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      Review: Dalia Stasevska Returns to the New York Philharmonic

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      Dalia Stasevska returned to the orchestra’s podium with a world premiere and subtly linked works by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.The opening of the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Friday took a step toward solving one problem while exposing another.Wang Lu’s “Surge,” given its world premiere at the top of the show, is the product of an initiative by the League of American Orchestras to commission new works from six composers — all women — that will be guaranteed performances from ensembles across the country.So far, so good. Too often, premieres have short rehearsal periods; then, unless future performances are lined up, or unless soloists champion concertos written for them, the music can easily disappear. The League’s project at least gives contemporary work a fighting chance at longevity.I hope, however, that the other premieres to come out of this initiative don’t have the running time of “Surge.” At a mere six minutes, it was shorter than all but one movement in the classics that followed at David Geffen Hall on Friday: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Sibelius’s Second Symphony.Larger commissions are certainly possible. A week ago, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Catamorphosis” took up the first 20 minutes of the Philharmonic’s program; last season in Los Angeles, an entire evening was given over to Thomas Adès’s 100-minute “Dante.” Imagine the League’s group of orchestras nurturing music on the scale of symphony. Then they might tackle what is perhaps the problem of world premieres: that, as brief curtain-raisers unrelated to the rest of a concert, they tend to just read as perfunctory exercises in box-ticking.That said, Wang’s piece has the elements of an enormous score skillfully accordioned into the shape of a much smaller one. From the flourish of its first measure, “Surge” is a restless succession of swinging gestures, martial flashes and exercises in disparate, assertive voices coming in and out of focus, then occasionally finding common ground in a tutti mass. It all had the feel of a TikTok binge: an endless and entrancing stream of much of the same in short, slightly different bursts. The music ended before it became exhausting — but, like TikTok, left you wanting more.At the podium was Dalia Stasevska, in her second appearance with the Philharmonic. Her debut last season proved her bona fides in contemporary music, with a whirlwind trio of works by Missy Mazzoli, Anthony Davis and John Adams. Friday’s premiere was equally impressive; Stasevska led the Wang with verve, commitment and, above all, clarity (despite distractingly wide-armed conducting mannerisms that could qualify as a cardio workout).The Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, a longtime outspoken critic of Russia, performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in a gown design to resemble the Ukrainian flag.Chris LeeThe rest of the program was another kind of test: standard repertory. For the Tchaikovsky, she was joined by the Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, in characteristically elegant and modestly electrifying form, with a focused, penetrating sound. In this piece, the orchestra mostly plays a supporting role to the singingly Romantic solo part. But ensemble moments were nevertheless distinct; the introduction alone seemed to inhale and exhale its phrases, and the cellos’ freely beating fifths in the finale set the tone for the rubato and joyously dancing liveliness that Batiashvili has previously brought to folk-inflected music by the likes of Szymanowski.It was the kind of performance that, without trying to, had audience members roaring with applause after the first movement, then, at the end, immediately rising for a standing ovation — one of the most passionate I’ve heard at Geffen Hall this season. They had a similar response to the Sibelius, which here was anxiously brisk and occasionally furious.The symphony can come off as an exercise in motivic obsession on the level of Beethoven’s Fifth, and even has that work’s style of a soaringly ecstatic finale. But Stasevska’s heavily opinionated interpretation was unusual from the start; the slurred tenuto phrases of the strings, rather than gentle waves approaching a shore, were a ride along a bumpy road. With a liberal treatment of tempo markings, passages were pushed and pulled, some relished and others simply rushed. The last movement was an uncertain triumph, with a suggestion of continuing struggle, until Stasevska savored the radiance of the closing measures’ chords.Throughout, it was difficult to avoid seeing this idiosyncratic account as a personal one. Stasevska lives in Finland but was born in Ukraine, which she has been fervently supporting — through fund-raising, through driving trucks packed with supplies across its border — since Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago. Batiashvili, too, has long been outspoken against Russia and the classical musicians who have benefited from its leadership, especially the conductor Valery Gergiev. On Friday, she performed wearing a gown in the stark blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was written in the glory days of Imperial Russia — an empire that included Finland as a grand duchy subjected, by the time Sibelius’s Second Symphony premiered in 1902, to severe policies of Russification. Sibelius denied as much, but listeners heard in this work an outcry for national pride and independence. To them, the music could never be met with a neutral response. And it’s just as impossible to have one to Stasevska, neither to her life nor to her passionately argued performance.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Sunday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      The Beatbox House to Travel Abroad for the State Dept. 

