Recent releases from The Delines, Anjimile, and Ora Cogan offer a salve in these changing times. by Ryan J. Prado If music truly is a salve for the weary heart, then I hope we’ve all been slathering it on nice and thick the past c ouple weeks. With the onrush of spring blossoms and the doldrums of wintertime peacing out in the rearview, it’s a time for transition, and for emphasizing the importance of breathing, of centering, of noticing, and of letting go when it makes sense to.  In the waning days of the pandemic, when stepping out in public was just beginning to become acceptable again, I felt a desperation to see faces, to see smiles. The best place I could think of to appease those urges was the happy hour sets at Laurelthirst Pub, where a twirling mishmash of hippies, folksters, pool hustlers, old timers, and young wide-eyed first-timers coalesce, fully letting go of whatever baggage may have preceded their arrivals. Seeing a steady cavalcade of freak-flag dancing and undeniable merriment at that legendary haunt was and still is a powerful panacea in changing times, and one I’d recommend for just about anybody in this city.  This week’s drill-down of recently released albums is in the spirit of transition, and keeping a semblance of mellowness in the face of wild oppression almost everywhere you look. Music is a healer, and it’s time to take your medicine.  With that, let’s get spinning! The Delines  The Set Up Portland’s The Delines have made a side-hustle out of cinematic Americana for more than a decade, anchoring the profound, athletic lyricisms of acclaimed novelist/musician Willy Vlautin. The band’s symbiotic relationship with the literary is part and parcel for a group with someone as widely known as Vlautin, but on The Set Up, the musical performances give his down-and-out missives a run for their money.  On the heels of 2025’s equally gritty LP Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom, The Set Up is billed as a kind of road movie, executing in atmospherics, with vocalist Amy Boone’s arresting voiceovers and vocals paving the way for snapshots of addiction, grifters, and life in the margins of society. Replete with lush instrumentation from Cory Gray on keys and trumpet, the album oozes soulful cool even while it’s essentially detailing everyday hardships, broken dreams, and the minutiae of unfulfilled wishes. As the sordid tale unfolds, the instrumental track “Jumping Off in Madras” arrives warm, almost inviting, with a hushed embrace that lulls you into a sense of security before the devastating “Dilaudid Diane” ushers in a slab of heartbreak around the story of an addict with “a maxed out credit card and 63 bucks.”  Later, “Walking With His Sleeves Down” shows Vlautin’s character development at peak powers, finding rhythmic legs over a quaint piano progression, where a man confronts his life in vignettes of memory, lamenting missing the St. Johns Parade, musing on bands in basements playing Judas Priest songs, and looking “Like a breeze could just take him away / Disappearing his way through town.” You can almost see the slow coil of Plymouth exhaust and cigarette smoke binding together on the sepia streets of songs like “The Set Up Part 2,” dripping with 1970s cop drama soundtrack sheen. These stories are the unflinching truth of a lot of the seedier sides of America. Through The Delines’ prism, the inherent bummers of those realities are granted civility.   The Set Up released on Portland's Jealous Butcher Records March 6. The album is available on The Delines Bandcamp in vinyl, compact disc, and digital download formats. Anjimile You’re Free to Go  A poignant sense of liberation echoes throughout Anjimile’s fourth full-length, You’re Free to Go. You can hear it as his voice opens the album on the title track, singing “There is something like a new being growing on me,” sensing it deep inside the muted 1990s alt-pop that jackets the entire LP.  There’s an airy resolve floating in the periphery of tunes like “Rust Wire,” propelling the folky edges of Anjimile’s emotive contemplations toward stoic confession. Elements of grunge-y roots lay solid bedrock for pastoral harmonies and deconstructed melodies on songs like “Point of View,” adding a skewed symphonic flourish, scoring an explicit breakup cycle and merely hints at redemption despite the song’s eerie fringes. Anjimile, based in North Carolina, sings “I don’t care how you feel / You fucked up everything” through a haunted harmonic refrain.  Elsewhere, the anthemic “Like You Really Mean It” is driven by taut percussion and an optimistic, easy vocal emerging as eminently hummable, sharing sonic real estate with the likes of Juliana Hatfield or Jay Som. There is hope heard in the valleys of Anjimile’s songs that speaks to his own senses of rediscovery, stemming partly from new vocal approaches due to ongoing hormone therapy. You can hear the confidence in his voice on the intricate finger-picked composition “Exquisite Skeleton” as he sings “I don’t wanna be a sonofabitch to you / I’m taking off my dress / I’m shaking off my skin.”  By the time you get to “Destroying You”—the penultimate track on You’re Free to Go, featuring guest vocals from Sam Beam—it’s with a sense of having weathered an intimacy and a renewal that feels reinvigorating at just the right time.  You're Free To Go released on the seminal 4AD label March 13. The album is available on Anjimile's Bandcamp in vinyl, compact disc, and digital download formats. Ora Cogan Hard Hearted Woman The last gasps of winter moodiness need not linger forever, but we can wheeze a little while longer on the kind of mystical instrumentation Ora Cogan freezes her dazzling goth-folk tunes with. The Nanaimo, BC artist’s new effort, Hard Hearted Woman, is sprinkled with the kind of eldritch Americana that’s heavy enough on dark undertones that even the brightness of pedal steel is unable to pierce its shadowed realm. Opening with the hazy “Honey,” from which the “hard hearted woman” line is culled for the records’s centerpiece theme, the album seems to soften and harden like a faulty camera lens, focusing and blurring its way through a charnel wormhole of spellcasting, summoning, and possessed folk that reads a bit scarier than it comes across. Cogan’s gorgeous voice is lithe enough to embody both angel and devil, particularly on standout tracks like “Division,” a darkwave epic trawling the depths with synth-pop aplomb, warbling like B-movie vinyl before making room for the gothic underbelly of “Bury Me.” It’s on this track that Cogan’s conjurings coax the nightmares to the surface, with spooky reverb guitars and dissonant arrangements making for a ghostly panorama of orchestral folk. On “Love You Better,” Cogan turns the page to a still-moody but steadier sensibility, singing “Something’s wrong with my mind / I’m drinking river water like wine.” If that doesn’t sound exactly lyrically stable, the song’s rhythmic pocket, clean acoustic guitar, and pedal steel help buoy Cogan’s dreamy resonance. Hard Hearted Woman’s outsider goth leanings, curious chordal left turns, and fearlessness to get way way down into runic dark pop make it one of the best albums these big dumb ears have heard thus far this year. Hard Hearted Woman released on the Sacred Bones label March 13. The album is available on Ora Cogan's Bandcamp in vinyl, compact disc, and digital download formats. ...read more read less