Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
Aventura, ‘Bud Light Seltzer Sessions con Aventura’
Enough with the livestreams. Seriously. They are, for the most part, a poor compensation, an unsatisfactory compression of artists still learning how to express the fullness of their gifts while on lockdown. Plus, there’s nothing worse than having an appointment to keep in a moment in which time has no edge. But this. This! I did not see this stellar acoustic Aventura concert live, but thankfully it is archived on YouTube. Few acts are as well suited to this stripped-down approach as these innovative bachata superstars. For this performance, three of the four members — Romeo Santos, the frontman; Lenny Santos on guitar; Max Santos on bass — were together on a sound stage, and the fourth, Henry Santos, was beamed in to do harmony vocals. For about 40 minutes, they played striking, poignant renditions of “Cuándo Volverás,” “Obsesión,” “Enséñame A Olvidar,” “Un Beso” and many more hits. Sprinkled throughout the show was some unconvincing shilling for Bud Light Seltzer, but that was a small price to pay for a performance this intimate and careful. The close-up shots suited the group well: You could see the dexterity of Lenny’s guitar playing, catch the flexibility of Max’s funk, and watch in awe as Romeo — an utter ham, an irrepressible sensualist, a singer of uncommon sweetness — massaged the cameras with his eyes. JON CARAMANICA
John Legend, ‘Bigger Love’
Just surrender to the meticulous catchiness of John Legend’s latest benevolent message. From its dembow-ish beat to its wholehearted chorus to all of its burnished details — the mixture of electronic and acoustic-sounding percussion, the female voice that sails alongside Legend in the last choruses, the brief bits of guitar, the synthesizer and saxophone counterpoints, the nuggets of sampled vocals that pop up all over the place — this seemingly modest ditty (credited to five songwriters and four producers) springs little delights all the way through. JON PARELES
Captain Planet and Shungudzo, ‘Big Man’
Captain Planet, a D.J.-producer with an ear for world music, enlisted the Zimbabwean-American gymnast-turned-musician Shungudzo for the class-warfare song “Big Man.” West African balafons (marimbas) plink out a six-beat vamp spattered with trap percussion as Shungudzo plays the arrogant mogul: “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine,” she taunts. “You carry my load while I break your shoulders.” PARELES
Roy Ayers, ‘Reaching the Highest Pleasure’
Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Roy Ayers, ‘Synchronize Vibration’
Roy Ayers’s great recordings from the 1970s are equal parts hunger and poise. On this previously unreleased 1977 recording of “Reaching the Highest Pleasure,” the vibraphonist and fusion pioneer lives up to those principles, taking his time as he turns up the pressure over a lively, corkscrewing bass line. This week also sees the release of “Synchronize Vibration,” the lead single from an album that the 79-year-old Ayers recently recorded in collaboration with the hip-hop producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who have recently been making music together under the moniker Jazz Is Dead. The track has all the trappings of golden era Ayers: a chorus of wafting female vocals, gooey synths and a drum beat that steadily simmers. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Future featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Trillionaire’
A father-son outing of hip-hop’s melancholic solipsists, “Trillionaire” unites Future, almost a decade into his sadness, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, full of bluster seeping out of wounds. Given that, this collaboration — from the new Future album “High Off Life” — is more lively than you’d expect. YoungBoy’s hook is hopeful, and Future raps about taking care of his mother. The two sound relieved to have found each other. CARAMANICA
Rico Nasty, ‘My Little Alien’
There are bigger-name contributors to “Scoob! The Album,” the soundtrack to the new animated feature film (and extension of the Scooby-Doo universe). But there is something very right about Rico Nasty’s “My Little Alien,” which matches oddity with accessibility, chirpiness with wry knowingness — intersections at which the underappreciated rapper thrives. An upbeat theme song for the oddball children of the world. CARAMANICA
Dijon, ‘Rock n Roll’
Rock has shrunk down to a negligible cultural keepsake, a handful of trivia citations, in “Rock n Roll,” which has Dijon courting a girl who “don’t like rock ’n’ roll” even though “daddy owned a record shop,” whatever that was. The sound of the backup instruments is crumpled, distorted and lurching, while Dijon, singing like a low-fi Prince, cites the Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, “Born in the U.S.A.,” “1999,” punk-rock and, hmmm, Earth, Wind & Fire. “I just wanna see her dance around the room,” he moans, defeated. PARELES
Ben Harper, ‘Don’t Let Me Disappear’
The possibility of hope grows ever more remote in Ben Harper’s “Don’t Let Me Disappear.” He picks an acoustic guitar, a major chord falling to its relative minor, and sings in a subdued, careworn voice as sonic voids open up around him: quiet keyboard tones that are mostly air, implacably deep drums, distorted electric guitars that only echo his despair. “Been so long since it was easy,” he sings, on the way to the final minor chord. PARELES
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, ‘The Steady Heart’
“The Steady Heart,” by the electronic composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, is meditative and hyperactive at the same time, a swirl of burbling organ tones and Smith’s voice(s) singing sweetly about trust, with undertows of bass notes and drumbeats that only make the track more vertiginous on the way to a final unexpected ascent. PARELES
Tropos, ‘Of the Trellis’
The compositions of Anthony Braxton tend to be fastidious and wily works: They are carefully, almost obsessively built, but with room to move around; the performer also becomes a composer. That feeling — of a writhing text, something almost escaping its own language — became inspiration for Tropos, a quintet of young improvisers and composers who first met as students at New England Conservatory. On their debut album, “Axioms // 75 AB,” they take inspiration from Braxton’s method; half of its tracks are his compositions, and the other half are original pieces inspired by him. One of those, “Of the Trellis,” a smoky piece by the drummer Mario Layne Fabrizio, becomes a fertile meeting ground for Laila Smith’s voice and Raef Sengupta’s alto saxophone. RUSSONELLO
Source: Music - nytimes.com
