The Year of Magical Listening

Willie Costello

5.0 (1)
Music Commentary
Updated Monthly

Reflections on the joys of discovering new music

May 29

056 :: LYF

FEATURING A Wave That Will Never Break by WU LYF, released by LYF Recordings in 2026. Listen / Buy direct "Letting Go" "Love Your Fate" TRANSCRIPT It's impossible for me to hear this music without being brought back, fifteen years into the past, to when I first heard this band, and when they released their last record. The band has been virtually silent since then, and partly because of that, they've remained like a time capsule in my mind: a relic of a distant age, a reminder of years gone by, a flame that burned so brightly that it extinguished itself as quickly as it appeared. Yet now, against all my expectations, that fire has rekindled. To listen to this music is, for me, to experience a flood of memories rushing back all at once, a Proustian madeleine on my palate setting my senses ablaze. But the more I listen to this new album, the more I think that it isn't just me. Even if you've never heard this band before, their music has the aesthetic quality of a comeback, resounding with youthful exuberance and wistful yearning. And maybe this is what I loved about their last album, too: this music has always brought me back to an earlier time, even the very first time I heard it. No other music has ever made me feel so free. And there's an irony here – or is it a poignancy? – that, for a band that in my mind is so synonymous with youth, their music only gets more potent with age. To make music that sounds like this, in 2026, feels iconoclastic, an insurgency against the prevailing winds of our time – when really what it is is a resurgence, or reawakening, of a band that's lain dormant for over a decade and now just wants to keep making the same music they've always made. And when you're making music like this, I get it. This is all I want them to do, too. And it's fitting, that such liberating music should be so liberated itself, from trends and genre, from norms and expectations, from anything other than the drive to make this music exist. The lyrics couldn't be more explicit: this is music about letting go. And listening to this music, I need no further instruction. I am immediately released – freed from all else – carried by these waves – weightlessly floating on this endless sea. So what is it about this music? I've just spent five minutes describing how this music makes me feel, but how does it do it? I guess we need to start with the voice: a double-tracked snarl, awash in reverb, quietly screaming. It's the sound of a voice singing with all the urgency of the moment, the sound of a voice singing with all their heart. But what I'm struck most by is that, for all its gravelly roughness, this voice is surprisingly tender and vulnerable. If it sounds like it's in extremis, that's only because it's on the verge of breaking. But this music isn't just about the voice. I've also got to talk about the guitars. Just listen to this tone, so subtly and perfectly overdriven, a voice unto itself. And the bass, too, when you can hear it, is off singing its own song. And I know, these are some of the most basic pleasures of rock music – the rapturous electricity of these analog sounds. But it's refreshing to hear a band that understands these pleasures so well, and can deliver them to us in full force. It's also refreshing to hear a band that's unafraid to get a bit schmaltzy, as it leans into its chorus and its guitars give way to big chords on the piano and soaring synths in the background. Because really, this is music about big feelings, in all their rawness and enormity, and it needs a sound to match – even if, or especially if, that sound veers into the cinematic – because with some feelings, that's exactly what you need to express them. But the song has one last surprise for us: an instrumental breakdown, of the kind you just never hear anymore, one last opportunity for these musicians to revel in the pure joy of their instruments and just play, and dance, before burning it all to the ground. But this band is at its best when it's burning, a roaring fire of sound and fury, engulfing us in its flames and setting us alight.

