In 2016, indie-pop musician Katie Day experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows in the scope of less than a week. Her beloved Chicago Cubs ended a 108-year long drought in spectacular fashion just a few days before the election that fundamentally changed the nation forever.

On her third EP, No Turning Back (Available April 27, 2018), Day poignantly channels the political frustrations of the past year into four dreamy indie pop anthems that are as inspiring as they are contagious. The title track is an uplifting and unapologetic homage to the modern feminist movement, in which she declares the end of her time as anyone’s “pet” or “toy”.

"Whatever happens, I want to be able to look back at this period of time and know that I was honest and fearless and can be marked as someone who was on the right side of history. This album is basically a public record of where I stood,” says Day.

Co-produced by Scott McDowell (Feist, The Head and the Heart, Washed Out) and Kyle Vandekerkhoff of Interscope Records (Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Schoolboy Q) in San Francisco and Los Angeles, No Turning Back offers an impressive blend of Day’s modern influencers like Vulfpeck with the sound of her favorite Motown classics and the lyrical writing chops of Joni Mitchell.

Katie Day is a Los Angeles-based musician and composer whose songs about the Chicago Cubs have earned her countless on-air media spots, including WGN’s popular morning news program. Her work has been featured on Daytrotter, MTV’s Real World, ESPN, Spotify’s New Music Friday, and more.

30 miles west of El Paso, surrounded by 3,000 acres of pecan orchards and only a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, the band Big Thief (a.k.a. Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia) set up their instruments as close together as possible to capture their most important collection of songs yet. The band had only just finished work on their 3rd album, U.F.O.F. -“the celestial twin”- days before in a cabin studio in the woods of Washington State. Now it was time to birth U.F.O.F.’s sister album -“the earth twin”- Two Hands. 

In sharp contrast to the wet environment of the U.F.O.F. session, the southwestern Sonic Ranch studio was chosen for its vast desert location. The 105-degree weather boiled away any clinging memories of the green trees and wet air of the previous session. Two Hands had to be completely different— an album about the Earth and the bones beneath it. The songs were recorded live with almost no overdubs. All but two songs feature entirely live vocal takes, leaving Adrianne’s voice suspended above the mix in dry air, raw and vulnerable as ever. Where U.F.O.F. layered mysterious sounds and effects for levitation, Two Hands grounds itself on dried-out, cracked desert dirt. 

Anybody who has borne witness to Big Thief in the wild will find songs they recognize here. Much of the album’s tracks (“The Toy”, “Those Girls”, “Shoulders”, “Not”, “Cut My Hair”) have been live staples for years. “Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” says Adrianne. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.” 

Lyrically this can be felt in the poetic blur of the internal and external. These are political songs without political language. They explore the collective wounds of our Earth. Abstractions of the personal hint at war, environmental destruction, and the traumas that fuel it. Lyrics like “And the blood of the man who killed my mother with his hands is in me/ it’s in me/ in my veins” are genuine attempts to point the listener towards the very real dangers that face our mother planet. When Adrianne sings “Please wake up,” she’s talking directly to the audience. “Attention is power,” she says. “I believe you can manifest something on the other side of the world just by using your power well.” 

Engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo, who were both behind U.F.O.F., capture the live energy as instinctually and honestly as possible. Sarlo teamed up with James Krivchenia to mix the album, where they sought to emphasize raw power and direct energy inherent in the takes. The journey of a song from the stage to the record is often a difficult one. Big Thief’s advantage is their bond and loving center as a chosen family. They spend almost 100% of their lives together working towards a sound that they all agree upon. A band with this level of togetherness is increasingly uncommon. If you ask drummer James Krivchenia, bassist Max Oleartchik or guitarist Buck Meek how they write their parts, they will describe—passionately—the experience of hearing Adrianne present a new song, listening intently for hints of parts that already exist in the ether and the undertones to draw out with their respective instruments. It is an honor to give life to these intricacies. 

With raw power and intimacy, Two Hands folds itself gracefully into Big Thief’s impressive discography. This body of work grows deeper and more inspiring with each new album. While you listen, let your own two hands rest in front of your body with palms facing inward and see what power grows between them.

Debbie Neigher’s career is marked by an inherent lust for joy. A sought-after keys player and vocalist, Neigher has toured with pop icons Demi Lovato and Marina, Grammy-winner Daya, and indie darlings Suki Waterhouse and Ezra Furman in addition to cultivating her project Lapel. Now, on her new EP Brutal Joy, Neigher blends her taste for pop catharsis with incisive self-reflection as she questions how to nurture and protect joy in the face of systems that seek to tear it away.

The kinetic pleasure of Brutal Joy is like a gasp for air after being held underwater—ecstatic, but not frivolous. This is hard-won joy, the thrill of arriving when you might not have. That grief and pleasure are so intertwined in these songs is a reflection of Neigher’s personal journey as a woman, activist, and artist, as well as the greater context in which the songs were made. Written and recorded in the arc surrounding the pandemic, Brutal Joy became a vehicle for Neigher to exercise her agency. Studying production and drum programming in between community organizing and solo living room dance parties to release the heaviness of her days, Neigher produced alongside Andrew Lappin (Anderson .Paak, Marina, L’Rain) and invited friends to record remotely.

The result is a collection of songs steeped with yearning for freedom as much as they effortlessly provide a sense of it. They remind us of our responsibility to preserve our own joy, and the bounty that awaits if we remain tender in the fight.

Known for his work fronting the enigmatic rock band Pedro the Lion, David Bazan’s emotionally charged narratives, eye for telling detail, and mournful voice have more in common with J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories” or Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood” than with the usual lyrical slant of popular music. Bazan is a gifted storyteller, weaving parables of spiritual conflict, suburban ennui, and personal surrender into magnetic, well-crafted songs.

His debut solo full-length album, Curse Your Branches (out now on Barsuk), is a masterwork by a modern American poet at the height of his powers. Paste Magazine called him one of the “100 Best Living Songwriters”. This record is the deepest and most explicit exploration of his struggles with faith and a meditation on all things passed between the generations.

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