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      The trip will mark the first time that the government officially recognizes the genre in its American Music Abroad program.Members of the Beatbox House, a group of five vocal percussive artists from Brooklyn, will follow in the footsteps of American music legends Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong when they travel abroad later this month to serve as cultural ambassadors for the United States.Chris Celiz, Gene Shinozaki, Amit Bhowmick, Kenny Urban, and Neil Meadows (better known as NaPoM), all beatboxing champions, will visit Indonesia and Singapore with the State Department for three weeks of beatbox competitions, workshops and collaborations with local musicians as part of American Music Abroad, an outreach program sponsored by the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.The Beatbox House, a group that has tens of thousands of fans, creates drum and instrument sounds with accented speech, distorted singing and lip oscillations. The music covers many genres, including hip-hop, EDM, grime, trap and rock. The group is also known for its popular cover of the Rednex song “Cotton Eye Joe.”Members of the Beatbox House have won competitions individually, in pairs and as a group, and they are active in music education efforts around New York City. In the group’s workshops, students are introduced to basic beatbox sounds, as well as to the endless possibilities that the human voice offers for musical expression. Now, the group has the chance to share the same lessons abroad.Known for holding inclusive, community-oriented competitions — known as battles — around the city, the Beatbox House has an itinerary that will include visits to plenty of community centers abroad. Alison Bassi, a cultural affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Singapore, hopes that the locations beyond bars and concert halls will make the music “accessible to lots of different people and a slightly different audience,” not just beatbox devotees.Dancers recently performed in a collaboration with members of the Beatbox House at the Guggenheim Museum.Jordan Macy for The New York TimesOriginally one of the five pillars of hip-hop, beatbox made its way to Europe in the late 1980s by way of American soldiers. Since then, the appetite for the art form in Europe and Asia has grown. The international beatbox community now numbers in the millions, with Asia representing many of the recent gains in support and participation. For the State Department, sending the Beatbox House musicians abroad — the first time it will recognize the musical genre in the cultural program — presents an opportunity to share an art form that is both specifically American and quite popular overseas.“We depend upon our American artists to join in our country’s diplomacy,” Lee Satterfield, the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, wrote in an email. In recent years, this mission has led American Music Abroad to partner with fewer chart-topping artists and more mission-driven performers like the Beatbox House, a shift that reflects what Mr. Satterfield said was the department’s goal to “expand the reach of music diplomacy.”Of course, security issues, on a smaller and more intimate scale, might crop up in Indonesia, where the group is already popular. “They love us out there,” Mr. Shinozaki said. Last time some of its members performed in the country, he said, they had to be escorted out of the venue.Mr. Shinozaki, Mr. Celiz and Mr. Bhowmick are all first-generation Americans whose families came from Japan, the Philippines and Bangladesh, respectively. For the five band members, performing an American style of music, in a diverse group, sums up the spirit of hip-hop, the spirit of democracy and the best of what this country has to offer.“My parents wanted the American dream,” Mr. Celiz said. “I feel like I’m getting to live it. But we’re also redefining what that means. This is our version of it.”Mike Quinlan, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, wrote in an email that the Beatbox House was the Embassy’s “top choice” for the visiting artists program.“They have a good amount of people who are very excited about them being here,” Mr. Quinlan said, adding that “the Beatbox House is a living example” of the diversity of the United States, and of its music.Mr. Shinozaki, left, and Chris Celiz in their show, “The Missing Element.”Jordan Macy for The New York TimesSome Beatbox House members have experience in the region already, like Mr. Shinozaki in Indonesia. And four years ago, Mr. Bhowmick, Mr. Meadows and Mr. Shinozaki performed in Bangladesh, enjoying a warm reception, especially Mr. Bhowmick.“They look up to me,” he said of his fans in Bangladesh. “I’m a Bengali kid who changed his parents’ minds and broke the conventional path. So when we went there, the crowd was just amazing.” The trip with American Music Abroad, he said, “is going to be very similar in that way, if not even crazier.”Ms. Bassi pointed out that the biggest beatbox battle in Singapore is typically held in December. But when the organizers of the competition learned that the members of the Beatbox House would be in the country in February, they delayed the competition until then “to bring a bigger audience,” she said.After visiting Singapore, the group will continue its tour in the Philippines and Japan, doing the same community building, on their own time, that they are doing with the government program, simply because it matters to them. This will be the first trip to Asia that will involve all five members of the group, so they want to make it last as long as possible.Mr. Urban summed up the mood on behalf of the group, saying he was “just excited to be with my squad” and to “tour the world.”In addition to performing, the Beatbox House is dedicated to community outreach. Jordan Macy for The New York Times More

