Music in May 2025

• Vashti Bunyan is a delightful voice I hadn’t heard before.

• Both Sides Now in any form brings one to the verge of tears.

• There’s a whole slew of fun, punchy songs I can’t really categorize.

• Every Day Like the Last resolves into a kind of hopefully grim mantra.

• Bruno Coulais’ excellent score for Wolfwalkers is a great advertisement for a very good film.

• Regina Spektor’s 2009 Far and Stars’ 2007 In Our Bedroom After the War are both wonderfully sentimental miscreations of the late aughts.

• Chapterhouse is a great purveyor of that lovely fuzz that characterized so much of the end of the Cold War.

• I keep returning to Australian melancholy; there is something in me that longs for the dust, I suppose. What can I say? It smells nice there.

• Joan Baez is an encouragement in these strange days.