12 min
Apr 27

055 :: BOUND

FEATURING Cruel Joke by Ken Pomeroy, released by Rounder Records in 2025. Listen / Buy direct "Days Getting Darker" "Bound to Rain" TRANSCRIPT Some pieces of music are so simple and pure that it's difficult to pin down just what's so remarkable about them. With this piece of music, I guess it's, first and foremost, the voice: so dulcet, expressive, and down to earth. But the instrumental accompaniment is also perfect in its own, understated way, from the sparsely strummed guitars to the quietly plucked mandolin to those long swelling tones that fill in the spaces between. It's melodically indelible, and lyrically evocative, without ever being obvious or quite what you'd expect. It just comes in and hits you with lines like this: "The devil's hiding in the Bible Belt". Which is maybe just a roundabout way of saying that what's remarkable about this music is not so much that it's doing anything new, as that it's just doing everything right. And maybe there's a lesson here, about the particular type of music this is. Because whatever you want to call it, be it Americana or roots or country or folk, this is clearly music that is steeped in tradition, that moves forward by looking back and finds new expression in old forms. And part of what this music makes me feel is a kind of gratitude and admiration, that a young musician can still find such relevance and vitality in this timeworn form, and can still find ways to make it their own. But there's something else I love about this music, and that's a certain ambivalence that runs throughout its lyrics, a darkness mixed with the light, a strident honesty about life in all its ugliness and its beauty. And I can't even say how it does it; as many times as I've listened to this song, its lyrics still strike me as impressionistic, like little snapshots of the world gone by. But the impression they leave is one of a world where the everyday always contains a hint of menace – where rainclouds stand magnificent in the distance and it's bound to rain. And maybe again there's a lesson here, about the type of music this is. Because whatever you want to call it, be it Americana or roots or country or folk, this is music which, by its very name, bears the weight of a nation and its people on its shoulders. And the only way it can properly do that is by showing the nation for what it is, in all its colors and contradictions. But that's what this type of music, in its best instances, has always done. This music doesn't make me nostalgic for my country. But it does weirdly feel like home – that uncomfortable familiarity of a place you know too well, a place you're always trying to get away from, a place that always keeps pulling you back, a place that never changes and always seems to sound the same.

8 min
Mar 23

054 :: JESSICA

FEATURING Jessica Pratt by Asher White, released by Joyful Noise Recordings in 2026, a reimagining of Jessica Pratt by Jessica Pratt, released by Birth Records in 2012. Listen (Asher White / Jessica Pratt) / Buy direct (Asher White / Jessica Pratt) "Night Faces" (Asher White / Jessica Pratt) "Casper" (Asher White / Jessica Pratt) TRANSCRIPT How soon is too soon for hagiography? How soon is too soon to pay homage to a living artist? How long must one wait before an album can be considered enough of a classic that you would be justified to re-record the whole thing and put your own spin on it? I hadn't pondered these questions before hearing this album, but if you had asked me, I probably would've said longer than fourteen years. But here we are, in 2026, listening to a reimagining of an album from 2012, the original by an artist who is still alive and still releasing new music, and this version by an artist who is new on the scene and only thirteen years their junior. On paper it seems like it should be a fool's errand. But in fact, it's an astounding success, and achieves this remarkable thing: showcasing the original as the masterpiece it always was, while at the same time transforming it into something radically new. Which is to say, it's doing what any good cover song should do. And since it's not really possible to fully appreciate a cover without also knowing the song being covered, let us take a moment to switch over to the source. Immediately it's like I'm hearing this music anew. As many times as I've listened to this album before, it's as if I'd never heard it for what it was. The songs themselves are so potent that it's easy to forget just how stripped bare they really are. In juxtaposition to the version we were just hearing, the original now seems like a ghost, a pale shade, a wispy specter whistling in the wind. But no, this is the genuine article; this is the music in its original form. This is all that the younger artist had to go off of and take inspiration from. But it's easy to see why they would be so inspired. With its wobbly, double-tracked vocals and delicate fingerpicked guitar, it's like this music is conjuring a spell, speaking to the spirit world, or perhaps speaking from it, and making everything feel like a dream. And this version is like that same dream made vivid, buzzing with the same magic, but channelling it in new directions, like it's letting its spirit loose on the full spectrum of sound. But this new version isn't just about putting a maximalist spin on some acoustic folk ballads. It's also happy to shift into its own moments of stillness and delicacy. And truly, what I love most about it is that you really have no idea where it's going to take things, or what new sounds it's going to bring in. Sometimes it's as simple as the original: just a voice and an arpeggiated accompaniment. Sometimes its additions are subtle: a click or a single sustained tone. And sometimes it swells into this warm, lush arrangement that just feels like the natural embodiment of the song's ghostly essence. And sometimes it leans in to the song's inherent hypnotism, as these little bells quiver, jangle, and reverberate. And sometimes it decides to blow the whole thing apart. I'm not even sure I like this turn to noise. But I appreciate how it recognizes a capacity within the original to contain such wreckage – how it sees that behind its muted performance there is an uncanny power – a power that can be unleashed. It's not showing us how the original was always meant to be. It's showing us how it could've been. It's showing us that it was always a thing of wild energy – that it's always been electrifying, even if it wasn't electrified itself. It all leaves me with an even greater appreciation for just how elusive these songs really are. They've always struck me as lyrically enigmatic, but really they're just generally enigmatic, shifting shape as you try to pin them down, and going out of focus as soon as you get them in view. And maybe it's no coincidence that the lyrics so often dwell on dreams and the midnight hours, because that in the end is how I've come to think of these songs: as hazy, late-night dreams, floating mystically from one artist's imagination, now through another's, and finally to our own.

