Songlights: Lucinda Williams, Brandi Carlile, The Mountain Goats, David Bowie, Valerie June, and Elbow (live!)

As I reach the halfway point of my 2025 Autumn Quarter, teaching courses in creative writing and film, I’m dizzy. The days are falling and flying away as fast as the vibrant autumn leaves on my university’s colorful campus during the blustery weather of the past weekend. A constant rush of high-priority tasks is washing away almost all of the opportunities I have for any rest or rejuvenation.

And when I find a window of “free time,” I dive into the closest movie theater. That’s where I find the only medicine I know that can force me to forget myself, forget my to-do list, and forget my troubles. Movies help in that way. They give me a break from my immediate anxieties, and invite me into an experience that makes order out of what seems to be chaos.

Having said that, I must also admit that many (perhaps most) movies are anything but restful. The films I’ve seen recently — One Battle After Another, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, It Was Just an Accident — have been rather stressful. Replacing real-world stress with new, imaginary stresses is not going to save me.

When I have to stay on-task, which is almost all of the time, I do find some solace and some strength in music. If new music is playing while I work, the work is often more enjoyable. And if I stumble onto something really special, I come home from work at the end of the day feeling like I received a gift from the world.

2025 has offered lots of engaging new music, but very few new albums that I’ve checked out have become particularly meaningful or inspiring. I hope your own adventures have been more rewarding. This could be a tough year to produce my annual list of favorites, as I can count on five fingers the new discoveries that I suspect I’ll still be playing in ten years.

Having said that, there are songs here and there that capture my attention, the rise from the ocean of background noise, and make me stop and pay attention.

Here are a few from the past week that have blazed up like bright autumn leaves in mud, made me pause and want to really pay attention.

Lucinda Williams, “World Gone Wrong”

She’s back, and this is a strong opener. It might lack the specificity and poetry of some of her best work, but there’s something refreshing in its straightforwardness. And I suspect there will be many more highlights as the rest of the album is revealed to us. Given what Williams has survived over the last several years, I’m just grateful to have new music from this artist who has given me so many meaningful ways, year after year, to notice and celebrate beauty, and to move through sorrows and grief. Her album Good Souls Better Angels helped me survive the first Trump term. Maybe this one will help me survive the relentless evils of the second.

Brandi Carlile, “Church and State”

I highly recommend that you make time for this profound conversation between NPR’s Rachel Martin and Brandi Carlile, where they give more attention to the subject of faith than I’ve heard in a public forum in a while. I was moved to tears by Carlile’s uninhibited, beautiful testimonies.

And then there’s this new song, which really made me sit up and pay attention. It’s worth looking up the lyrics on this one.

If you like that, check oiut this live performance from yesterday’s Saturday Night Live.

The Mountain Goats, “This Year”

Here’s an oldie-but-goodie that is sometimes just the singalong that we all need. I’m looking forward to joining the joyous Mountain Goats’ enthusiastic fan base for a live show in Seattle soon, and I am fairly confident the band will give us a chance to shout this chorus again, kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

David Bowie, “Sunday” (Moby Mix, 2025 Remaster)

Here’s a newly remastered version of one of my all-time favorite Bowie songs, remixed by Moby, and included on the new EP “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” The original version of the song has always seemed too short, too fleeting. This gives it more room to breathe. But I still haven’t found the version that takes the song to its full potential. I think the ideal version would bloom into a full-on rock jam, like the original sounds like it’s beginning to do as it fades out. This, being a Moby remix, is more about the beats.

Valerie June, “Runnin’ and Searchin’”

Here’s a new single from Valerie June — one that’s not on that fantastic 2025 album Owls, Omens, and Oracles, which looks likely to land on my short list of favorites for 2025.

Elbow, “The Birds” and “Adrianna Again”

Anne and I savored a joyous gathering of Elbow’s superfans at the Showbox in downtown Seattle, where lead singer Guy Garvey declared it “the best show of the tour” and called The Showbox the band’s “spiritual home.”

I hope my clumsy iPhone videos here capture enough of the spirit of that show to give you a taste. If you ever get a chance to see these guys live, don’t miss it. I find that I wish bands like U2 did not need the big, expensive arena-show circus, and that they could just show up and be content to play to a crowd this size without any of the special effects. There’s something sacred about shows in which the band and their audience can bond as intimately as this.