Now Playing: April 2022

Our April contributors recommend some songs you’ll want to put on repeat (and some TV shows, to boot) in the latest edition of Now Playing.

Ahsan Butt

Recently, to make it through my day job, I've been listening to Tame Impala's Lonerism and InnerSpeaker. Both albums are evocative and slightly acid while having this percussive push that keeps things moving. While writing, I've been running through a few different playlists—one of Teju Cole's currations called in a zone, another of my own with some Joy Division, Portishead, and Johnny Greenwood tracks, and another titled after the linked collection I'm working on, Lajiristan, with tracks like Kidung by Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang.

For the latter part of the pandemic, my wife and I have been watching Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown and Werner Herzog's documentaries. In other words, we've missed the world. I've also been watching clips of David Lynch directing on the set of Twin Peaks: The Return, a work of art that has yet to loosen its grip on me. If I write one line as haunting and potent as, "What year is this?"....

T. De Los Reyes

Lately I have Maggie Rogers on repeat, especially her song, “Back in My Body.” I find myself swaying to it in my living room, eyes closed, arms above my head. Or in the shower with the water in my hair. Or sitting outside my balcony with a cigarette in hand. Her music fills my body as much as it fills my whole house. I’m in that point in my life currently where I feel I’m finally catching up to myself, and this song encapsulates that experience. I’m grateful it exists.

Catherine Wong

Less than five hours ago I was on a plane back to the East Coast from San Diego, a city I haven't been to in years and with which I am now madly in love. I was with a few other graduate students and we woke up this morning at 5am to drive to the airport, dazedly watching the shore recede in the distance, and then someone put The Oogum Boogum Song on. I'm cackling just thinking about it. It's been playing lightly in my head from takeoff to landing.