Vikesh Kapoor, ‘Down by the River’

Like Bob Dylan to those roaring locomotives, the mythical river has long been a source of artistic inspiration, impacting everyone from classical musicians to modern rock stars: Less assuming than a powerful ocean but no less captivating, that wayward wind of water often tells a story of its own. The mystery of the river — so easy to take for granted, until it dries up or overflows — runs as deep and long as its path, always headed toward a greater force and never sedentary. A river can whisper one moment and rage the next, hiding truth and lies beneath its murky surface.

When folk musician Vikesh Kapoor wrote “Down by the River,” he wasn’t hopping steadily along the banks in the summer sun. Instead, he was stuck home in Pennsylvania, while a snowstorm lingered. “A river called the Susquehanna rushed through my town and I’d sit on its bank in the snow thinking about a Ukrainian girl I met there, by chance, the winter before,” Kapoor says. “A few nights later, waiting for the snow to melt, the image of her on the edge of the river became clear in my mind. I finished the song while the sun was still down, but never got to sing it for her in the morning.” Maybe, just maybe, she can hear it now.

Set to a delicate pluck of guitar and Kapoor’s voice floating like a gentle mist over the water, it’s a moment to appreciate the ephemeral nature of things: Just like love, which changes in an instant, the river is transforming as it’s being watched, ever shifting and creeping toward its eventual goal. On “Down by the River,” Kapoor acknowledges that movement — and understands that, as romance and time get washed down stream, there is nothing more valuable then a simple second of standing still.

John Moreland, ‘Old Wounds’

There’s a reason we talk about a broken bone and a broken heart in the same way: While wounds heal and lovers move on, their memory lingers. Like a knee that stiffens on a rainy day, a certain scent can waft through the air and conjure up the shadows of a departed relationship, stopping us in our tracks. Love hurts and love leaves scars. Those things can fade, but they never quite go away.

Few modern songwriters are better at capturing the deep and lasting lesions from a torn romance than John Moreland — his versions of sonic heartbreak don’t just hurt, they bleed. And though there’s some healing on his newest LP, Big Bad Luv, it’s all from the perspective of a man who understands how delicate those fibers of repair actually are: On “Old Wounds,” a bruise is always a bruise, even after it withers back into the skin and disappears. But Moreland, who is now happily married, also acknowledges how pain can be a crippling crutch and that it’s okay to seek rehabilitation. “We’ll open up old wounds in celebration,” he sings, his voice profound and delicately sandpapered. “If we don’t bleed, it don’t feel like a song.” Love that causes us to ache can be hard to run away from — like a nip to the finger, that rush of adrenaline can make us feel alive. But sometimes music, and partnership, is best when it salves and sutures, not aggravates what’s already there. Maybe once we can’t see our scars, it’s okay to pretend, now and again, they were never there at all.  

Willie Nelson, ‘Still Not Dead’

Death: it’s no laughing matter. There’s nothing really funny about staring down the end of things, and most of us spend our entire lives — as long as we’re lucky to have them — thinking of clever ways to avoid the inevitable fact that, yeah, this wild ride is all going to end somewhere. Very few of us, however, have to be confronted with news of our own mortality on a regular basis: Our own obituaries are the one piece of journalism that none of us ever really expects to read, unless you believe in heaven and that God gets your local paper. Or, you’re Willie Nelson, and the media has obsessively reported on the fact that you may or may not be currently breathing since your hair first went gray.

But Nelson is breathing — and inhaling — as boldly as ever on God’s Problem Child, his newest LP, and he’s “Still Not Dead,” as he proclaims on a song written with his producer Buddy Cannon. Sonically, it’s like a bookend to his classic “On the Road Again,” buoyant and swinging: He’s still on the road to somewhere and he’s just as surprised as anyone that he’s alive and kicking. But shouldn’t we all be? Waking up in the morning is never a given; it’s a gift, and Nelson knows it. “Don’t bury me, I’ve got a show to play,” he sings, playing licks on his beloved guitar that bloom with both youthful vitality and aged wisdom. Nelson doesn’t value life because death is now tangible. He values life because he doesn’t live like it is. Thankfully for us, he plays music like it, too.

Andrew Combs, ‘Bourgeois King’

In the wake of the presidential election, everyone is busy trying to put together the puzzle pieces that will make sense of this terrible mess. Pundits are scrambling, academics studying, mouthpieces screaming on Twitter from both sides of the aisle about who exactly is to blame. As constructive as some of this is, it all starts to feel like noise in the same chorus that got us here to begin with: the volume is high, but the content low. How do we climb out of this echoing cave?