10 min
Feb 26

053 :: GIVE

FEATURING "Give-upping" by Disiniblud, from Disiniblud, released by Smugglers Way in 2025. Listen / Buy direct TRANSCRIPT What am I hearing? That is, perhaps, the fundamental question I hope any new piece of music I come across will pose. What I am constantly seeking is music that throws me into a state of bewilderment and also wonder. And this music, in all its shimmering brilliance, is a perfect example: so clearly a thing of beauty, but such a baffling collage, of countless voices layered one on top of the other, chopped, cut short, sometimes glitching out, as the surrounding air buzzes with an anxious rattle and melts into a warm harmony, enveloping itself as it envelops us. But what really strikes me about this music is its eschewal of form. It's not following any standard structure or compositional pattern. It's more like it's following individual sounds and ideas, seeing where they lead, letting them blossom and multiply, and pulling every other imaginable sound in with them. It's like music is not so much the intention but rather an emergent phenomenon of the controlled chaos these musicians have stirred into existence. And it's remarkable, to encounter music like this. It never seems like it should be possible, and you never know which way it's gonna go. And I know, this is not the first music to ever sound like this. I guess it's what is typically called "post-rock", but even that designation seems too specific. It's more like post-everything, post-post, postcore, post as an aesthetic unto itself. So, of course, this music must push itself to the limit – must nearly rend itself apart – must take in everything in order to show that it can transcend anything, even its own being. And I still don't know what I'm hearing. Fragments of voices, disappearing before completing their thought. A throbbing bass, pounding like a headache or a heart attack. A keyboard so overdriven that it might be a guitar. Drums whose rhythm is like a perpetual crash. A wall of barely distinguishable sounds. Yet somehow, from this maelstrom, what we hear is music, bursting forth from these millions of sound waves colliding, a new form of energy released out into the world, a little miracle of physics – a bewildering wonder ringing between our ears.

6 min
Jan 30

052 :: HOW

FEATURING How You Been by SML, released by International Anthem in 2025. Listen / Buy direct "Daves" "Chicago Three" TRANSCRIPT Jazz wasn't meant to be like this. And I'm not talking about this music's sound or arrangement or atonality. In all those respects, this is exactly how jazz should be: exploratory, experimental, playful, and free. No, I'm talking about something much more basic: the fact that we are listening to a piece of recorded music, whereas jazz is meant to be experienced in the moment of its performance. So how, then, does this recording manage to sound so spontaneous and alive? More than any other jazz record I can think of, I feel like I'm hearing the music come together in real time, every player improvising wildly and continuously finding new directions to move in. Obviously there's the sax out in front, vigorously pushing everything forward. But I also love what the guitar is doing, syncopating with this piercing two-note riff. The drums are, frankly, out of control, and the bass is on a whole other wavelength, holding it down in its own time and feel. And lower in the mix, there's a rolling boil of synth sounds that I can only think to describe as aquatic mallet percussion. Yet somehow, somehow, it all works. And not just works: it grooves, it excites, it cooks, it kills. And as many times as I listen to this recording over and over again, it surprises. What's not so surprising is that this music originates from live recordings of improvised performances. Its raw musical material was created on the spot. But for this recording, that raw material has been processed and refined, manipulated in post-production into whole new forms. It's like the band took their live performances and distilled what was most vital in them, reconstructing their various bits and bytes into something that's even more live than live. Which is, really, what any good recording should do: to present a rarefied version of what the music, in its original conception, was. But I don't want you to get too hung up on this music's backstory. It's not so important to know how this music came to be; what's important is to hear this music for what it is – to feel the wild energy coursing through its veins – and to marvel that a piece of recorded music could ever sound so extemporaneous and yet also, so intricately arranged. And what's really remarkable is that this music has these same qualities even when it slows things down, even when it's not playing at full tilt, when it trades free jazz for smooth jazz and veers into something more plainly melodic and mellifluous. Even if it doesn't have quite the same energy, it retains the same spirit: of playfulness, creativity, originality, synergy – a commitment to discover new forms of expression in its motley ensemble of sounds. You can hear this even at the level of the individual parts, the way each instrument is subtly twisted and transformed, unravelling in new and unexpected directions. And some of it is just that these musicians clearly have a predilection for the goofy and the weird: the springy synth, the quacky guitar, the squawky sax. Where others might shy away from these sounds, they lean in, exploring their full sonic possibilities and proving that maybe they're not so goofy after all – that they can be hip or heady or high-minded or hard-nosed or even, in a way, beautiful. Listening to this music, I get the feeling that everything is fair game, and the point is to show us what we've been missing, to make every moment be full of surprise and delight, brimming with the unexpected and unconventional. And so we hear something like paper fluttering, a sax phasing in and out, crunchy static marching forward – an improbable symphony – the shape of jazz to come.

