Allison Russell - Outside Child

Quite the mixture, roaming across a range of roots and folk streams. It ties together well - there's depth to it.

Zakiya Dalila Harris - The Other Black Girl

This is ferocious and good. It's focused in its rendition of race and racism, in the broad and with specificity, and page-turning in its plot, structure and sentence-level writing. Doubtless it reads differently, and deeper, to Black readers but it scans strongly for me regardless. I could quibble with some aspects - especially the way some of the secondary characters and background plotting feels underdeveloped - but the overall energy of the novel carries it easily over those things.

Art

Some discoveries via last year's and this year's (to date) Metropolitan Museum of Art desk calendars which have been part of my home work space - along with others, including many existing favourites - over the last while.

Janet Fish - "Raspberries and Goldfish", 1981

El Greco - "Christ Healing the Blind", 1570

Utagawa Hiroshige - "In the Kameido Tenjin Shrine Complex", 1856

Leon Bibel - "Brooklyn Bridge", 1938

Camille Pissarro - "Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen (Effect of Sunlight)", 1898

Amedeo Modigliani - "Jeanne Hebuterne", 1919

Winslow Homer - "The Bather", 1899

Walker Evans - "Subway Passengers, New York City: Two Women in Conversation", 1941

Kerry James Marshall - "Untitled (Studio)", 2014

Leonora Carrington - "Self-Portrait" , 1937-38

Ruth Chaney - "The Writer", 1935-43

Martha Marlow - Medicine Man

Ornate, faintly Disney-ish singer-songwriter pop in the vein of Natalie Prass's debut. Has some nice hooks, but not the songs to lift it above the throng.

The Wolf of Wall Street

What struck me on this watch was how well The Wolf of Wall Street conveys the distastefulness of its main characters - both DiCaprio's and Jonah Hill's. Champagne film-making. (last time)

Derry Girls seasons 1 & 2

Part of what makes it so great is how little there is of it - just 2 x 6 episodes of 20 minutes each, so it never runs the risk of outstaying its welcome or repeating itself while also displaying a nice modesty. The brevity also probably contributes to its sense of having captured lightning in a bottle - all its bits coming together just right.

(previously)

Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & John Randall - The Marfa Tapes

Relaxed and dusty session-y sounding record, including a prompt - by way of a more unadorned version - as to how actually great "Tin Man" is, a fact somewhat obscured by its placement amidst a double album, The Weight of These Wings, that's full of actually great songs.