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      Vampire Weekend Did Not Make a ‘Doom and Gloom Record’

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      From the first seconds of Vampire Weekend’s new album, “Only God Was Above Us,” it’s clear that something has changed. “Ice Cream Piano” starts with hiss, buzz, feedback and a hovering, distorted guitar note — the opposite of the clean pop tones that have been the band’s hallmark. It’s the beginning of an album full of startling changes and wild sonic upheavals, all packed into 10 songs.The new album, like all of Vampire Weekend’s work, is meticulous, self-conscious and awash in musical and verbal allusions — sometimes direct, sometimes cryptic. But it’s also a broad pendulum swing from its 2019 release, “Father of the Bride,” a leisurely, jam-band-influenced sprawl that ran nearly 58 minutes. “Only God Was Above Us,” the group’s fifth album, due April 5, is eight songs and 10 minutes shorter.“With every album we have to push in two directions at once,” Ezra Koenig, Vampire Weekend’s singer and primary songwriter, said in a recent interview. “Sometimes that means we have to be poppier and weirder. Maybe with this record, it’s about both pushing into true maturity, in terms of worldview and attitude, but also pushing back further into playfulness. There’s a youthful amateurishness along with some of our most ambitious swings ever.”Koenig, 40, described the new album’s sequence of songs as “a journey from questioning to acceptance, maybe to surrender. From a kind of negative worldview to something a little deeper.” Ultimately, he said, the LP is optimistic. “It’s not a doom and gloom record. And even if there’s songs where the narrator is trying to figure something out or feels confused, that’s not all. That’s part of the story — it’s not the thesis of the album that the world is dark and horrible.”The album also exults in musical zingers, non sequiturs and startling off-grid eruptions. The songs often morph through multiple changes of tempo and texture, riffling unpredictably through indie-rock austerity, orchestral lushness, pop perkiness and hallucinatory electronic studio concoctions, like the cascade of wavery, overlapping piano lines in “Connect.” Where “Father of the Bride” had a folky openness, “Only God Was Above Us” is crammed with ideas that gleefully collide.Ever analytical, Koenig mused that Vampire Weekend’s albums each reflected patron saints. He named Paul Simon for the band’s self-titled 2007 debut, Joe Strummer and Sublime for “Contra” from 2010, Leonard Cohen for “Modern Vampires of the City,” and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, along with Phish, for “Father of the Bride.” The new album, he said, may reflect a short-lived tour he didn’t get to see: the 1997 pairing of Rage Against the Machine and Wu-Tang Clan, which reached the cover of Rolling Stone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eric Clapton’s Love Letters to Pattie Boyd Go Up for Sale

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      Eric Clapton’s handwritten messages, being auctioned this week, shed light on how he wooed Pattie Boyd away from George Harrison and on the impassioned songs the affair inspired.One spring morning in 1970, the model Pattie Boyd was having breakfast at her ramshackle mansion in the English countryside when she received a letter marked “Urgent.”Inside the envelope was a short, lovesick note. “Dearest L,” the letter began, adding later, “It seems like an eternity since I last saw or spoke to you!” As Boyd read on, the note took on a desperate tone: “If there is still a feeling in your heart for me … you must let me know!”“Don’t telephone,” the emotional scribe added. “Send a letter … that is much safer.”The author signed off with a mysterious “E.”Boyd is selling a letter she received from Clapton in spring 1970 while she was married to Harrison.Christie’s Images Ltd.In a recent interview, Boyd recalled that she had assumed the letter was from a crazed fan and showed it to her husband, the Beatles guitarist George Harrison. Then she forgot about it — until a few hours later when the phone rang. It was Eric Clapton, the rock guitarist and one of Harrison’s friends.“Did you get my letter?” Clapton asked.More than 50 years after Clapton’s missive drew Boyd into one of rock music’s most mythic love triangles, the note is getting a moment in the spotlight. On Friday, Christie’s is auctioning over 110 items from Boyd’s archives, including the letter (with an estimated price of up to 15,000 pounds, or about $19,000), as well as photographs of Clapton and Harrison and handwritten song lyrics by both the rock greats.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yunchan Lim, Jan Lisiecki and Alexander Malofeev at Carnegie

