We’re hitting that point in the year where there isn’t much new music being released so I’m going to have to start getting a little more creative with what I’m considering new. So this week I’m talking about two songs off of the deluxe version of Amos Lee’s newest album My New Moon, which was just released yesterday.

One of the new songs on the deluxe version of the album is a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. I wish this song wasn’t still so relevant to today. There was so much great protest music written in the 60s and it’s kind of disheartening to listen to it today because the lyrics still fit so well and you can see that we haven’t come very far.

Marvin Gaye’s version of this song has never been one of my favorites from that era, but I love what Amos Lee has done with it. His voice is perfect for the song and I think the even more slowed down and mellow tone he gives it work really well.

That brings us to “No More Darkness, No More Light” which was the first single off the album. It was a song I thought about writing about for this series multiple weeks only to have something else edge it out until it no longer felt new enough to fall under the new music Friday moniker. But since I’m writing about another song on the album I thought I would go ahead and sneak it in here.

Despite the uplifting tone of the music, the song itself is actually pretty heavy. Amos Lee took apart the whole song and rewrote the lyrics in the days following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting as the students there started to call out people for the hollow “thoughts and prayers” they were offering. I feel like the song offers a bit of hope at the end even if it seems to indicate there’s a long road before we ever get there. I keep trying to follow that hope even though most days I find it harder and harder to even see the road. I like when my music keeps reminding me to push forward.