VA - Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers (2025) Hi-Res

The world is an especially rough place these days, and, to hear some people talk, all of the problems you're dealing with are 100% the fault of an immigrant. Can't get a job with a salary commensurate with your skillset and experience? Immigrants probably got them all. Unable to find an affordable home? A refugee from a famine almost certainly bought all the available property in your neighborhood. Billionaires and corporations extracting wealth at every available opportunity while leaving you to pick up crumbs? Definitely an asylum-seeker's fault. Spill your coffee on the way to work? Close the borders!

To be sure, immigration is—and always has been—a complex issue, but the fact remains that every immigrant is an actual person; the constant dehumanization and vilification of people who are leaving their homes behind in search of something better for themselves and their family has been one of the saddest developments of the last decade and it has reached a fever pitch of callousness in recent years. But there are, of course, many people still doing good work. The organizers behind Passages hope to "defend human dignity in the face of persistent cruelty," and, in an effort to fundraise for two Texas-based organizations—American Gateways and Casa Marianella, both of which provide no-to-low-cost legal services, food, shelter, access to health care, and other essential services to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers—they asked artists to write and record a song "in a place that feels like home."

The result is a shockingly intimate and emotionally intense album, compiling tracks by 17 artists like Lambchop, St. Panther, Dirty Projectors, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Alan Sparhawk, and William Tyler, nearly all of whom took the "home" part quite seriously; many of the cuts are raw, straight-to-tape renditions. Some, like Y La Bamba's acoustic "Wrong Crowd," sacrifice fidelity for red-level vehemence, while others—the gentle "Country" by Oneohtrix Point Never, or the brief, poetic ambience of "Un Trayecto Largo" by Anjou—are more ruminative and haunting in their approach. All of them, though, are united in their reflection of the heartbreak and anger that's felt when confronting the inhumane treatment so many immigrants are facing.