Now Playing: January 2024

Our January 2024 edition of Now Playing features music that transports, music that inspires, and music that meets us where we are right now, all from our contributors!

Ina Cariño

Lately (or rather, for a whole year, according to my 2023 Spotify Wrapped), I’ve been listening to one song on repeat: “Sad,Infinite and Dazed” by Railway Suicide Train, which is an experimental rock group from China. I listen to a lot of Asian post-punk and this was one of the suggested songs from the algorithm. It’s a bit moody, dreamy, and sad all at once. I listen to this band a lot in general, and I like that their sound is so varied. But this song stuck with me in particular. It popped up on a day when I had just moved in to a new place, and I was sitting in the mostly empty living room at dusk, with the window open and the curtains slightly ruffled by a cool breeze.

Craig Tollifson

I recently listened to Rush’s 1975 album Caress of Steel. One of their more obscure releases that even I– a die hard fan in the 80’s– had forgotten about. It was an in-between album for the band, and I’m in a very in-between point in my life, so I appreciated how bifurcated it was between their original bar band vibe and progressive rock beginnings. Also from the 70’s, I’m reading Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth fantasy series right now. The stories are timeless and weird as hell and I love them because the prose is luscious and in her world of demons and sorcery, it’s impossible to know what’s coming.

Razi Shadmehry

Lately, something I’ve been listening to often is Spotify’s Instrumental Celtic Folk playlist. I’m working on my MFA thesis, a novel partly set in Ireland, and this helps me get in the spirit!