So that we can all put on our headphones and tune out the world for an hour...

Name one record, a personal favorite, that you wish more people knew about. Old or new, any genre, popular or obscure, doesn't matter -- just one record that you go back to again and again and that feels a bit like a secret, like "why doesn't everyone keep this in their back pocket?"

My pick today: Valerie June - The Order of Time

I could wax poetic about this record all day but I won't (at least not right now). All I'll say is that there is something really warm and rich and comforting about the record, and June has a knack for both the particularities of the mundane and the cosmic, both in lyrics and in music. Even where the lyrics are on the sadder end of things, every song here just seems to float and drift and it asks you to float and drift with it. And June's unorthodox vocals give it a quality both palpable and mysterious.

I find myself going back to it time and again since its release in 2017 and every time I wish more people knew about it.

I don't think there's a single track on here I ever skip but my favorites are probably the opener "Long Lonely Road," "Love You Once Made" (I've put that on repeat on more than one occasion, I wish it just hung out with the closing refrain for 20 minutes), the Escher-like "If And," "Astral Plane" and "Slip Slide On By."

I'll throw "Two Hearts" in there as a masterclass in building up a song gently and with so much subtlety that where it ends seems completely different from where it begins, and yet there's no pinpointing how it got there...

I could go on.

Just go listen to the whole album now. It's impeccably produced so put on some good headphones for it. Sink into it. Then come back and share one of your favorite records so I can stop doomscrolling for a bit...

-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~