It Ain't Hemingway

It’s hard for me to measure the profound impact an album like Jessie Baylin’s Dark Place had on me this year – for both its stunning beauty, its daring complexity and its sheer, completely honest sense of lyricism. Created after the birth of her daughter, this is a set of songs about the fear that comes with enormous love and the danger that lingers when we assume that happiness is a given. How Jessie was able to turn away from what’s expected of us – doting parent, dutiful wife with zero secrets to be told – is as mesmerizing as that voice, that floats so effortlessly over each note and syllable. It’s one of the best there is. With a two-year-old myself, I know well how that first year of your child’s life isn’t only full of sweet snuggles and movie-scene midnights with a sleeping baby on your chest, rocking the chair to the…