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      David Crosby, Folk-Rock Voice of the 1960s, Dies at 81

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      He was an original member of the Byrds and a founder of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But he was almost as well known for his troubled personal life as for his music.David Crosby, the outspoken and often troubled singer, songwriter and guitarist who helped create two of the most influential and beloved American bands of the classic-rock era of the 1960s and ’70s, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, has died. He was 81.Patricia Dance, a sister of Mr. Crosby’s wife, Jan Dance, said in a text message on Thursday evening that Mr. Crosby died “last night.” She provided no other details.Mr. Crosby was inducted twice into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, as a founding member of the Byrds and as a founder of CSN&Y. He brought jazz influences to both groups, in the process broadening the possibilities of vocally driven folk-rock. And his reach extended to later generations: His alternate tunings became an inspiration for the innovative “freak folk” movement of the early 21st century while influencing scores of other musicians eager to give acoustic music a progressive spin.If Mr. Crosby’s music expanded boundaries, his persona fixed him in a specific era — and proudly so. In 1968, he wrote “Triad,” an ode to free love, recorded in distinct versions by the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. His song “Almost Cut My Hair,” which he recorded with CSN&Y for their acclaimed 1970 album, “Déjà Vu,” was a virtual loyalty oath to the counterculture.Mr. Crosby’s image as the twinkle-eyed stoner and sardonic hedonist of the cosmic age was said to have been a model for the obstinate free spirit played by Dennis Hopper in the 1969 movie “Easy Rider.”His impish indulgences turned potentially lethal many times. He became nearly as well known for his drug offenses, weapons charges and prison stints as for his music. By the mid-1970s, he was addicted to both cocaine and heroin.“You don’t sit down and say, ‘Gee, I think I’ll become a junkie,’” Mr. Crosby told People magazine in 1990. “When I started out doing drugs, it was marijuana and psychedelics, and it was fun. It was the ’60s, and we thought we were expanding our consciousnesses.”But later, he continued, “drugs became more for blurring pain.” He added: “You don’t realize you’re getting as strung out as you are. And I had the money to get more and more addicted.”Mr. Crosby’s drug abuse may have exacerbated his medical problems, including a long battle with hepatitis C, which necessitated a liver transplant in 1994. He also suffered from type 2 diabetes and, in 2014, had to cancel a tour to endure a cardiac catheterization and angiogram.Despite his health issues, his voice remained robust enough in those years for him to tour. And in his best moments while performing with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, he could recreate some of the most famous harmonies of the rock era. His voice remained strong as well when touring with his solo band in later years.A Prominent LineageDavid Van Cortlandt Crosby was born on Aug. 14, 1941, in Los Angeles into families with deep roots in American history dating back to Dutch rule in New York in the 17th century. His mother, who was born Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead, descended from the prominent Van Cortlandt family. His father, Floyd Crosby, an Academy Award-winning cinematographer whose credits included the classic western “High Noon,” was a member of the Van Rensselaer clan.David attended Crane Country Day School in Montecito, Calif., where he starred in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “H.M.S. Pinafore” and other musical productions, but he flunked out. He completed his high school studies by correspondence at the Cate School in nearby Carpinteria. He studied drama at Santa Barbara City College, but he dropped out before graduating to pursue a music career.He was 16 when he received his first guitar, from his older brother, Ethan, who had begun playing years earlier. David started out, like so many others in the early ’60s, performing folk music.“I would learn two chords and go back and forth between them,” Mr. Crosby told the British music magazine Mojo. “What took it to the next level was, my brother started listening to 1950s jazz: Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, people like that. Listening to jazz really widens your world.”Mr. Crosby also absorbed the music of the Everly Brothers, which taught him how to layer harmonies into diaphanous patterns. He first performed with his brother, but he soon went solo and drifted through coffee houses around the country until landing in New York, in the epicenter of the 1960s folk movement, Greenwich Village. In 1963, he cut his first demos, produced by Jim Dickson, who would later manage the Byrds.Mr. Crosby, front row left, as a member of the folk group Les Baxter’s Balladeers in the early 1960s. