Libretto’s Best of… Whenever

Time has ceased to have any meaning whatsoever, so while we can’t be quite sure that we actually enjoyed these things in 2021, we’re recommending them anyway in the hope that they bring you joy, make you think, and entertain you in 2022.

Neal

Ear Hustle
Ear Hustle has moved and engaged me like no other podcast. Originally produced at San Quentin State Prison, the show now encompasses both the stories of incarcerated people and tales of life on the outside. For those of us with little idea of how doing time affects incarcerated people and their loved ones, Ear Hustle demystifies prison life through exceptionally compelling explorations of topics ranging from race and work to food and romance. These beautifully crafted narratives reveal both the web of factors that often lead the poor and marginalized toward incarceration, and the humanity of those whose experiences inside guide them to grace and redemption.

Ted Lasso
It’s relatively rare that I laugh out loud or cry at a television program; those that move me to do both on a regular basis are rarer still. (I’m looking at you, Schitt’s Creek.) Ted Lasso is the latest series to achieve this vaunted status. Witty, fast-paced, and good-hearted, the show benefits from crisp, multilayered writing, and the acting chops of a (largely British) cast that hopscotches effortlessly from irony and crankiness to vulnerability and poignancy.

a fragment of the day
Stephen Sondheim’s recent death was a monumental rite of passage in American theater; he was truly an artist of the first order. As I watched and listened to the tributes inspired by his passing, I was struck by how tightly he controlled his personal narrative, often repeating anecdotes and biographical details almost verbatim. Helena Richardson’s powerful remembrance breaks the mold; instead of viewing Sondheim’s achievements through the lens of his life, she present his work as a catalog of human experience (hers and ours). Once you’ve read her essay, take a few minutes to check out this exquisite rendition of my favorite Sondheim composition.

Nancy

Home Cooking
I stumbled on Home Cooking sometime between feeding my sourdough starter and cooking a pot of beans in 2020, and I’ve savored all the episodes since. Initially a 4-part podcast special intended to get us through the two-week lockdown in March of 2020 (!), it ended up being a multi-part podcast that got us through, well, a lot more. In each episode, Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) and Hrishikesh Hirway (who hosts the Song Exploder podcast, another gem) walk listeners through a series of write-in questions about cooking that range from practical to outlandish, and provide tips, ideas, and recipes. They also chat, laugh, and exude humanity—the podcast felt like making new friends in a time when we all really needed them.

The Bureau
2020 and 2021 mostly made me want to watch TV that felt like a warm hug (I mean, right?), but The Bureau was a notable exception. A French spy drama, the show is challenging and heart-wrenching in all the right ways. Part of its allure was its ability to transport me to Paris and various far-flung locales—a reminder that while I never seemed to leave these four walls anymore, the world is still out there. And it’s so compelling that it sometimes made me forget myself, the pandemic, and the fact that I’d been wearing the same jeans for so many days in a row. A rare feat for a TV show these days. Highly recommend.

Good Talk, Mira Jacobs
I first discovered Mira Jacobs through her graphic recounting of her family’s trip from New York to Arizona during the early pandemic, which was published in the New Yorker. I immediately wanted to be her friend read more of her work, and was thrilled to learn about Good Talk. A graphic memoir in conversations, Good Talk is about storytelling, interracial families, parenting, friendship, America, and any number of other things. It’s gorgeous to look at, hilarious and heartbreaking, never pedantic, and will actually make you laugh out loud.

Jason

With the pandemic forcing the closure (some permanently) of movie theaters, documentary films more often than not have premiered on television screening services (though some, like the Brian Wilson doc at the Kendall Square Cinema last month, have also had screenings at cinemas). Here is my list of the 5 best music documentaries from the past year that you could/can watch on the boob tube.

1. Get Back – Disney+
   Kind of an obvious choice, perhaps, though I am not as enamored with it as most people are. Sure, it’s a fascinating glimpse into a key period in the history of the world’s greatest rock band, but it’s hardly artful as a film, and as all the footage was shot at the time it was happening, one wonders what effect the presence of the film crew had on the proceedings, and whether things might have gone better for the band if had they’d had more privacy in which to work. That said, its sweeping scope (eight hours of a few men in a room—and, eventually, a rooftop), historical importance, and the sheer quality of the material that came to be affords Get Back the #1 spot. Also, I nominate Billy Preston for Best Supporting Musician.