9 min
2025-12-26

051 :: MAGIC

FEATURING s h i n e by Tobias Jesso Jr., released by R&R in 2025. Listen "Everything May Soon Be Gone" "Black Magic" TRANSCRIPT Most of the album is like this: quiet and delicate, just a piano man at his piano, recorded so closely that you can hear the air in the room, the creaks of the chair, the rise and fall of the piano's pedals. It's an intimate affair. Yet as much as I love this, I actually want to talk about the one song on this record that's not this way, that's loud and energetic and a brisk two minutes, so I better talk fast. This song hooks me from its very first notes. And it never lets up – with each passing measure I feel myself falling deeper into its spell. And it couldn't be simpler: it's still just a piano man at his piano. But the production this time is almost claustrophobic, as if the musician's been shut up in a too small room, where every burst of volume reverberates and ricochets off the walls, like they're trying to break free. The whole song has this propulsive energy, as it builds and builds up to its inevitable eruption: a yawping chorus, set over new and thunderous chords – and then, it all dissipates, as quickly as it appeared. And then, like any good pop song, we now do the whole thing over again: one more time through the verse and the chorus and then a final post-chorus and then we're done. It's like a distillation of pop songwriting, and part of what I love about it is that potency, how it manages to squeeze so much into such a small space, just like the production makes the song sound. But it also does this other thing that never gets old: it's describing a feeling that the music itself creates in the listener. Because when I hear this song, I'm hypnotized, and I know exactly what the singer means.

5 min
2025-11-27

050 :: NEXUS

FEATURING Nexus by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, released by Latency in 2025. Listen / Buy direct "Particle" "Swamp" TRANSCRIPT The first thing I hear is time: the time that has passed since I first heard this artist and since I decided to feature them on the very first episode of this show. Now, five years later and fifty episodes in, the artist is back and I have returned to the place where it all began. And how appropriate, on this occasion, which like any anniversary was bound to make me reflect on the passage of time – how appropriate that this would be the music to ring it in, as this music is effectively about the passage of time: this is what it seems designed to make us hear. And nowhere is this more true than in this song, which is just a pulse, tapped out on a drum, not quite as regular as a metronome but just as unrelenting. And in a way that this artist's music always does for me, I feel like I am hearing simultaneously time moving forward, but also standing still. Paradoxically, in this music that is nothing but rhythm, that is nothing but marked time, I feel that I have been lifted out of time – that past, present, and future have collapsed – that I have been transported to the eternal now – and that maybe the passage of time is an illusion, a shadow play on the screen of our consciousness, and somehow this hypnotic thrum has lifted the veil on the whole charade. Or maybe it's just that this anniversary has got me in a contemplative mood. Because as much as this music reminds me that five years have passed, it also makes me feel like no time has passed at all. I'm still here, listening closely, feeling just as affected by this artist's music as I was then, so much so that I am compelled to write about it, to let others know about it, so that they might feel it too. I can't hear this music without feeling like nothing has changed. But that's not true, of course. So much is different; so much is new. Which is remarkable, that even for an artist limited to a single, percussive instrument, they are still finding new forms of expression, new arrangements of sound, new ways of surprising and delighting our ears. I honestly have no idea how this sound is even produced, what strange mix of movements is being used to make this drum come alive. It gives the impression of a thousand hands, all converging, fingers rapping, knuckles cracking, fervently tapping and scratching out a beat. And below it all, a steady and heavy thumping, anchoring everything in place – except it's not actually steady at all, being ever so subtly off-kilter, such that just when you think you've internalized its pulse, it hiccups and skips a fraction of a beat, shifting the song's center of gravity just an inch but transforming its orbital motions entirely. This music has always had for me this mesmerizing, trance-like quality, no doubt brought on by its seemingly infinite but never quite identical loop, an all-too-human conjuring of an unending spell. But really, in a way, this is what all music does for me, even music that is much more varied and dynamic: again and again, I find myself bewitched, suspended in time as the music moves around me. This is, I suppose, why I listen to music, and, I suppose, why I am inspired to make this show. I am always chasing this feeling, and when I find it I just want to stay there and hold everything else still, to marvel at the music and preserve it in amber for everyone to see. I still don't understand why music does this for me like no other medium can. But I am grateful that it does, and just like this music, I hope it never stops.