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Crosby, who briefly played with the folk group Les Baxter’s Balladeers in Los Angeles, got to know Jim McGuinn (who later changed his name to Roger) and Gene Clark while they were performing as a duo at the Troubadour. He soon began adding his harmonies to theirs onstage, fitting in so smoothly that they became a trio, known as the Jet Set.Mr. Crosby brought in Mr. Dickson to become the group’s manager. Mr. Dickson encouraged them to advance the new sound they had already been exploring, which combined their earlier folk influences with the electrified sound of the British Invasion bands, particularly the Beatles. To that end the band added a drummer, the inexperienced but handsome Michael Clarke, and Mr. Crosby took up the electric guitar. Together, the revolutionary style they honed became known as folk-rock.That hybrid found its first recorded expression after Mr. Dickson acquired an acetate of a new Bob Dylan song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in August 1964. The band’s own demo of the piece, with the new recruit Chris Hillman on bass, helped land them a contract with Columbia Records that November. Two weeks later, the Jet Set changed its name to the Byrds.Writing Songs, and HitsColumbia, however, felt that the group hadn’t yet jelled musically, so only Mr. McGuinn was allowed to play an instrument on the single, which came out in April 1965, with studio musicians accompanying him. Mr. Crosby and Mr. Clark did provide impeccable harmonies on the song, which helped it reach No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. The song was the title track of their debut album, released in June 1965, and the full band played on the rest of the tracks.The Byrds performed at Yankee Stadium in 1966 on an all-star bill that also included Stevie Wonder, the Beach Boys and others. From left: Mike Clarke (partly hidden), Chris Hillman, Mr. Crosby and Roger (then known as Jim) McGuinn.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Crosby didn’t contribute compositions to the Byrds’ first two albums. But on their third, “Fifth Dimension” (1966), he and Mr. Hillman helped fill a writing void left by the departure of the band’s most prolific songwriter, Mr. Clark. Mr. Crosby contributed to the composition of several songs on the album and wrote one himself, “What’s Happening?!?!” Its lyric introduced a Crosbyesque motif: posing questions that had no answer. More famously, Mr. Crosby wrote the band’s smash hit “Eight Miles High” with Mr. McGuinn and Mr. Clark.For the Byrds’ next album, “Younger Than Yesterday,” Mr. Crosby contributed “Everybody’s Been Burned,” which idealized the key strategy of his emerging style: to contrast a dreamy melody with dazed lyrics.A more daring number helped seal Mr. Crosby’s fate with the band. He had written “Triad” for the fifth Byrds album, and the band recorded it. But the other members were reluctant to release it, preferring instead “Goin’ Back,” written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Mr. Crosby vigorously argued against using outside writers for a band that already had three, and tension in the band grew. There was anger, too, over political speeches he had made between songs when the band played the Monterey Pop Festival the summer before. All of it led to his firing.Mr. McGuinn and Mr. Hillman delivered the crushing news. They “said I was impossible to work with, and I wasn’t very good anyway, and they’d do better without me,” Mr. Crosby told the British music magazine Uncut. “It hurt like hell. I didn’t try to reason with them. I just said, ‘It’s a shameful waste. … Goodbye.’”By this time Mr. Crosby had already started casually jamming with Mr. Stills, the guitarist and singer whose group Buffalo Springfield had recently disbanded. Mr. Crosby wrote his first song with Mr. Stills (along with Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane) while sailing on a 74-foot boat he had acquired a year earlier. The song, “Wooden Ships,” also recorded by the Airplane, tested out the vocal blend that would become Crosby, Stills & Nash’s signature.Mr. Crosby and Mr. Stills connected with Mr. Nash in July 1968 at a party at Joni Mitchell’s house in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles. Mr. Nash was eager to leave his slick British pop act, the Hollies, to join the hot folk-rock scene. The three began meeting on their own to perfect their sound, and when Ahmet Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records, heard their elegant three-way vocal braiding, he signed them to his label.A Grammy, Then a DeathThe group’s debut album, titled simply “Crosby, Stills & Nash,” was released in May 1969 and shot into the Top 10. It earned them a Grammy as best new artist. Besides “Wooden Ships,” the album included two other songs by Mr. Crosby, the shimmering “Guinevere” and the elegiac “Long Time Gone,” which he wrote after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.From left, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Mr. Crosby in a photo taken at the shoot for the cover of the album “Crosby, Stills & Nash,” their first as a group. Henry DiltzThat same year, his longtime girlfriend, Christine Hinton, was killed in a car accident while running a routine errand. Mr. Crosby later saw this as the tipping point that sent him into depression and serious drug use.