[Songlights are tracks I’m listening to this week that brighten the light of my days. Check back! I may add more to this post as the week goes on.]

I have a lot of new-music highlights to share with you this week, but I want to start this week’s Songlights with a song that’s been on my mind and heart for a couple of weeks now since Anne and I saw Bruce Cockburn perform it live at The Neptune on March 7. It’s from his last album, O Sun O Moon, and it’s called “Orders.”

It helps me cry out for justice for those who are being unjustly condemned and illegally deported.

It helps me cry out for all of those who will suffer as our government tears down the institutions that protect us from diseases and other deadly threats.

It helps me grieve the violence already crashing down on my non-white neighbors in this land that falsely promised them freedom and justice.

It moves me to reach out to my LGBTQ+ family members as their country turns even more hatefully against them.

It reminds me to love even my enemies — which feels like a tougher assignment than it used to be.

Has there been a clearer proclamation of Jesus’ teachings in song in recent memory?

The just, the merciful, the cruel
The stumbling well-intentioned fool
The deft, the oaf, the witless pawn
The golden one life smiles upon
The squalling infant in mid-squall
The neighbors fighting down the hall
The list is long — as I recall
Our orders said to love them all

The cynic and the crooked priest
The woman wise, the sullen beast
The enemy outside the gate
The friend who leaves it all to fate
The drunk who tags the bathroom stall
The proud boy headed to his fall,
The list is long — as I recall
Our orders said to love them all

The pastor preaching shades of hate
The self-inflating head of state
The black and blue, the starved for bread
The dread, the red, the better dead
The sweet, the vile, the small, the tall
The one who rises to the call
The list is long — as I recall
Our orders said to love them all

The one who lets his demons win
The one we think we’re better than
A challenge great — as I recall
Our orders said to love them all

Struggling with a sore throat, Cockburn fought his way through a challenging set of songs at The Neptune on March 7. But it was an inspiring show, made all the more compelling by how hard he fought through his hardship.

Tamino and Mitski, “Sanctuary”

Tamino, “Dissolve”

(from Every Dawn’s a Mountain)

These are two of my favorite songs of 2025 so far.

And I’m very impressed with the whole of Every Dawn’s a Mountain, an album of intimate, soulful, and sometimes-obviously-Radiohead-influenced songs in which the Belgian Egyptian singer-songwriter explores loss — “Loss in all its forms,” he tells Chelsea Peng at Nylon, “and what that does to your sense of who you are, how to place yourself in the world, and how to find your direction. And when everything before that moment had a different direction. I guess it’s a turning-point kind of album because my life was very much like that.”

About the duet with Mitski, he says that it helped that they got to know each other on tour.

I think she was listening to my music, which was a tremendous honor for me because I’ve been a fan for a long time. And she reached out like “Hey, if you have got any songs lying around, I would love to sing with you.” Months later, I sent her a song, but this was before we were about to go on tour and she was rehearsing, so there wasn’t really space for that. But then once we both had some time to get into creative mode again, she was like, “I think it’s a good song. Let’s work on it.” In the end, I wrote another song two weeks before we were supposed to record together because, suddenly, I felt like there was another song waiting. And I sent that to her, and she was like, “Yes, this is the one.” And that’s “Sanctuary.”

In “Dissolve,” he sings,

The wrath of God comes down on us
And claims today we pay the cost
For we stole from eternity
But couldn’t hide it up our sleeves

…

A line dissolves between each home
That I will come to breathe out of my heart
More and more

The engines of Give Me Some Light run on the fuel of reader-support. Sign up for a free subscription and you’ll receive occasional posts like this one. Join the paid subscribers and receive access to everything, including first-impression film reviews.

My Morning Jacket, “Out in the Open”

(from is)

Is it just me, or is there some “Where the Streets Have No Name” energy in the album opener? I like this whole album. It’s hard to really feel musical positivity right now as it seems the America’s leadership is hell-bent on burning down all of the best things about it. But Jim James sounds like a man of rejuvenated faith here, and he’s lifting my spirits, which is impressive as they are very heavy these days.

Men I Trust, “The Landkeeper”

Thanks to my colleague Traynor Hansen for bringing this gentle, sunny record to my attention.

Morning dew on cherry trees
Fruits that carry tears
The soul and heart retrieves

So many stories, many deeds
About the man who grafted breeds
Instead of sowing seeds
And he lives on, in the land’s memories

Strong stuff from 2024 albums I’m discovering late

Seems like Halsey and the band Goat might be drawing inspiration from the same real-world nightmare.

Halsey, “Arsonist”

(from The Great Impersonator)

Arsonist burning down the world to feel it's heat
The arsonist doesn't feel the embers on his feet
And arsonist, your human starter kit came incomplete
My apologies, arsonist, you loved me

I'm going to a building that's on fire
Handcuffed to a narcissistic liar
Empty space and leather jeans
Eyes are blazed with apathy
Fool me twice, the shame is on me

Goat, “Dollar Bill”

(from the self-titled album Goat)

Everyone’s at your command
Dollar bills inside your hand
Spinning like a pussycat
Getting rich and fat

Looking through a dead man’s eyes
Talking with a mouth of lies
Hearing with a deaf man’s ear
Warrior of fear

or…

ALL-TIME FAVORITE: Elbow, “My Sad Captains”

I’ve abandoned a lot of social media platforms in 2025. I refuse to show up on sites hosted by those who are tearing down democracy, amplifying misinformation, and contributing to the rise of authoritarianism.

But that means I’m no longer showing up in places where I had found large communities of dear friends, and I am already missing them. This makes my in-person communities that much more meaningful. I’m so grateful for friends who will take the time to enjoy small simple things in these dark days. I’m not sure I know a song that captures the bittersweetness and the gratitude of this than this beautiful anthem from what I consider Elbow’s masterpiece: The Takeoff and Landing of Everything.

The chorus is a reference to Antony and Cleopatra, in which we find these lines:

“Come,
Let’s have one other gaudy night: call to me
All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;
Let’s mock the midnight bell.”

Or, as Bruce Cockburn sings, let’s “kick the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.”

ONE MORE!

St. Vincent, “DOA”

(from the movie Death of a Unicorn)

A late-breaking surprise!