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      Lucy Dacus on the Art of Frames (and Busting Out of Them)

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      The singer and songwriter chats about the movies (“Paris, Texas”), music (SZA) and books (“Healing Back Pain”) that shape her world as she releases her fourth LP.In the music video for “Ankles,” the first single from Lucy Dacus’s fourth studio album, the singer plays a pleasure-seeking Victorian-era damsel that has escaped from a painting to gallivant around Paris. Her foil is a stern museum guard trying to corral her back into her frame.Dacus came up with the idea as a way to reflect the push and pull between curiosity and restraint in the song. Also, she said, “The song is pretty horny, so it’s not like I was going to recreate what happens.”For Dacus, frames have become a recurring motif. She used one in a video for a song from her second album, “Historian,” when she was a rising indie singer-songwriter. And she poses in one on the album cover for her latest LP, “Forever Is a Feeling.”“Framing is such a huge part of art,” Dacus said. “What are you putting in the confines of the frame? What are you filling in time? What are you putting in front of people?”The shape of “Forever Is a Feeling” emerged when Dacus realized she was writing songs about love. (Then she wrote more of them.) It’s her first solo album since boygenius — the indie-rock supergroup she formed with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker — grew to an arena-size, Grammy-winning band. (Dacus recently revealed that Baker is the subject of one of those love songs.)In a phone interview before flying to Paris to perform, Dacus shared the cultural essentials that help fill her life. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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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      New Songs From Mumford & Sons, Maren Morris, Lucy Dacus and More

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      Hear tracks by Mumford & Sons, Mon Laferte, the Swell Season and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Maren Morris, ‘Carry Me Through’Equal parts self-help, Elton John and secular gospel, “Carry On” puts robust piano chords and a choir behind Maren Morris as she works on finding the will to heal herself. She’s taking full responsibility. “Yeah, I got friends around / Plenty of hands held out,” she sings. “But I’m still the one who has to choose to carry me through.” The music gives her ample reinforcement, and by the end she’s vowing, “I’ll get there.”Mumford & Sons, ‘Truth’Mumford & Sons get a strong infusion of Southern rock in “Truth” from the band’s new album, “Rushmere.” Over a bluesy, sinewy riff, Marcus Mumford declares, “I was born to believe the truth is all there is” and insists, “I refuse to offer myself up to men who lie.” The track intensifies — with percussion, guitars, handclaps and choral harmonies — as the singer’s desperation grows: “Don’t leave the liars in the honest places,” he pleads as it ends.Timbaland, ‘Azonto Bounce’Timbaland, the producer whose sounds and techniques transformed 1990s hip-hop, has suprise-released an album, “Timbo Progression,” that visits entirely unexpected territory: West African music, with a vintage sound. Azonto is a dance and music style from Ghana; Timbaland’s version, with its mid-tempo beat and modal horn lines, also hints at Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat. There’s little information with the album — Timbaland is credited as “programmer” — but the groove is undeniable.Pablo Alboran, ‘Clickbait’The Spanish pop songwriter Pablo Alboran usually deals in romance. But “Clickbait” confronts a different class of relationships: the parasocial ones online. “Many say they know me, but they have no idea who I am,” he complains in Spanish, with an Auto-Tuned edge. In Spanglish, he continues, “Flash flash, mucho clickbait, mucho fake.” It’s a choppy track that jump-cuts between a minor-chorded ballad and pounding drums, then unites them. Alboran sings about people with “poison in their hearts,” and he’s willing to break character to fight back.Tortoise, ‘Oganesson’Since its formation in 1990, the Chicago instrumental band Tortoise has been blending jazz, rock, Minimalism, electronics and improvisation. Its first new track since 2016 is “Oganesson,” named for a synthetic, very short-lived element with atomic number 118. It’s an off-kilter, 7/4 funk tune with a spy-movie ambience: laconic guitar chords, plinks of distorted vibraphone and a hopscotching bass line. Perhaps the stretch of noise at the end represents atomic decay.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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      Under Trump, Kennedy Center’s Classical Offerings Will (Mostly) Go On