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      Jan Lisiecki, 28, is the elder statesman alongside Alexander Malofeev and Yunchan Lim in a trio of recent recital debuts at the hall.At 28, Jan Lisiecki can certainly be called a young musician. But of the pianists making recital debuts at Carnegie Hall recently, he’s something of an elder statesman.Last month, Yunchan Lim, then still in his teens, confidently pressed through the challenges of Chopin’s études. And on Tuesday, Alexander Malofeev, 22, was an unruffled guide through the richness of Russian late Romanticism and its afterglow.Both Lim and Malofeev were appearing at Carnegie for the first time, but Lisiecki has been an occasional presence with orchestras there since 2016. While the main hall’s scale can be daunting for a solo recitalist, with almost 3,000 people watching, on March 13 he seemed calmly at home from the start.The second half of Lisiecki’s program was given over to Chopin’s 24 Preludes (Op. 28), while before intermission came an assortment of other short pieces in that genre: a kind of prelude made of preludes. This was a canny mixture of chestnuts and rarities. Lisiecki combined the easily recognizable likes of Bach’s Prelude in C (the opening of “The Well-Tempered Clavier”) and Rachmaninoff’s in C sharp minor (Op. 3, No. 2) with much less common selections from sets of preludes by Szymanowski, Messiaen and Gorecki.Lisiecki plays with gentle judiciousness, aristocratic reserve and a touch that tends shadowy without losing a core of clarity. He clearly relishes soft playing, with sensitive effects of distant bells and moonlit drizzles in Messiaen’s “La Colombe” and “Le Nombre Léger,” and a murmured sotto voce in Chopin’s Op. 28, No. 15.His recordings of Chopin’s études and nocturnes offer lovely, generally introverted, smoothed, even sleepy takes on those works. But in an interview when the nocturnes were released, Lisiecki said that the album’s slow tempos wouldn’t work in concert.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Took the Hard Path. The Music Kept Coming.

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      After a tumultuous childhood in an ultraconservative family, River Shook finally heard country music at 23. It prompted a long journey of self-discovery.River Shook warned their father: If the family left western New York for North Carolina, something awful would happen.Living at home at 19, Shook was the introverted middle child who had relocated to so many new towns, they’d given up on making friends. Their parents, Robert and Rita, had led rough and wild early lives, Robert playing lead guitar in lascivious bands and Rita escaping an abusive first marriage and descending into hard drugs. The couple met through church, married and vowed to shelter their kids — home-schooled and raised on classical and Christian music, with boys, booze and bad behaviors verboten. Whenever God told Robert to move, everyone obeyed.This, though, was different. At 9, Shook realized they were bisexual and began questioning the family faith. They hid both from their parents, living a Janus-like life of two faces for a decade. But Shook had found confidants at the Wegmans where they worked, friends who supplied secret mix CDs featuring the Gorillaz and Elliott Smith. They were interning at a local dance studio, teaching yoga to kids and unsteadily emerging from a miasma of childhood depression. And then, in 2005, the family headed South.“I went from 0 to 100, from having been kissed once to having sex to having a threesome the next night,” the singer and guitarist said during a series of video interviews in early February, grinning wryly from the porch of their rural North Carolina home. (Yes, they stayed.) “And then I married a guy I met on Myspace three weeks later and got pregnant two months later. Upending everything my parents held dear was an act of self-preservation, because their belief system taught me I could not be myself.”During the last 20 years, Shook, now 38, has slowly discovered who they are — a nonbinary, atheist, vegan single parent using incisive and honest country songs to unpack past baggage. The process has been arduous, even life-threatening. When their band, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, played 150 shows a year, they would drink until they blacked out almost every night. But in July 2019, following a Canadian bacchanalia, Shook accepted their own ultimatum: Sober up or die trying.That epiphany led to therapy, daily walks in the woods, a new name, and, ultimately, the Disarmers’ new album, “Revelations,” due March 29. A stirring country-rock record that two-steps between Waxahatchee’s incisive beauties and Tom Petty’s winking classics, “Revelations” is the work of a songwriter relishing newfound clarity and confidence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cola Boyy, Indie Singer and Disability Activist, Dies at 34

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      Cola Boyy, whose real name was Matthew Urango, sang and produced his own brand of disco music. Born with spina bifida, he had been a vocal advocate for people with disabilities.Cola Boyy, the California singer-songwriter who collaborated with MGMT and the Avalanches and advocated for people with disabilities, has died. He was 34.Cola Boyy, who was born Matthew Urango, died Sunday at his home in Oxnard, his mother, Lisa Urango, said. No cause was given.A self-described “disabled disco innovator,” Mr. Urango assembled diverse instruments to create a brimming mixture of funky rhythm and colorful sounds that accompanied his alluring voice, a striking balance of silk and chirp.Mr. Urango was born with spina bifida, kyphosis and scoliosis and had used a prosthetic leg since he was 2.As Cola Boyy, he released a debut 2021 album, “Prosthetic Boombox,” that garnered millions of streams on Spotify and other platforms and boasted lively and introspective tunes such as “Don’t Forget Your Neighborhood,” a collaboration with the indie pop group the Avalanches.He used his burgeoning platform as an artist to speak out for social causes, including those related to people with disabilities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aribert Reimann, Masterful German Opera Composer, Is Dead at 88