9 min
2025-10-31

049 :: BABY

FEATURING Baby by Dijon, released by R&R / Warner Records in 2025. Listen "Yamaha""HIGHER!""Baby!" TRANSCRIPT How do I even begin to describe this music? Its unruly beauty – its unlikely collage - and then, this piercing vocal, cutting through the tempest aswirl around it – and then, this heartbeat, grounding us in place. This song defies my expectations at every turn, every second bringing with it a new and unanticipated flourish. But as much as it is unlike anything else I've ever heard, there's only one name I can think to give it: it's soul music – music that's full of passion – music of the heart. But it's not just any kind of soul music. This is music for those emotions that make us want to jump up on the table and scream at top of our lungs. This is music for those emotions that feel like you're the first to ever feel them, and that need a sound that's equally new and unheard of to express them. This is music about the thrill of just feeling this way, the unbridled excitement that makes every moment vibrate with newly discovered possibilities. And that's why it's so perfect that the leading line of the chorus is this: "I'm in love with this particular emotion." Yes, this is a love song, but in its first instance it's a love song about the feeling of love itself, about how the singer is enthralled, not by their lover, but by the emotion that their lover makes them feel. And it seems to me that this music is an attempt to reproduce that feeling in sound – its ecstasy, its electricity, its effusiveness – and to make us fall in love with this particular commotion that's been conjured before our ears. And I am in love with this music; it's worked its spell on me. How could it not? There's just so much going on, so much to hear, so much that seems like it shouldn't belong, and yet it all feels just right. Like this song, which is basically the same one groove on repeat: the drums with a classic backbeat, the keys on the right with those steady, staccato eighth-notes, and the big acoustic piano interjecting at regular intervals with these little harmonic flourishes. If this was all the song was, it would still hit so hard, and have us swaying in time to its irresistible rhythm. But the brilliance of this song is that this groove is the backdrop, meant to be obfuscated by the layers of other ideas thrown on top of it. And boy, does this song ever throw on a lot. I don't even know what half these sounds are. They're chopped, distorted, mutated beyond recognition, zipping in and out faster than you can even clock them. Like, is that a car horn, or a horn horn? And does it even matter? Because as much as this song sounds like a sledgehammer taken to a music studio, it never stops grooving – and more than that, the chaos is part of the groove. I've never heard music this excitable, literally bursting with energy and creativity, impatiently flitting from one idea to the next. Which is fitting, because, it must be said, this is also incredibly horny music. It's not about love at its most poetic or reflective or even articulate; it's about love at its most hot and bothered, the kind that makes you want to jump out of your skin and onto someone else's – the kind of love that can feel halting and disjointed and that can send your head spinning – the kind of love that sounds, I guess, kind of like this. But this music can also do moments of more straightforward passion and devotion. Or maybe the better way to put it is that it doesn't see any separation between these feelings. They're all on the same continuum, all just different expressions of the same earth-shattering force of love. And what's really remarkable about this record is that the artist takes it one step further, and extends that continuum to also encompass a parent's love for their newborn child. And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't the same music be able to give voice to both romantic and parental love? For all their differences, they share that same miraculous, revelatory feeling that floors us, stuns us, gives us a little shiver, and then makes us want to jump up and scream out in joy. Yet even as the lyrics take us right into the delivery room, it's still hard to hear the singer's invocation of the word "baby" as addressed to their literal child rather than their lover. It's just so ingrained in how we hear the vocabulary of popular music. But that almost makes it easier to understand the passion they're trying to convey, how strongly they feel about this new life in their life, and how, in the end, it's all love, and all love should sound like this.

12 min

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2025-10-08

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Reflections on the joys of discovering new music

Creator

Willie Costello
Years Active

2020 - 2026
Episodes

56
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Copyright Willie Costello
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The Year of Magical Listening