Songlights: Tune-Yards; Suzanne Vega; Lucius; Bon Iver; Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke; U2; Sinéad O'Connor

I’m trying something new: “Songlights” — playlist posts which I revise and expand over the course of the week as more and more songs brighten the light of my days and gleam like stars through my nights. Check back! I may add more songs to this post at the week goes on.

So much good music, so little time. It would be greedy of me not to share the secrets to my success in surviving this last week — getting through the grading of my students’ final research essays and returning (after two-months of crisis!) to my book in progress.

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Here’s a playlist of highlights from this past week’s listening. I hope you find a new favorite here. (Subscribers, you’re encouraged to share links in the Comments to the songs that got you through, that lit your way.)

And as we listen, here are some voices from The Looking Closer Book of Wisdom to hold in your heart:

Democracy, in its essence and genius, is imaginative love for and identification with a community with which, much of the time and in many ways, one may be in profound disagreement.

…

When definitions of “us” and “them” begin to contract, there seems to be no limit to how narrow these definitions can become. As they shrink and narrow, they are increasingly inflamed, more dangerous and inhumane. They present themselves as movements toward truer and purer community, but, as I have said, they are the destruction of community. They insist that the imagination must stay within the boundaries they establish for it, that sympathy and identification are only allowable within certain limits. I am convinced that the broadest possible exercise of imagination is the thing most conducive to human health, individual and global.”

– Marilynne Robinson, “Imagination and Community,” in When I Was a Child I Read Books

The cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go in order to restore broken community. The resurrection is a symbol of God’s triumph over all the forces that seek to block community. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation.

– Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, “An Experiment in Love,” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.,  United Kingdom, HarperCollins, 1991, p. 20.

Tune-Yards — “Limelight”

Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner are back with a song about jubilee from the upcoming Tune-Yards’ album Better Dreaming. Instant joy! Just try sitting still through this.

Suzanne Vega — “Speakers Corner”

She’s back! I’m 40 years into my meaningful relationship with Suzanne Vega’s music, and she’s still capable of surprising me. Here she is with what may be her most direct shot at false prophets and hypocritical evangelists..

Lucius — “Gold Rush”

One of my favorite tracks of the year so far, Lucius’s “Gold Rush” is bigger, brighter, and more addicting than anything I’ve yet heard from them. I’ve been more intrigued by them recently since T Bone Burnett invited them to sing harmonies on his fantastic The Other Side album. I keep lingering over the tickets page for Seattle’s The Showbox, extremely tempted to grab a ticket for their upcoming November 17 show.

Bon Iver — “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS”

I’m intrigued by several of the advance tracks for Bon Iver’s upcoming record. I’m occasionally put off by the opacity of his lyrics, but I’m drawn in by the warmth and sincerity in the sound of this one.

U2 — “Treason”

I was pleasantly surprised by “Treason,” this outtake from U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which doesn’t sound to me like anything else they’ve ever done. It’s on the recent deluxe re-issue of that album called How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb.

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke — “Back in the Game”

It’s hard to be too anxious for a new Radiohead album when Thom Yorke is doing so many interesting things in the meantime. (But I’m still anxious.) Here are two songs from his collaboration with electronica artist Mark Pritchard — Tall Tales.

ALL-TIME FAVORITE: Sinéad O'Connor — “You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart”

An epic highlight from 30 years ago: Sinéad O'Connor joins forces with Bono, Gavin Friday, and Maurice Roycroft from the soundtrack album for James Sheridan’s outstanding film In the Name of the Father. You may be very familiar with it already, but did you know Atticus Ross, whose Challengers score I’ve been playing a lot just to get the adrenaline flowing, is listed as “assistant programmer”?

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