“I was unable to handle it,” he told People magazine. “I was very much in love with her and she just never came back. That was when I got more into hard drugs.”His increasing recreational drug use made it harder for him to create music, he said, but he nevertheless managed to write two classic songs for the band’s follow-up album, “Déjà Vu,” released in 1970, which officially expanded the group’s lineup to include Neil Young: “Almost Cut My Hair” and the title track, a rhythmically daring number with complex harmonies.Fueled by drugs and egos, the group quickly began to fracture. Over the next year, all four members released solo albums. Mr. Crosby’s, “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” released in 1971, sold well, but it was the least well received in its day. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice called it a “disgraceful performance.” Mr. Crosby would not record another solo album for 18 years. But in later years it received a critical overhaul; in his 1994 book, “All Time Top 1,000 Albums,” Colin Larkin called it “miraculous.”Starting in 1972, Mr. Crosby released a series of successful albums with Mr. Nash, his closest ally in the band. All three of their first joint albums went gold, buoyed by Mr. Nash’s more commercial tunes.In 1973, Mr. Crosby reunited with the four other original Byrds for one album, but it was poorly received. For much of the ’70s, he also worked as a session singer, backing up star friends like Jackson Browne and James Taylor. In the ’80s and ’90s, he did similar work with Phil Collins.Mr. Crosby, Mr. Stills and Mr. Nash, and sometimes Mr. Young, reunited from time to time. But by the 1980s Mr. Crosby was increasingly running afoul of the law.Mr. Crosby was arrested by Dallas police in April 1982 and charged with drug and gun possession. He spent nine months in prison.Bureau of Prisons/Getty ImagesHe spent nine months in a Texas prison in 1982 on drug and weapons charges. In 1985, he was arrested on charges of drunken driving, hit and run, and possession of a concealed pistol and imprisoned for a year. By his account he quit hard drugs in 1986. But in March 2004, he was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, as well as illegal possession of a hunting knife, ammunition and marijuana. He pleaded guilty and got off with a fine.Mr. Crosby detailed his travails in two harrowing autobiographies, “Long Time Gone” (1988) and “Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It” (2006), both written with Carl Gottlieb.Surging Late in LifeHe earned less fraught tabloid headlines in 2000, when he was revealed to be the biological father, via sperm donation, of the two children of the singer Melissa Etheridge and her partner at the time, Julie Cypher.Mr. Crosby had first become a father in 1962, with Celia Crawford Ferguson, but as young parents they put their son up for adoption. He had three other children: Erika, by his former girlfriend Jackie Gutherie; Donovan, by another partner, Debbie Donovan; and Django, with Ms. Dance, his wife of 35 years. His brother killed himself in the late 1990s. His survivors include his wife and four children.In 1997, Mr. Crosby reunited with the son he had put up for adoption, James Raymond, who had grown up to become an accomplished pianist. With the session guitarist Jeff Pevar, they formed a jazz-rock band, which they cheekily called CPR.Mr. Crosby in concert in Los Angeles in 2012. Two years later he released his first solo album in 21 years, ushering in one of the most prolific periods in his career.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersIn 2014, Mr. Crosby released his first solo album in 21 years, “Croz,” which debuted in the Billboard Top 40. It ushered in one of the most prolific periods in his career, in which he released five solo albums, most recently “For Free” in 2021.Mr. Crosby told The Orange County Register in 2019 that his late-in-life resurgence was sparked by his realization that “at this stage, you don’t know if you’ve got two weeks or 10 years,” adding, “Really what matters is what you do with whatever time you have.”Mr. Crosby announced in 2022 that although he planned to continue making records, he would no longer tour. “I’m too old to do it anymore,” he said. “I don’t have the stamina; I don’t have the strength.” (He recently said that he had reconsidered.)In 2019 he was the subject of an uncommonly frank documentary, “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” directed by A.J. Eaton and produced by Cameron Crowe. In the film, the famously cantankerous Mr. Crosby talks about how he had alienated nearly all of his old musical associates, even his longtime ally Mr. Nash. “All the guys I made music with won’t even talk to me,” he said. “I don’t know quite how to undo it.”Adapting a more appreciative tone, Mr. Crosby looked back at his life with wonder in his second memoir. “I was tremendously lucky, surviving injury, illness and stupidity,” he wrote. “As for the music, I was blessed early and often, from the Byrds to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, singing with Graham, meeting my son and creating CPR” and experiencing “the wonderful, exploratory forward motion of new music.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      David Crosby’s 15 Essential Songs

