1. Over the nearly three decades that I’ve been posting “Album of the Year” lists on my website (the most recent, here), I’ve generally done a “half-way there” post of the things that are moving me most as the summer season kicks in. Last year, though, I elected to go with quarterly updates, and to create a running Spotify playlist as I posted the evolving list each quarter. That seemed like a useful approach, and one that elicited a fair amount of interest/engagement as the year went on, so I’m going to continue that rubric this year. And, with that as preamble, here are the albums and non-album singles (both previews of forthcoming albums due in the second quarter) that have most moved me over the past three months.

Best Albums of 2024 (First Quarter):

• Les Amazones d’Afrique, Musow Dance
• Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past Is Still Alive
• Imperial Wax, Tranquilliser
• Vijay Iyer, Compassion
• The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy
• Charles Lloyd, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
• Ministry, HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES
• Modern English, 1 2 3 4
• Nadine Shah, Filthy Underneath
• TORRES, What an enormous room
• Yard Act, Where’s My Utopia?

Best Non-Album Singles/EPs of 2024 (First Quarter):

• Hawkwind, “The Starship (One Love, One Life),” from the forthcoming album Stories From Time and Space
• HOUSE Of ALL, “Murmuration,” from the forthcoming album Continuum

And then here’s the Spotify playlist sampler, providing one representative cut from each of the records listed above:

2. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had finally printed out the complete manuscript of my next book with Rear Admiral Jim McNeal, Crucibles: History’s Most Formidable Rites of Passage, nearly two years after we began working on the project. We’ve now had it copy-edited by independent eyes, have made what seem to us to be the final updates, and will be sending it on to Agate Publishing on Monday, with publication expected in early 2025. Which is all very exciting, of course, even as we are beginning to frame a proposal for our next collaborative work. When describing Crucibles in conversations with curious colleagues and friends, I’ve routinely had people ask me for examples of the rites of passage we cover. So as a preview tease, and as a convenient place for me to park this list where I can nab it quickly (since I often struggle on the spot to name all of the chapters), here’s a screen-cap of the Table of Contents for the book’s main text, laying out the specific cultures and organizations that we assess and analyze in our work, including our own Plebe Year experiences together at the United States Naval Academy:

I look forward to sharing it with you all, and hopefully lots of other readers who do frequent this website, when it’s ready to roll out. As always, I’m grateful to all of you who support my creative endeavors, and also as always, if you’ve not read my earlier books and are interested in doing so, here’s the link to learn more about them.