Like the way humor has been able to shine an uncanny light on the political climate, music is a crucial piece of our healing: It helps us understand and synthesize the world around us, and use the power of forceful instrumentals or passionate lyrics to find cracks in our unstable reality. One of the best to come out of the 2016 election has been Andrew Combs’ “Bourgeois King,” off of his third LP, Canyons of My Mind. Written before Trump became president, it reflects on the cacophony of events that led to him assuming the throne and transmits the fear and anger of what’s to come. “Parasites and politicians, intertwined and holding hands,” he sings. “Feed us fiction, fabrication, make this country great again.” There’s something about Combs’ portrait of a spoiled royal seizing power through venomous slogans that says more than 30 think-pieces, especially when paired with the fury of piano and strings that surround the howl of his deep and tender vocals. There may be no savior or salve to this heal this moment, but songs like “Bourgeois King” grab us by the shoulders and rattle us deep — they can’t change the past, but they can influence our future.  

Sam Outlaw, ‘Trouble’

Earlier this week, a festival called Tumbleweed — billed as “America’s Outlaw Country Music Festival” — dropped their lineup. With artists like Jamey Johnson, Cody Jinks, and Billie Joe Shaver, it’s chock full of terrific acts, with one exception: women. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Though the event’s organizers claimed they extended invitations to female performers, it makes one thing clear. And that’s how the music we consider to be “outlaw” is so often synonymous with a tough, proto-male way of doing things — scruffy bar songs, big scruffier beards, jeans as untailored as the music itself. And definitely no pink.

One of the things that’s most refreshing about Sam Outlaw is how he challenges this theory to the bone. “Outlaw” wasn’t his given name, but belonged to his mother, so it’s a moniker he chose to use himself. Thus Outlaw, who, on his second album, Tenderheart, embraces the soft, the sweet, and the gorgeous over scruffy and gruff, is almost trolling country conventions: You’re literally forced to call him an outlaw while his music veers toward the relaxed and subtle, and with more of a sense of humor than any textbook “outlaw” would ever boast. On songs like “Trouble,” you picture him driving down Sunset Boulevard in a convertible with the top down, not in a pickup truck or on a motorcycle. With a touch of Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, and the carefree spirit of ’90s pop, he’s not even the bad guy. Instead, it’s someone else who is pushing him to the dark side, and he has enough wherewithal to let them go. To add insult to macho injury, some of Tenderheart’s promo art is — gasp! — pink. That’s Outlaw, but it’s not outlaw, and that’s the magic of it.

Joshua James, ‘Losin Mi Mente’

What is the dividing line between art and madness, between madness and furious love? In the most passionate creations or passionate relationships, the distinction is often blurred — perhaps dangerously so. Genius is sometimes at the expense of sanity and, when it comes to romance, to same applies: Maybe we’re “crazy” about another, unable to sleep or think clearly as long as they populate our minds. Maybe we behave unpredictably, or uncharacteristically, ashamed at the near lunacy of our actions. Maybe we become someone other than ourselves. Whether in the splatters of Jackson Pollock or an embrace between two lovers, there’s an element of unease that remains. Beauty simply cannot linger in the status quo.

Joshua James, an ethereal folk singer out of Nebraska, meditates on all this on “Losin Mi Mente,” off My Spirit Sister. A creative being, a husband, and new parent, he is acutely aware of the near maddening highs and lows that come with all of those things, especially when we factor in absence to this equation — whether it’s a spiritual distance, time on the road, or, at its most extreme, death. “When the sun goes down, I try to keep my brain from thinking,” he sings with his warm rasp, evocative of Jonathan Wilson and Ryan Bingham. “And when death comes a-dancing, I’ll be happy to see your face.” James turns “Losin Mi Mente” into a sort of pastoral rock ‘n’ roll hymnal, never afraid to add spikes of spiraling guitar or locomotive percussion. He knows that the most dangerous madness can linger deep in our own solitude and, as risky as it is to become crazy for another, sometimes love is the only kind of shock treatment that truly works.    

The Mavericks, ‘I Wish You Well’

Ever since I heard the Bob Dylan lyric “He not busy being born is busy dying,” from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” I felt haunted by it: Which one was I doing at any given time? And is there a point in your years where you switch permanently from one to another? Is it a specific age? A moment? As I grew older, I realized there was no easy answer to this question. Timing of life and death is often completely trivial at best, falling in our laps when we least expect it, and the best we can do is keep being reborn, over and over again, until that hourglass runs out of sand — or just shatters.

