Album Of The Week: Miguel Kaleidoscope Dream

Before I get into this absolutely lovely new Miguel album, I'd like to say a quick word about the Mountain Goats. The Mountain Goats are quite possibly my favorite band on the face of the earth, but their albums almost never reveal themselves to me right away. It takes months, maybe years, for them to fully sink in and become a part of my headspace. Get Lonely only really started making sense to me, mattering to me, maybe last year, when that album was like five years old. And so Transcendental Youth, their new one, isn't my favorite album of the week, though god knows it could be in a month or a year or a decade. In the beginning, I always get all caught up in second-guessing John Darnielle's musical decisions, feeling slightly disconsolate about how far they move from previous albums (what the fuck dude, horns?), and it takes me a while to figure out why those work, how they support the words. I'm working on it. It'll take me a while. In a slower week, I might've gone all-in, listened to Transcendental Youth day and night, attempted to piece together some rough idea of it so I could write this thing about it. But this week, there's this absolutely glittering gem of a Miguel album, and I just can't bring myself to listen to much of anything else.