2. The Velvet Underground – Apple TV+
   By far the most artfully composed documentary film I’ve seen in some time, The Velvet Underground uses techniques that blend perfectly with the subject band and its music. Opening with disturbing metallic sounds, using split screen or multiple frames, and making liberal use of Andy Warhol-shot film clips, the filmmakers remind us that the Velvet Underground was all about the seedy underside of society. No summer-of-love romanticism for this group. The film rightly focuses on its two leading members, John Cale and Lou Reed, and Warhol, the not-so-invisible puppeteer. It also features the two best talking heads you could ever hope to see: Jonathan Richman (who speaks about the many times he caught the band at the Boston Tea Party) and John Waters.

3. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) – Hulu
   Though there is some dispute over the filmmakers’ claim that the reels of this music festival were lost for many years, there is no doubting it represents a missing piece in the history of music festivals in America, doubly important because of the time and place in which it occurred (Harlem in 1969, mere months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.). The directorial debut of Roots drummer Questlove, Summer of Soul features an amazing lineup, including Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension, The Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson, B.B King, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Hugh Masakela, and more.

4. Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road – Amazon Prime
   Brian Wilson has been the subject of numerous documentaries, so why another one? For one, his story is endlessly fascinating, the troubled genius whose music is so full of love but whose life has been one long nightmare of mental illness, drug use, and changing fashion. That he is alive at all in 2021 is incredible enough (knock on wood), but the fact that he can continue to tour (including an excellent show in Lowell in October) is testament to an inner strength that is truly remarkable. What sets Long Promised Road apart from other docs about the Beach Boys leader is that his mental issues are not merely a chapter of the story, but front and center throughout the entire film. We see and feel Brian’s struggles right up close. That makes it a difficult watch but it’s also very moving and powerful.

5. Adele: One Night Only – Paramount+
   Bit of an outlier, as its not a documentary per se, but the Adele/Oprah interview was interesting and enlightening. For an artist as successful as Adele to release only four studio albums in a span of 13 years (though the band Boston holds the unofficial record of 18 years), there is certainly pent-up interest in her life and career. But while any interview with Oprah ends up being as much about her as about the interviewee, the corresponding 10-song concert was mesmerizing, showcasing her incredible voice at a price quite a bit less than a concert ticket for one of her shows would be.

Adrian

SOUR, Olivia Rodrigo
As an unabashed lover of female pop stars and the oft-derided genre of pop-punk, this was a pretty excellent year for new music. And in budding superstar Olivia Rodrigo, the two combined to create one of the best debut albums in recent memory and a truly inescapable earworm of a tune in her hit single “good 4 u.” It and the other two major singles off the record—“drivers license” and “deja vu”—have landed on best-of-2021 lists at publications ranging from Rolling Stone to NPR to Pitchfork, reflecting the extent to which SOUR dominated the airwaves this year. This is a beautiful, catchy, and extremely human album, and I—like those various professional critics—have had a hard time landing on one favorite track. An excellent problem to have.

I do my best to keep up with releases throughout the year, so Olivia isn’t my only new discovery. Here are my top 10 songs of the year—or, for the more adventurous (or bored) among you, my top 100.

King Richard
This excellent movie chronicles the early years and the rise of Venus and Serena Williams, two of the greatest female tennis players of all time. And sure, the inspirational underdog sports story has been told a million times—but this is such an inspirational story. There were several times where I had to remind myself it was based on reality because the plot points felt too scripted to believe, but a quick fact check revealed that it was (pretty much) all true.

My one criticism is that I’m not sold on how far the film goes to turn Richard Williams into a hero. I know Venus and Serena continue to credit him for their success, but the movie makes his rampant narcissism into a comedic device and turns a pretty blind eye to his infidelity, only briefly mentioning that he has other children out of wedlock that he doesn’t seem to care a whit about. But Will Smith gives his best performance since Pursuit of Happyness playing this more family-friendly version of King Richard, and the young actresses who play Venus and Serena are downright charming.

