Shanti, it sounds nice on my tongue. “Shanti”, on Left of Cool, by Bela Fleck and his Flecktones sounds like a cold spring on the New Age mountainside, resolves like a Beatles tune, and boasts integrity from its gritty cello timbre.

Most of all, the motherfucker is playing a banjo. Every great song should have melody, harmony, rhythm, progression and resolution. “Shanti” has all of that, and she has a good twenty seconds in which I feel like I should be on my way to visit a garpon, or breathe a valley full of some alien flower.

-Tom Laverty

Tom Laverty‘s work has appeared in Passages North, The Cortland Review and Unsaid. He lives in Detroit.

Questions, compliments, (hopefully not) complaints? Contact Jackie Clark: jackie [at] coldfrontmag [dot] com.

see all songs of the week here.