Each month here we visit with a member of the community to find out what music they’ve been digging.
At the beginning of a new year I often find myself catching up on releases I missed from the old year. I have to thank my singer-songwriter friend Dusty Wright, who splits his time between Chatham and New York City and made another great album last year, Lonelyville, for introducing me on his end-of-year playlist to the song “Be Careful,” a collaboration between Madi Diaz, S. G. Goodman, and Joy Oladokun. I’m wary of calling it a feminist anthem because it also checks “all the queers and trans and binaries,” but, any which way, it’s an extraordinarily delicate yet powerful piece of modern political Americana. The sleeve is a hand-designed throwback to simple Jamaican releases of old and adds to the folk-art charm. I’m also excited by the return of husband-and-wife duo Everything but the Girl, due to release their first album in 24 years. The teaser song “Nothing Left to Lose” finds them in the melodic electronic vein they occupied when we last heard from them together, and hopefully the new album will break new ground, too.
This article appears in February 2023.
