You Set Me Right: Favorite Songs of the Aughts

For most of The Aughts I com­piled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christ­mas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of any­thing that I like. A few of my peo­ple love it too, though, and they tend to be less dili­gent (obses­sive) about find­ing the new stuff than I am. That’s where I come in. I claim no author­ity. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000–2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some hon­or­able mentions). […]

Remembering Dave Carter

I wish, oh I wish, Dave Carter had gone on shar­ing new aspects of his gift with us for years to come. His task was an unend­ing one, so of course it feels like it was pre­ma­turely arrested, because the work of untan­gling the world can never be fin­ished. The long­ing for new Dave Carter music and the new under­stand­ing that comes with it brings me to the brink on days like this. Then I remem­ber: his gift is gen­er­a­tive. Oth­ers have been stirred to share their own new visions of the world because of the words Dave Cater wrote. That trib­ute keeps him as present now as he ever was, and my lament only delays its fur­ther uncovering. […]

Introducing the Google Nostalgia Filter

Unless you’re writ­ing a Greek epic, do not under any cir­cum­stances explic­itly invoke the muse. It pisses her off. […]