For the better part of a decade, McKinley Dixon has been turning his experiences as a native Southerner sometimes living in Queens and an eager student of literature into vivid reflections on joy, pain, and perseverance. His breakthrough, though, began with 2021’s much-loved For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her and continued with 2023’s Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, both instrumentally rich exercises in storytelling wrapped up in the trauma and grief of losing a young friend. Those albums were emotional expurgations, Dixon dumping his feelings into marathons of literary references where Toni Morrison and Greek mythology shared space with detailed personal reflections.

In many ways, the breathless and ebullient Magic, Alive! continues the work of its predecessors: It is the story of three kids who lose their best friend and wrestle with the subsequent turmoil. The essential twist, though, is that the trio wonder what they can do to bring their pal back or, at the very least, reconvene with him, so that their friendship does not end with mortality. Indeed, the crux of Magic, Alive! is a broad contemplation of what constitutes magic at all. Why can’t it be the guy who simply gets away with something by ducking from authorities, or the slippery way the world starts to feel after a long pull on a joint or a slow drink from a bottle? Can it merely be the belief in something we cannot plainly see just as well as an abiding trust in miracles, spells, and portals for something beyond our own experience?

On Magic, Alive!, Dixon—a son of the ghost-haunted South—says yes to all of it.