Slow Vessels
As an antidote to these chaotic subzero days, I’m returning to my spiritual practice of slowing my favorite songs down to a crawl.
????
Strange Shapes in the Night
Dedicated to the great American tradition of speaking to the heavens through candy-colored mountains, car-wreck calendars, and junkyard rockets.
Naming the Snow
“God is an experience,” an old man said as he reached for another cookie.
Holy Ruins
Some wobbly loops from T. Rex and Roxy Music, plus a static-ridden visitation from Nancy Sinatra and other moments of holy imperfection.
2024 Rotation
Here are the albums I played the most this year, the ones I kept revisiting because they challenged, delighted, and reassured.
Professional Holiday Party
Five joyous classics from Chicago, Detroit, and Berlin. So sing along: “If snow was black, I’d wear black shades and drive a black car.”
The Heart Accumulates Microcracks
Psychedelic lamentations, Alabama soul, and baroque synthesizers respond to a Very Kind Listener's request for a soundtrack to accommodate a slowly breaking heart.
Brutal Times
Because true freedom is not thinking about the president every day.
Grey
Yesterday a man who smelled like gasoline attempted to enter the Capitol with a flare gun.
There Will Be No Armageddon
As we teeter on the edge of several unpleasant possible futures, here are five of the most reassuring songs I know.
Guanyin of Eleven Heads
The bodhisattva was so overwhelmed by the suffering in the universe that the deity’s head split into eleven pieces.
A New Dark Age
"The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality."