously reflected in the music I chose to spend time with this year.

Without further ado, below you will find two Spotify playlists. The first is a sampler of songs from my ten favorite new records released in 2021, sequenced for your aural pleasure receptors, along with some brief commentary and context. The second is a collaborative playlist of eclectic singles that I loved along the way and frequently used to help keep track of music this year (as well as new finds from all those consensus lists). Yes, it’s collaborative, so I really hope you will add some of your favorite songs to it too if you use Spotify!

*In this context “feel-good” is extremely debatable, the Mountain Goats record is called Dark in Here, for christ’s sake. This is about as sunny as my musical taste gets.

***

Top (10) Albums of the Year - Listen Here on Spotify!
*Featuring 3-4 songs from each, sequenced for maximum pleasure

The Go! Team - Get Up Sequences Part One
Tonally, this sample-forward, maximalist groove box of a record is what I reach for when I’m in a particularly up-beat mood. I sincerely hope there’s a Part Two forthcoming asap.

Mikey Erg - S/T
The closest thing to a proper Ergs’ album that superfans like me have had in a long time. Louder, faster, and more in your face than his last two solo albums, but just as melodic and hook-filled as anything on Dork Rock Cork Rod or Upstairs/Downstairs. HIs faithful cover of Green Day’s “Going to Pasalacqua” feels like the keystone to the whole endeavor.

Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
People who listen to a lot more diverse styles of music than I can better explain why this record is all over the “Best Of” lists. I really didn’t expect it to dig its hooks into me so deeply, but here we are. I love how cinematic it is, from the ethereal floating bliss of the chorus in “Paprika,” to the piercing synth/vocoder solo in “Savage Good Boy,” to the lilting-turn-droning 6+ minute finale “Posing for Cars.” It’s a trip.

The Mountain Goats - Dark in Here
Alex and I got to see John Darnielle and company perform at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, which was our first (masked! fully vaccinated!) concert in 18 months. It was soul-satisfying from the jump, and Dark in Here might be the album that best captures their recent live band experience on wax, while still retaining Darnielle’s classic, story-telling charm.

Lucy Dacus - Home Video
This is another popular, consensus pick that I have no shame seconding in a heartbeat. Lucy Dacus shows that she is one of the most vivid storytellers writing today, and her dulcet-toned remembrances of youth are expertly awash in swelling waves of fuzzy distortion and swampy delay/reverb.

The Pink Stones - Introducing…the Pink Stones
A lush alt-country record from some young kids in Athens, Georgia that descends from Graham Parsons and his line of “cosmic country music.” Music made for drinking whiskey in a humid bar south of the Mason Dixon—something I’d like to do again come the new year. “You can call me Charlie / even though you love me hardly.”

Jeff Rosenstock - Ska Dream
Spoiler alert, if the Mountain Goats and Jeff Rosenstock release new music then it’s going on my year-end list. If this particular album sounds familiar to you, it’s because Jeff has re-recorded last year’s Top 10 pick No Dream, but this time he’s gone back to his roots and completely ska’d it out (**looking at you quarantine fever dream**). But it’s no curiosity remix—these songs bump in exciting new ways, while paying tribute to ska’s generational waves, and featuring great guest appearances like Fishbone’s Angelo Moore, and frequent collaborator/Asian Man Records honcho Mike Park.

Illuminati Hotties - Pool Hopping
Last year’s mixtape, Free I.H., a contract-fulfilling, fuck-you to her old record label, was a favorite of mine and “free dumb” was included on the Honorable Mentions playlist. The anthemic first single from Pool Hopping, “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA,” alone (especially it’s piss & vinegar meets bubblegum bridge) cements Sarah Tudzin’s new record on this year’s list.

Lande Hekt - Going to Hell
Released in January, the second solo record from the Muncie Girls’ lead singer has been spinning longer than any other in my top ten, and it was one of the inspirations for keeping tabs on 2021’s new releases. I knew way back then (pre-vaccinations!!) that I was going to save a spot for these beautifully angst-ridden songs, and I’m glad it’s held up over the ensuing 12 months.

TORRES - Thirstier
I was delightfully surprised by this complex, brilliantly layered rock record that channels the best of Liz Phair turned up to 11, while simultaneously backed by J. Mascis and Fountains of Wayne. It’s incredibly easy to start this record over from the beginning, again and again. “Baby, keep me in your fantasies / Baby, keep your hands all over me.”

***

And here is my collaborative “Honorable Mentions and Miscellany 2021” playlist—listen here in Spotify! It’s full of potent potables and other sundries (Guided by Voices! John Prine covers! More ska! Also, other non-ska things!). I hope you dig it, and I hope you’ll add some of your favorites too.

