January is a great time to make resolutions/look forward, but it’s also a great time to look back at how badly you fucked up your top albums lists.
This year’s omissions offer a bumper crop. I balked in the face of burgeoning relationships with Grouper and John Luther Adams… failed to get to know Charlie XCX’s Sucker and Eno/Hyde’s High Life in time… but I think Mirah takes the regret cake. I’m smitten after just a few days with Changing Light, which came out last May. The very first time through, I felt closely connected, in large part because it feels like the decisions this album makes — the change in texture from the generous arrangement of “Gold Rush” to the acoustic guitar in “Fleetfoot Ghost,” the oboe countermelody in “Radiomind,” the stacking of processed harmonies in “Oxen Hope” — anticipate what my brain wants to hear with an accuracy that’s downright spooky. “Radiomind” and the picture of an ever-present internal monologue its lyrics paint resonates especially deeply. The whole experience was a little like having a friend finish a sentence you didn’t even know you were about to start.
If only I’d heard Changing Light before Mirah performed in Richmond on Tuesday. Then again, an Instagram photo from that show was how I found out about her, and there’s no regretting that.
Check out “Oxen Hope” and “Radiomind” below and click here to buy Changing Light.
You Hear That 
I bought this at Christmas, too, and it would have bumped everything on my ‘best of …’ list, barring my top choice, down one. It’s a superb album.