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.
Lil Yachty featuring Drake and DaBaby, ‘Oprah’s Bank Account’
We’ll look back at Lil Yachty’s rap career as a means to an end. His new single “Oprah’s Bank Account” has a plinking charm, just like his breakthrough hits “1 Night” and “Minnesota.” Beats like these — soft shuffles with chirpy melodies — suit him the most neatly. But what he does best atop them isn’t anything specifically technical — he’s more character actor than rapper. Hence, this video, a nine-minute comedy sketch in which Yachty plays an Oprah-like talk show host giving Drake and DaBaby the third degree. That they’re game for the elaborate shtick means they hear something in Yachty, and that they see something more than can be heard. JON CARAMANICA
Ava Max, ‘Kings & Queens’
It has been … checks watch … barely a dozen years since Lady Gaga restored shimmery disco 4.0 maximalism to pop music. Ava Max is in a hurry to revive the revival. “Kings & Queens” continues her brazen, loyal-little-monster updating of Gaga’s glitter. CARAMANICA
Margo Price, ‘Twinkle Twinkle’
Too often on Margo Price’s first two albums, her ambition was undercut by her production, which was faithful and often polite. Finally, “Twinkle Twinkle” — from her forthcoming third album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started,” produced by Sturgill Simpson — has a sound to complement the particular tang of her voice. Simpson assembled a band both ferocious and grimy: Matt Sweeney, Pino Palladino, James Gadson, Benmont Tench. They’re uproarious support for Price, whose singing is looser and tarter than ever. CARAMANICA
Natalia Lafourcade, ‘La Malquerida’
Released on International Women’s Day, “Malquerida” (“Unloved Woman”) is a campfire singalong by the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. She strums a Venezuelan cuatro, a small guitar, and sings a waltz about the age-old mistreatment of poor, hardworking women: “Without looking at my eyes they silenced my words.” Quietly, and then with resolve, the women and girls flanking her join in to sing, “Ay, que dolor”: “What sorrow.” JON PARELES
The Seshen, ‘Wander’
“Wander” is the two-minute track that ends “Cyan,” the new album by the Seshen, a band from the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s less a song than a bit of slow-motion vertigo: a whorl of overlapping, interlocking instruments and Lalin St. Juste’s multilayered vocals, with a three-beat pulse and no clear boundaries between loops and improvisation. PARELES
Tones and I, ‘Bad Child’
Tones and I — the Australian songwriter Toni Watson — conquered the world last year with “Dance Monkey,” and she follows it up with a variation on its music and attitude: plinking piano chords and her annoyed-child voice carry her from petulance to righteous pugnacity. This time, instead of singing about a rapacious audience, she’s confronting insecurities implanted by her family — ones she hasn’t entirely conquered. PARELES
Mara Rosenbloom, ‘Dream of a Common Language — Irruption’
There’s a low-lying restlessness about Mara Rosenbloom’s piano playing: Each moment, for her, seems best understood as something to escape from. But with her new trio, Flyways, featuring the vocalist and percussionist Anaïs Maviel and the bassist Rashaan Carter, Rosenbloom leaves loads of empty space; she’s inviting you to relax inside her restlessness. The first thing — and ultimately, one of the only things — that you hear on “Dream of a Common Language — Irruption,” from Flyways’ debut album, is a repeated, five-note pattern in the left hand. Maviel and Carter soon join in, each taking things one note at a time. “No one lives in this room/Without confronting the whiteness of the wall,” Maviel sings, sounding cool but tender. Eventually, as the song continues, Rosenbloom starts to adorn that low pattern with chords in the right hand; eventually it disappears completely, as a cloud of electronics fills the air around her. The space feels finally welcoming as Maviel sings in long, slowly fading tones: “The true nature: the drive to connect.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Noveller, ‘Effektology’
With her electric guitar and an array of effects, Noveller (a.k.a. Sara Lipstate) summons the tones of bells, choirs, orchestras, calliopes and distant tsunamis. “Effektology” begins as a hazy, airborne, awe-struck reverie and adds just enough of a pulse to propel it toward its resolution. PARELES
Sam Gendel, ‘Saxofone Funeral’
If Sam Gendel is playing his instrument into its own grave on “Saxofone Funeral,” then he should be pleased with what he’s found there. It’s more of a tomb than a grave, adorned for the afterlife with electronic accouterments, curved mirrors and history folding back upon itself. This piece comes from “Satin Doll,” an album of electronically warped jazz standards (like the title track) and originals (like this one). Together with the bassist Gabe Noel and the electronic percussionist Philippe Melanson, Gendel builds a rubbery sound-space out of the influences of U.K. jungle, ambient music, underground hip-hop and American Minimalism. RUSSONELLO
Source: Music - nytimes.com