Happy New Year. I hope our paths cross again as soon as possible.

Big hugs (and bisous from Paris!),
justin

Justin's 2020 Albums of the Year

I know that we're all looking forward to closing the book on this awful year, and I can't wait for the day that we can finally see each other again. The thought of sharing a drink with you in a dive bar as we hijack the jukebox, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the back of the pit with all of the other adults, is intoxicating after nine months of masked-up solidarity. 

While there are no silver linings to this collective trauma, there was some new music. During the first month of lockdown I started a playlist that I intended to share. Hours of specifically curated songs that—as I wrote at the time—"make me happy. Songs that make me sad (my favorite kind). New 2020 stuff, and old favorites. Songs that inadvertently speak to our shared experience. Songs that don’t mean anything at all but make me feel like breaking something, or hugging someone." Alex and I have listened to that unfinished "Quarantine Playlist" so many times this year that Spotify just used it for my "Wrapped 2020." 

So, inspired by all of the "Best of" lists going around, I decided to put together my own personal selection of new music. This isn't all-encompassing, or intended to be definitive of anything. They're just the year's new records that made me happiest when I put them on, and are permanently staying in the rotation. A few are pretty obvious, "cool" consensus picks, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

If you want to skip the editorializing, here's a Spotify playlist* with the highlight tracks from my Top 10 Albums of the Year.

One final thing...We lost two artists this year whose work I've leaned on often and occupies almost an entire cube in my vinyl collection, John Prine and Justin Townes Earle. I miss you terribly. Thank you for the music.

Top 10 Albums of the Year
*Sequenced for maximum pleasure.

Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud
One of those consensus "Best Records," and deservedly so. On it Katie Crutchfield composes stunning oil portraits wrapped up in four-minute, Americana-tinged pop songs. This record arrived just in time to ease those early quarantine blues.

Spanish Love Songs - Brave Faces Everyone
Every line of this record is delivered like one last, exasperated breath. The most relatable feeling of 2020.

The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers
By the time Jump Rope Gazers came out in July, New Zealand had effectively eradicated the coronavirus. Watching the band satellite into "Live on KEXP" from their home island—playing live in each others' mixed-company—felt like watching something from an alternate universe. Despite that jealousy, this upbeat, charming pop record is all kinds of aural bliss. 

Gia Margaret - Mia Gargaret
One of the most unexpected revelations of the year for me. A quietly textured, mostly instrumental, synth-heavy ambiance. An antidote for everything anxious and manic.

Bad Moves - Untenable
The sophomore effort from a D.C. band that's one part fistful-of-Skittles sugar rush, slathered in power pop, and laced with some Howard Zinn.

Jeff Rosenstock - NO DREAM
I'm biased. I've seen Jeff perform live in some iteration—solo, with Bomb the Music Industry, or backing other musicians—more than any other musician. NO DREAM checks every box for me—loud, melodic, original, anthemic, fuzzy feel-goods. I can't wait to shout along to "Scram!" next year(?) in the pit.

Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Fuck me. Even the Grammy's got its brilliance.

The Mountain Goats - Songs for Pierre Chuvin
Weeks into the initial lockdown, John Darnielle got back to his roots and recorded an album on his Panasonic boombox, a first since 2002's All Hail West Texas. He conjures that same black magick on Songs for Pierre Chuvin.

Frances Quinlan - Likewise
Hop Along's Frances Quinlan continually impresses with her jaunty, angular, deceptively-catchy compositions that reward the listener for time spent. When this stripped down solo-effort lacks Quinlan's usual guitar shreddery, it more than makes up for with lilting declarations urging you to shout along.

AJJ - Good Luck Everybody
Cathartically dark, AJJ puts words to all the anger I've been channeling into the ether for the last four years. Despite that, it ends on a hopeful note in "A Big Day for Grimley" with a rousing chorus of echoing pleas, ending with static uncertainty. 

"Solitude for the stoic / Mirth for the merry 
A quiet room for the overwhelmed / Arcades for the ADHD 
Health for the sickly / A big day for Grimley
Good luck everybody."

***

I've also started a collaborative playlist on Spotify with songs from other records that I loved this year, as well fun singles and summer jams, songs I almost forgot about, and ones I went to spend more time with in 2021. **I hope you'll add some of your favorites from the year too** What did you love? What got you through?

I hope this unsolicited missive finds you and yours healthy and sane. I miss you all and can't wait to see you again. 

Big hugs,
justin