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      The singer and songwriter, who died this week, created music that helped define an era and stretched across generations. Listen to six decades of tracks that tell the story of his career.A streak of otherworldliness ran all the way through David Crosby’s long, complicated life in music. It was in his voice, a reedy, quavering high tenor that could sound like he was pondering every line he sang. He was also happy to dissolve that voice, and the ego it implied, into shared vocal harmonies: with the Byrds, with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young) and with his 21st-century group, the Lighthouse Band.There was otherworldliness, too, in the hovering harmonies he loved: the hypnotic modal patterns he picked on guitar and the ambiguous jazz chords that could lead in multiple directions. While Crosby, who died this week at 81, sometimes touched down in topical songwriting — a role he described as being a “town crier” — more often his lyrics were full of what-ifs and reflections on time, consciousness and eternity.In the 1960s, Crosby was a prime mover in the Los Angeles music scene that spun together folk, rock, country and psychedelia. He was a founding member and a secondary but innovative songwriter in the Byrds. He was an integral part of what became the Laurel Canyon coterie of songwriters in Los Angeles, and he also forged connections to psychedelic San Francisco.Crosby’s personal life was calamitous enough in the 1970s and 1980s — cocaine and heroin addiction, prison time, medical crises, financial ruin — for him to chronicle it in two older-but-wiser autobiographies: “Long Time Gone” and “Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It.” Throughout his career, close musical collaborations gave way to harsh acrimony.But his music told different stories. Shaped by the upheavals of the 1960s, his songs held crosscurrents of freedom and disorientation, of seeking and disillusionment, of yearning and alienation and, later, of seasoned reflection. In 2014, at 72, he restarted what turned out to be a prolific solo career with “Croz,” the first of five studio albums he released in the next seven years; there were live recordings, too. His voice, amazingly enough, held up for his final creative surge. It sounded gentle and selfless, humbled and purified by time.Here, in chronological order, are 15 songs spanning David Crosby’s six-decade career.The Byrds, ‘I See You’ (1966)Is it a love song or a rush of hallucinations? Written by Crosby and Jim McGuinn (who would later rename himself Roger), “I See You” shows their shared interest in Indian music and John Coltrane’s jazz. They sing about “Warm sliding sun through the cave of your hair” over a galloping backbeat, with early hallmarks of Crosby’s songwriting: a modal drone in the verses, a meter shift to change things up.The Byrds, ‘Everybody’s Been Burned’ (1967)Crosby sings with bittersweet patience about the pain of love gone wrong, as drums tick along and guitars entwine. But there’s a twist; he’s actually talking himself into taking another chance.The Byrds, ‘Mind Gardens’ (1967)An artifact of psychedelia’s experimental heyday, “Mind Gardens” is a parable about protection and openness, with an Indian-tinged vocal line rising above a multitracked, droney web of guitar picking: acoustic and electric, picked and sustained, running forward and backward and completely reveling in disorientation.The Byrds, ‘Triad’ (1968)In one of the disputes that led to Crosby leaving the Byrds, the band recorded his taboo-testing song about a ménage a trois — “Why can’t we go on as three?” it asked — but refused to include it on “The Notorious Byrd Brothers,” an album that marked the Byrds’ turn toward country-rock. The song would emerge anyway: first with the Jefferson Airplane, later on “4 Way Street” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.Crosby, Stills & Nash, ‘Long Time Gone’ (1969)Written after the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, “Long Time Gone” seethes with bitter frustration, from its ominous organ chords to Stephen Stills’s gnarled guitar fills. There’s open desperation in Crosby’s voice as he exhorts, “Speak out against the madness/You’ve got to speak your mind if you dare.”Crosby, Stills & Nash, ‘Wooden Ships’ (1969)Crosby had a lifelong fondness for boats. Writing with Paul Kantner (of Jefferson Airplane) and Stills, in “Wooden Ships” he offered a grim but hopeful post-apocalyptic scenario. Survivors from opposite sides of a war, who don’t even know “who won,” share their meager supplies, deciding they can be “free and easy” on the water.Crosby, Stills & Nash, ‘Guinnevere’ (1969)“Guinnevere” was Crosby’s supreme enigma. The lyrics compare an unnamed “milady” to the adored but absent Guinnevere, who “drew pentagrams” on the wall and “had green eyes like yours.” Crosby, Stills and Graham Nash harmonize over two electric guitars picking modal chords, hinting at fleeting syncopations and suddenly declaring, “She shall be free.”Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ (1970)Boomers can remember when the length of a man’s hair signified a political allegiance. While Stills and Neil Young set up a lead-guitar duel behind him, Crosby sings with his most intense near-rasp, feeling paranoia — “like lookin’ at my mirror and seeing a police car” — but deciding he was “letting my freak flag fly” anyway.Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, ‘Déjà Vu’ (1970)“Don’t you wonder what’s going on down under you?” the members of this supergroup harmonized at a key moment in this wonderfully complex musical and verbal construction. Guitars, harpsichord, drums, scat-singing and vocal harmonies ebb and flow through the song, all delivered as if it were simple and homespun.David Crosby, ‘Laughing’ (1971)In 1971, Crosby released his perfectly atmospheric solo debut album, “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” backed by members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as well as Joni Mitchell, who joined the backup harmonies on this song. Crosby sings about a failed spiritual quest — finding “only reflections of a shadow that I saw” — and Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel guitar floats above him as he finds acceptance.David Crosby, ‘Orleans’ (1971)In this elaborate miniature, an eerie chorale of vocal harmonies carries the names of places in France; then guitar counterpoint takes over, sketching a melody just once before letting it fall away.David Crosby, ‘Holding On to Nothing’ (2014)There’s more than a hint of Crosby’s lifelong admiration for Mitchell in “Holding On to Nothing,” with its calmly strummed, eccentric chords and asymmetrical melody. From “Croz,” which was his return to making solo albums after 20 years, “Holding On to Nothing” meditates on time, longing, depression and persistence, feeling like “a stranger just passing through.”David Crosby, ‘The Us Below’ (2016)In a song from “Lighthouse,” the album that inaugurated Crosby’s years of collaboration with Michael League of Snarky Puppy, Crosby gazes at the vast distances between stars and wonders, “Why must we be eternally alone?” But gradually, layer by layer, guitar patterns and vocals waft in and interlock, suggesting that we’re not.David Crosby, ‘Curved Air’ (2017)Even in his last years, Crosby was trying new approaches. “Curved Air” — written with his son James Raymond — is briskly percussive and rhythmically unpredictable, with flamenco-like handclaps and a bass line that talks back to him. The lyrics wish for “a little traction here/A little solid ground,” yet as the melody hops around, Crosby is entirely sure-footed.David Crosby, Michael League, Becca Stevens and Michelle Willis ‘Balanced on a Pin’ (2018)Written with the members of the Lighthouse Band, “Balanced on a Pin” contemplates fragility and mortality: “Landing’s the hardest part/The connection comes apart,” Crosby sings. For much of the song, his only accompaniment is the picking of a lone guitar, suspending his voice above the inevitability of silence. More

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      David Crosby, a King of Twitter

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      The musician relished sharing opinions big and small, sparring with fans and dispelling myths, often in sharp, hilarious quips. The vibe on the platform changed, but he posted until the end.On Wednesday, one day before the world learned of his death at 81, the musician David Crosby posted to Twitter over a dozen times.He picked his favorite Beatles song for a rainy day (“Eleanor Rigby”). He expressed support for the climate activist Greta Thunberg, and disdain for the Republican representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a bit of poignant foreshadowing, he shared some thoughts about heaven: “I heard the place is overrated,” he wrote, “cloudy.”Among his musical peers, Crosby lived out a unique series of American lives. He was a defining voice of the folk-rock music of the 1960s and ’70s. He was a boldfaced name for his brief prison stay on drug charges, his liver transplant and the revelation that he was the sperm donor for Melissa Etheridge’s two children with Julie Cypher.And there was his surprising ascent as Twitter pundit, cemented in 2017 when he appeared in a commercial for the social media service. There are no formal metrics, but it’s fair to say that no other Woodstock performer or double inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame tweeted as much as Crosby, or with such personable enthusiasm.Crosby was a true poster, a compliment handed out to those who seem to intuitively understand the unspoken rules for how to live an online life. He loved to interact with fans and haters; he never censored his thoughts or minced his words. He tweeted around 79,000 times in over a decade spent on the platform, a pace that dramatically eclipsed his contemporaries. Many musicians, and certainly those of his generation, exclusively use social media as a promotional service for tour announcements and new songs. Crosby, instead, treated Twitter as a walkie-talkie, a direct connection between himself and anyone who wanted to hear from him.This was one of Twitter’s initial appeals: The idea that you might actually interact with famous names like Ashton Kutcher or Shaquille O’Neal propelled thousands of newcomers to sign up in the platform’s early days. But numerous celebrities have quietly left in recent years, driven away by the increasingly combative dynamics that make sharing any opinion a risky proposition, or by Elon Musk’s messy takeover.Crosby did not care, and Crosby never quit. On any given day, he could be found opining on subjects like his distaste for Ted Nugent; his distaste for the Doors (which he eventually decided to tone down, though he never changed his mind about their lack of swing); his distaste for the songwriter Phoebe Bridgers’s