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      His works, which were radically individual, were among the most celebrated of the late 20th and early 21st century.Aribert Reimann, whose powerful operas based on works by Shakespeare, Kafka, Lorca and others made him one of the most significant opera composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, died on Wednesday in Berlin. He was 88.His publisher, Schott Music, announced the death.A prolific composer with widely performed works, particularly his operas and songs, Mr. Reimann (pronounced RYE-mahn) was revered for his ability to fuse complex and often challenging modern music with lyrical texts. His works were frequently devastating in their emotional impact, sounding like organic expressions of the human voice.“Like few other composers of his generation, Reimann knew how to tell stories in his operas which directly affected us humans living in the 21st century,” Dietmar Schwarz, the manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, said in a statement.Mr. Reimann enjoyed a close relationship with the opera house. Five of his stage works were performed there, most recently his ninth and final completed opera, “L’Invisible,” which was based on texts by the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and premiered in 2017.Another stage work, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was planned for 2025 but was unfinished.A performance of Mr. Reimann’s ninth and final opera, “L’Invisible,” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2017. Five of his works were performed at the theater.Lieberenz/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Philharmonic’s 2024-25 Season: What We Want to Hear

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      Gustavo Dudamel, who takes over as music and artistic director in 2026, is getting a head start with three weeks of concerts and more programs.Next season, the New York Philharmonic will be without a full-time maestro or a designate music director for the first time in decades.But Gustavo Dudamel, the superstar conductor who takes over as the ensemble’s music and artistic director in 2026, will help fill the gap, leading three weeks of concerts, the Philharmonic announced on Tuesday.Dudamel, who currently leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is steadily ramping up his commitments in New York. He is already helping to shape programming and tours. And next season he might begin to take part in auditions, though talks are still underway, said Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive. Dudamel will also lead the summer concert series in city parks.“This is how we’re going to introduce Gustavo to literally tens of thousands of New Yorkers across the boroughs,” Ginstling said. “When you look at the totality of that, it feels like we’re making huge strides toward his imminent arrival.”Ginstling described the coming 2024-25 season as one of “experimenting and exploring.” There will be five world premieres, including works by Nico Muhly, Jessie Montgomery and Kate Soper. The pianist Yuja Wang will serve as artist in residence, and the dancer Tiler Peck will organize a series of evening programs. The Philharmonic’s musicians will create a program focused on the orchestra’s legacy.Here are five highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics and editors for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Did Wagner Want His ‘Ring’ Cycle to Sound?

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      With a team of researchers and dedicated musicians, the conductor Kent Nagano is taking a historically informed performance approach to Wagner’s epic.What began as a flippantly offered pipe dream, on second thought sounded too good to resist.Kent Nagano was leading the period-instrument ensemble Concerto Köln in concert performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” in 2016 when one musician suggested he come back for more, and with new repertoire. Because Nagano was conducting the “Ring” at the time, he lightheartedly said, “How about Wagner?”They laughed at the idea of taking on Wagner’s four-opera, 15-hour epic, Nagano recalled in a recent interview. Not just playing it, but devoting years of research and practice to a historically informed performance of it. Then they realized that this was rich terrain; installments of the “Ring” had been given this treatment before, but they didn’t know of any complete cycle. Now, after years of study and partnerships across universities, orchestras and cities in Germany, Nagano and his collaborators are in the middle of presenting their findings.Nagano’s work on this “Ring” has included creating Wagner-Lesarten, or Wagner Readings, a research organization devoted to the project.Simon van Boxtel PhotographyAnd just in time: In 2026, it will be 150 years since Wagner premiered the full “Ring” at his festival in Bayreuth, Germany. Each year until then, Nagano and the Concerto Köln — with the addition of Dresdner Festspielorchester for “Die Walküre” — are touring installments of their historically informed “Ring” operas: last year, “Das Rheingold,” and now “Die Walküre.”Heard in the acoustically generous Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on March 16 as part of the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series, “Die Walküre” took on such clarity that no supertitles were necessary to understand the singers. And, yes, the score sounded different from a typical modern performance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More