Songlights: Iron & Wine, Peter Gabriel, Beck, Phoebe Bridgers, Allison Russell, The Waterboys, Nathan Partain

My plan this week was to post a review of The Odyssey, but I’m still waiting for the week to afford me the peace and quiet I need to invest in that effort.

In the meantime, music is keeping me afloat. Music is sustaining me.

Waves keep crashing over the bow of my fragile boat during my own personal odyssey of summertime challenges — the demands of complicated family relationships, the demands of book promotion, and the fact that my home office becomes an insufferable furnace late into the night during these Seattle heat waves. The siren song of faraway concerts and arts festivals and workshops and friend gatherings — these have my heart roaring with longing for all that I am missing, like Matt Damon’s Odysseus tied to his ship’s mast. But I must meet these challenges, even as the start of a new school year looms in September and my window of opportunity for rest and rejuvenation begins to close.

Thank God for the flourishing garden that Anne tends in our backyard, which is as wild and eloquent as her poetry in giving me hope. And thank God for the music that gets me through the hot afternoons and these long, uncomfortable nights.

Here are some of the car-stereo highlights from recent hours on the road, or vinyl highlights from my home office in the mornings when I can sometimes seize a couple of hours of solitude. I recommend you spend some time with all of these records.

From the Iron & Wine album Hen’s Teeth, a song with what are for this listener some of the most moving, memorable lines in Sam Beam’s discography:

This album did not grab me as immediately as 2024’s Light Verse, but I’m warming to it more and more, and I love the lush instrumentation throughout.

Peter Gabriel continues to unfold his new material according to the phases of the moon, and of all of the last year’s revelations, this latest — “I Belong to the Sky” — is my favorite. It weaves sonic threads from many different seasons of his adventurous career together into something like a celebration of his whole discography. I love the bright, dynamic sounds of the “Bright Side” version, but I also love the spaciousness of the “Dark Side” version. And this is a song that takes its time, giving us time to breathe and luxuriate in its textures and ideas. If I could ask today’s best bands to improve one thing, it would be this: Your music should not just be scaffolding for lyrics. We should come away as enchanted by the music, if not more so, than by the words being sung. And that means making room for other performers to shine, and space for us to move around in the experience and appreciate individual elements. Peter Gabriel’s band is fantastic, and this is one of those songs that makes it easy to enjoy that.

Speaking of the sky, it figures impressively in the latest song from Beck, the second track he’s released for his upcoming studio album Ride Lonesome, which finds him drinking once again from the rivers of inspiration that brought us my favorite Beck records: Sea Change and Morning Phase. This video also stars the great Denis Lavant.

Another upcoming album that you may have already pre-ordered, Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend, is getting a lot of attention on the strength of the first single: “Lost Boys.” The song sounds so... so... so Phoebe Bridgers that I’m a little disappointed in it. I’m hoping to find her breaking new ground, exploring new sounds, and exploring with greater ambitions. This feels like a sturdy but rather basic single. Perhaps it will resonate with me more powerfully when I hear it in the full context of the record, and I’m hearing that the rest of the album is much more ambitious than this. Having said that, I really love this slower, more melancholy version of the song that is not, I’m told, included on the new record.

My most-anticipated album of the year has been Allison Russell’s In the Hour of Chaos, and now that it’s here I’m playing my green vinyl almost every day. It’s such a reliably inspiring source of joy. Here are two of my favorite tracks:

Fisherman’s Blues is my favorite album by The Waterboys. When I stumbled onto a vinyl copy in excellent condition in a used record store last year, I felt like somebody had planted it there just to give me hours and hours of joy. Here’s another big surprise: Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings, a three-record set of tracks that didn’t end up on the album — original songs and startling covers. This is such a treasure trove, I’ll link to four tracks.

For more than 15 years, Anne and I attended a Seattle church in which some of our most formative and meaningful hours were those listening to Nathan and Sarah Partain and their faithful musical family of collaborators. They sang and played with such whole-hearted joy and conviction, and their songs were not focused on any delusion that “personal” faith in Jesus solves all our problems or sets us free from struggle or responsibility. I came away from their music humbled and inspired to serve, here, in this world that is being renewed, rather than focusing on some imaginary heaven somewhere else.  

I’m late to this party — I was holding out for a vinyl copy, but that isn’t available yet. But I finally queued up Phroneō, Nathan Partain’s new record of prayers and meditations on scripture, and it is medicine for my weary heart, both for the beauty and energy of the record and for the sound of my friend’s passion and poetry. Thank you, Nathan and Sarah, for still taking us to church all these years later.

You’re invited to share some links to the music that’s moving you these days! Post something in the Comments if you’re so inspired.