The Mavericks know a thing or two about rebirth: Together since 1991, they’ve fought fiercely for their independence in a country climate often looking for conformity. Brand New Day is the first on their own label — Mono Mundo Recordings — and it proves that, nine albums in, the genre-blending quartet knows how to keep the cocoon spinning. But life can be long and cruel, and they know a thing or two about death, as well. Bandleader Raul Malo’s father passed away while they recording the LP, and “I Wish You Well,” a gorgeous meeting place between Tejano serenade and Roy Orbison croon, is the tribute to the legacy he left behind and the uncertainly ahead. “This is where the road divides,” sings Malo. His voice is unlike most in country or Americana — smooth, mournful, full of sunbaked soul. After two decades making music, old can be new again, even as we embrace the passage of time. Maybe the best way to keep busy being born is just to be a maverick.  

Ben Glover & Natalie Schlabs, ‘Fall Apart’

In the age of social media perfection, where only the best moments and prettiest pictures make the cut, it can sometimes seem like we’re suffering in seclusion. Twitter feeds and Instagram stories make us all feel like the lives we lead are lesser than, and showing signs of sadness or strife is considered a weakness, not an act of courage. Truth is, pain is universal — it’s what makes us human, and beneath every glossy selfie from the beach is a person that hurts just as much as the next. So where to seek relief when that isolation reaches a fever pitch? Well, there’s one place that’s always been safe. And that’s within the confines of a song.

“The world has a way of making promises it can never keep,” sings Irish-born, Nashville-residing Ben Glover on “Fall Apart,” a gorgeous duet with singer/songwriter Natalie Schlabs before they chant in unison, “Honey come home, where it’s safe to fall apart.” Together, their voices ring and resound like a fork tapping crystal, warm enough to shake anyone into security. “Fall Apart,” with its delicate guitar plucks alongside Schlabs and Glover’s breathy vocals, is a sacred place to turn off the filters and let the tears flow. They may be singing to each other, and about the comfort of simple human touch, but the offering to the listener is just as strong: Come home, release the fears and shackles, and just be free to feel. You can fall apart, baby, as they sing. It’s okay.

Rhiannon Giddens, ‘Better Get It Right the First Time’

Evolution is a strange and perplexing thing. It’s created bees that keep the flowers blooming, trees that keep the air clean, creatures that shift their colors to hide from their predators and blend in among the beauty. So much of nature has grown and changed to work more harmoniously than ever, constantly adapting to circumstances greater than itself. This is why it’s sometimes difficult to understand why one of the world’s most brilliant beings — humans — so often seem to move perilously along a path that’s in the opposite direction of progress.

Rhiannon Giddens’ sophomore LP, Freedom Highway, is about that very road: the road on which we’ve traipsed time and time again with holes in our shoes and weariness in our hearts, but never seem to take those final steps away from our eternal patterns. For every triumph, every leap, there are 10 Philando Castiles to remind us how long the highway to true freedom really is. Giddens tackles this on “Better Get It Right the First Time,” a tale of police brutality laced with punishing harmonies, urgent horns, and a rap that fills in all the blanks. “Better Get It Right the First Time” is a loaded phrase — a word of warning to a Black man who has no room for error when it comes to the police, a mournful recognition of how there are no second chances once bullets fly, and a shameful call to humanity which has had so many damn chances to just get it right. But Giddens didn’t call this album Freedom Highway — after the legendary Staple Singers’ civil rights anthem of the same name — because she’s ready to give up hope. We evolve, highways go on, and, eventually, that first time will finally be our last.

Tift Merritt, ‘Love Soldiers On’

And then, with the scribble of a black pen, the world changed.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed away a future for thousands of immigrants and refugees hoping to make America their new home — a future that included a life in this country that, once upon a time, promised them open arms. In that moment — along with the prospect of ticking our clock back years for women’s reproductive rights, equality for our LGBTQ citizens, and progress in climate change, not to mention efforts to “clean up” the inner cities — life as usual felt almost impossible. And, for me, that means music: There’s not a moment of my daily being that doesn’t include a soundtrack, from wake to work to the minutes of pseudo-consciousness before I drift off to sleep. But Friday, I felt numb. It seemed nothing would match the mood of the morning. No morose melodies helped, no upbeat pop anthems soothed.

Then I tried “Love Soldiers On,” by Tift Merritt, off her newest LP, Stitch of the World. Many have pointed out the similarities between Merritt and Joni Mitchell, and it’s not wrong — but there’s just enough grit in Merritt’s voice to not gloss over the hard realities of our current world. I’m not one for blind optimism, but “Love Soldiers On” gives that glimmer of hope in a post-Hope era, waltzing delicately with a heart on the mend and a head adorned with a pink knit cap. There is a way to soldier on, but it does feel like a battle. So load up our packs with resistance, poster board, and comfortable shoes, and get ready to fight. Along the way, look for love. And don’t forget the music.