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      The Kennedy Center’s flagship opera company and symphony orchestra announced Thursday that they plan to present robust and fairly typical programs next season, the first full season since President Trump took over the institution.But one prominent work was missing from the lineup: Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s “Fellow Travelers,” an opera set in the 1950s about two men working for the government who become lovers. The work was withdrawn by its creators because of concerns about Mr. Trump’s takeover, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.Washington National Opera said the 2025-26 season would include classics like Verdi’s “Aida” and less commonly heard works like “Treemonisha,” an opera by the ragtime composer Scott Joplin. The National Symphony Orchestra is planning warhorses by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and world premieres by Carlos Simon, the Kennedy Center’s composer in residence; Valerie Coleman; and others.In a sign of the political sensitivities at the Kennedy Center, the leaders of the opera and the symphony declined to be interviewed about the new season.The center has been in flux since Mr. Trump purged its previously bipartisan board of Biden appointees and had himself elected chairman. The president’s actions have prompted an outcry, leading some artists to cancel engagements there in protest. The musical “Hamilton” scrapped a planned tour there next year.The classical field, in which seasons are planned years in advance, has largely been unaffected. But the creators of “Fellow Travelers,” an opera based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon, confirmed this week that they were pulling the work, which was supposed to have its Washington premiere next year.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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      Selena’s Killer Is Denied Parole 30 Years After Murder

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      The Tejano music icon was fatally shot by the founder of her fan club, who has been serving a life sentence in Texas. On Thursday, a panel denied her first attempt at parole.A panel in Texas on Thursday denied parole for the woman who killed Selena, a 23-year-old trailblazing Mexican American singer who was making it big in the popular music scene. The decision came a few days shy of the 30th anniversary of the killing, which shocked her fans and spurred a cultlike following.Yolanda Saldívar, the woman who fatally shot her, was the founder of Selena’s fan club; she killed Selena after a confrontation in a motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March 31, 1995. A jury convicted Ms. Saldívar of first-degree murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.Ms. Saldívar’s case had gone into the review process approximately six months before she was to first become eligible for parole this Sunday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole said in a statement. She won’t be eligible for parole for five more years.“After a thorough consideration of all available information, which included any confidential interviews conducted, it was the parole panel’s determination to deny parole to Yolanda Saldivar and set her next parole review for March 2030,” the statement said.The panel cited the violent nature of the killing as the reason for its denial.“The record indicates that the instant offense has elements of brutality, violence, assaultive behavior or conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability indicating a conscious disregard for the lives, safety, or property of others, such that the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety,” the statement said.When she was killed, Selena had just come off a Grammy Award win. She was on the verge of making a breakthrough that could have brought her songs about heartbreak and new love to wider Spanish- and English-speaking audiences.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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      Scowl Made Hardcore Purists Angry. Now the Band Is Doubling Down.

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      The punk band fronted by Kat Moss wound its way from a local scene to national attention. Its second album, “Are We All Angels,” unpacks the pain of the journey.Last fall, on the second-floor stage of a cramped tavern called Neck of the Woods in San Francisco, Kat Moss was throwing elbows, shoving men twice her size into a packed circle pit and screaming into a microphone.Moss, the frontwoman for the Bay Area hardcore band Scowl, held her own. In the tight-knit circle of Northern California punks, this sweating, pulsing, tattoo-covered cluster of bodies were her people. Just before midnight, the crowd streamed out of the swampy bar into the cold air, bruised and smiling. In this crowd, stage diving, moshing and the occasional foot to the face all come from a place of love.But as Scowl’s star has risen from a group of underdogs playing house shows across the West Coast to a broader national audience, Moss and her four bandmates have been engaged in a different kind of fight — one with the gatekeepers who believe the band isn’t hardcore enough.The band was blasted on message boards and social media in 2023, accused of “selling out” when it struck a brand deal with a corporate sponsor. (Many hardcore contemporaries have done similar ones.) The group later took heat for putting out what some saw as pop sensibility masquerading as punk. Scenesters chafed when megastars like Post Malone and Hayley Williams of Paramore said they were fans of the group. And some of the most aggressive purists didn’t appreciate Moss’s proclivity for posting beauty tutorials on her personal social media channels. (Her mop of neon lime hair is hard to miss in a crowd.)Scowl isn’t shying away from the conflict. Instead, its members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. With Scowl’s second album, “Are We All Angels” out April 4, the group is moving from the stalwart hardcore label Flatspot Records to Dead Oceans — home to Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. It has enlisted Will Yip, a producer known for broadening the sound of punk bands. And it has leaned more into a slower, heavier sound with grungy riffs and catchier choruses.Scowl’s members want to push the limits of their sound and what they feel hardcore music can be. Mariano Regidor/Redferns, 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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      Herb Greene, Who Photographed the Grateful Dead and Other 1960s Rock Acts, Dies at 82