Contact
When the Librettists returned to Boston to finish moving out of the office in September, it was the first time that we had all been in one place since before the pandemic began. After the papers had been shredded and the chairs wheeled out and the walls unburdened of picture frames, we out-of-towners returned to the hotel we were sharing, slunk exhausted into Ikea furniture, and played Contact.

If you’re not familiar with it, the game is simple to play but devilishly hard to explain. Here’s a pretty good description.

Zoom is wonderful for so many things, but it’s no replacement for the experience of being together. For a couple of hours far too late in the evening, we enjoyed a real, in-person sense of connection. Contact.

Connor

Hades
I’ve never been a particularly dedicated or skilled gamer, but we bought a Nintendo Switch at the end of 2020 for no reason other than this is apparently what you do when you’ve been stuck in your house for too long. While the first game that really captivated me on the new system was the excessively lauded The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game that stole my heart and that I still play at least several times a week is Hades. A roguelike action dungeon crawler presented in isomorphic view (everyone knows what that means, right?), Hades has the player take on the role of Zagreus, only son of the titular god of the Underworld, who has decided he’s had enough of his overbearing father’s attitude and is going to break out of the realm of the dead. Along the way, he’s aided by his divine relatives on Olympus, who bestow boons on him that augment his ability to fight the menagerie of shades blocking his passage through Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium.

The game is no picnic, of course, and soon after being tossed in with no tutorial, you most certainly will die and be taken by the Styx straight back to the House of Hades to try again. Each escape attempt is unique, owing to the randomly generated arrangement of rooms, enemies, and treasure. Zagreus loses all his Olympian boons and upgrades each time he dies, which means that unlike some role-playing games, you make it further through the Underworld not as a function of better weapons or armor, but simply because you, the player, are getting better. It’s gratifying and frustrating all at the same time.

Despite being ostensibly repetitive, the game has many rich storylines that progress simultaneously. Whereas dying in most video games means going back to your last save and essentially resetting the in-game world back to that point, other characters in Hades comment on and respond to Zagreus continually emerging from the Styx after each failed attempt. Over the course of his Sisyphean journey, Zagreus meets and forms complex relationships with not only the Olympian gods, but chthonic beings like Thanatos, Nyx, and Charon, and legendary mortals who have passed into the Underworld, like Achilles and Orpheus. Mythology enthusiasts will find plenty of tiny details that allude to classic stories and characters, and subvert them in endlessly entertaining ways. The writing—not to mention the stellar artwork and voice acting—is funny, poignant, unabashedly queer, and still surprising after hours of gameplay.

Ian

Another Side, Leo Nocentelli
Even if you’ve never heard of The Meters, you’ve probably heard their music somewhere—their New Orleans brand of funk has been sampled by everyone from Aaliyah to 2Pac, and “Cissy Strut” sparks near-universal recognition from the first five notes. Their original lineup disbanded in 1977, so it came as a surprise when their guitarist Leo Nocentelli released Another Side this fall, a folksy solo album he recorded in 1970 and shelved for 50 years. It’s a pure pleasure, with catchy choruses and beautiful acoustic guitar playing that evokes Bill Withers and James Taylor. Leo Nocentelli’s guitar style—emphasizing rhythm and groove over flashy fretwork—fundamentally changed the way I approached the instrument, so it’s a revelation to hear him shine in a new context.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude on an extremely hot day this August while on vacation at the Jersey Shore. Sitting on a beach chair with my toes burrowing into burning sand, I was hooked from the opening line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” For the next few weeks, I became a full-time resident of Macondo, the fever dream of a town that seven generations of the Buendía family calls home. Accessible and readable—which surprised me given the extravagant title—Solitude is a surreal, disturbing, and often hilarious observation on the cyclical nature of human history. It’s also the first book in recent memory to send chills down my spine upon reading the final sentence.