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      Herb Greene, whose evocative portraits of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and others helped define the rock scene that emerged in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, died on March 3 at his home in Maynard, Mass. He was 82.His wife, Ilze Greene, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Mr. Greene pursued music portraiture in his spare time while working for about a dozen years in the 1960s and ’70s, as a fashion photographer for the Joseph Magnin department store and the men’s wear retailer Cable Car Clothiers.Instead of photographing concerts, which did not interest him, he invited bands and musicians to various studios in San Francisco, including one he had on Front Street, and to his apartment, where some of them stood in front of a dining room wall filled with hieroglyphics drawn by a roommate with knowledge of Egyptology.His pictures of the Dead, a favorite subject, include Jerry Garcia, the band’s leader, in a vest and tie, playing a banjo while seated on a stool, with a wall-sized American flag behind him; Ron McKernan, the Dead’s organist, known as Pigpen, striking a threatening pose in front of Mr. Garcia; and the band on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, in the district known as a center of the hippie counterculture.Mr. Greene’s many pictures of the Grateful Dead, a favorite subject, include a well-known one of Jerry Garcia against a wall-sized American flag.Herb Greene, via Greene familyHe also photographed Ron McKernan, the Dead’s organist, known as Pigpen.Herb Greene, via Greene familyMr. Greene photographed the Grateful Dead (from left, Mr. Garcia, Mr. McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann) on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, in the district known as a center of the counterculture.Herb Greene, via Greene familyWe 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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      Eddie Adcock, Musician Who Pushed Bluegrass Forward, Dies at 86

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      A master improviser on banjo, he understood the genre’s roots but was also in the forefront of the later “newgrass” movement.Eddie Adcock, a virtuoso banjo and guitar player who served as a bridge between the formative early years of bluegrass and the innovative “newgrass” movement of the 1970s and beyond, died on March 19 in Lebanon, Tenn. He was 86.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Dan Hays, a former executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association, who said Mr. Adcock had a number of chronic health problems.Mr. Adcock brought his improvisatory fretwork to musical settings ranging from the first-generation traditionalism of Bill Monroe to the newgrass, or “new acoustic,” sounds fashioned by forerunners of modern bluegrass like the Country Gentlemen and II Generation.Mr. Adcock was best known for his tenure in the 1960s with the Country Gentlemen, a group based in Arlington, Va., that, through advances in style and repertoire, all but redefined bluegrass music. Employing a traditional string-band format, they broadened the genre’s appeal with their impromptu arrangements of folk and pop songs and material written by artists, like Hedy West and Gordon Lightfoot, whose work fell outside the bounds of bluegrass.Mr. Adcock’s contributions were consistently among the quartet’s most daring, notably his dazzling string-bending and his use of the thumb-style guitar technique of Merle Travis to create a unique jazz- and blues-inflected approach to playing the banjo.“I released all my insides, all my creativity, into the band,” Mr. Adcock said of his heady early years with the Country Gentlemen in a 2016 interview with Scottsville Monthly, the magazine of his hometown, Scottsville, Va. “I was ready to say something of my own, and that’s where I made my mark.”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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      Bon Iver Is Happy (and Sexy) Now. It Took a Lot of Work.

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      What you notice right away on “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s fifth studio album and first since 2019, is its directness, its brightness and, in some places, its lust. Justin Vernon — the band’s frontman and creative engine — is singing more directly than ever before, and the production captures hope, thrills and a kind of unselfconscious exultation.These have not typically been hallmarks of Bon Iver albums, known as elegant but abstract statements of emotional claustrophobia and fantastical catharsis. They have made Vernon, 43, a much-lauded folk mystic, and also an in-demand collaborator for in-the-know superstars — including Kanye West (now Ye), Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Zach Bryan.But those same qualities have also pigeonholed Vernon and his music as vessels for pain and anxiety — his own and, as it turned out, a lot of other people’s as well.Eventually, the weight of that burden became overwhelming. “I think there was a good 10 years where it felt like somebody had a boot on my chest from before I woke up until after I fell asleep,” Vernon told Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli in a recent interview on Popcast, The New York Times’s music podcast.During the pandemic, Vernon began reckoning with the fact that Bon Iver — as acclaimed, popular and crucial to his social ties as it had become — might have been keeping him down as a person.So he made some changes: He wound down Bon Iver as a touring outfit; he quit smoking cigarettes (after a five-day rehab); and he began spending time away from his Wisconsin home, in Los Angeles, with no agenda other than to decompress.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