attempted guitar-smashing on “Saturday Night Live”; his distaste for a not-so-bad painting of him drawn by a fan; his distaste for poorly rolled marijuana joints; his distaste for Donald Trump, always a subject on his mind.Possibly you notice a theme. But Crosby was no troll, complaining about every possible topic just to propel engagement. Many of his tweets were playful, and sweet. He loved to talk about his wife, and his appreciation for his family life. He never stopped praising his ex-girlfriend Joni Mitchell or his former bandmate Neil Young, even as his relationships with them were openly fraught.He advertised the sensual side of his discography. He solicited movie recommendations and promoted restaurants. He praised younger musicians like Jason Isbell and Jacob Collier. He really enjoyed the work of the director Alex Garland. He dispelled myths about his own life, regardless of whether the lie would have been more flattering.These posting tendencies evolved Crosby’s public persona for a new generation of music fans, in ways that felt both natural and genuine. As the music industry continues to change, its existing stars often attempt to latch onto emergent trends, through efforts that can easily seem forced or hatched by corporate fiat. (It’s hard to believe that Mick Jagger has anything to do with the Rolling Stones’ newly announced TikTok account.) But Crosby was right there, doing it himself. There was little doubt that he personally authored every tweet, because who else could post with such frequency, or idiosyncratic phrasing? His willingness to post so often and honestly did the work of several marketing budgets, and accompanied a late-career creative renaissance that saw the release of five solo albums in the last decade.This exposure didn’t suddenly transform Crosby into a commercial force. (His last album, “For Free” from 2021, did not chart in the United States.) Still, it was oddly reassuring to know that a public figure with such a varied and involved life, who had been present for some of the most consequential events in popular American music, could not resist the elemental pleasures of wasting time on Twitter like many of us, despite its myriad downsides.“I’m really trying to just have fun here,” he told Grammy.com in 2021. “I like people. I think they’re fascinating.” Celebrity is a fickle status, and surely there were moments in his career when Crosby wondered if people would ever care about him or his music. But here was evidence that they did. Even as Twitter frays and coarsens under Musk’s ownership, it’s still possible to have fun with others, one of the few things that keeps users from leaving. Crosby was right there until the very end.In his final weeks he was rating joints, once again advocating for the mood-setting capabilities of his own music and making plans to perform again. He was mad about George Santos and the environment, Spotify and Covid-19, as always, but the happy and the angry were intermingled for everyone to see.A few days ago, he posted his 1989 cover of the Noel Brazil song “Columbus,” with an opening verse espousing a philosophy he endorsed every day he spent on Twitter: “Better keep your distance from this whale/Better keep your boat from going astray/Find yourself a partner and treat them well/Try to give them shelter night and day.” More

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      Review: Carnegie Hall Makes an Intimate Space More Intimate

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      Zankel Hall has been temporarily reconfigured so that audiences can sit in the round, beginning with an enjoyable performance by the group yMusic.New York’s classical music powerhouses would like to get closer to you.Mere months after the New York Philharmonic’s stage at David Geffen Hall was shifted 25 feet out into the audience, with seating added behind the orchestra, as part of a gut renovation, Carnegie Hall has followed suit. If more economically: It has reconfigured its second stage, the subterranean Zankel Hall, and rearranged it so that audiences can sit in the round.To make that happen inside such a steeply raked space, Carnegie has raised the Zankel stage. This has reduced distances for everyone: the critics in prime seats, and the bargain-hunting customers in the balconies. It’s all part of initiative that Carnegie is calling “Center Stage,” with programming, from Thursday night through Jan. 27, designed to take advantage of the enhanced proximity.The Thursday concert, a richly enjoyable performance by the group yMusic, could be seen as a validation of Zankel’s temporary change. And yet what was best about the evening was more along the lines of business as usual for the hall. This vivacious and canny sextet — an idiosyncratic combination of cello, violin, viola, clarinet, a trumpeter who doubles on horn and a flutist-vocalist — debuted two Carnegie co-commissions: the world premiere of Allison Loggins-Hull’s nine-minute “Supply,” and the American unveiling of Andrew Norman’s 24-minute “Difference.”Helping to fund new work from younger American composers is part of what Carnegie’s Zankel wing does well. And that part of the machine is humming along just fine.In “Supply” — inspired by a tale of extramarital office romance — Loggins-Hull makes stirring use of the multiple talents of the flutist-vocalist Alex Sopp (who was lightly but effectively amplified). There was seductiveness in her singing of lines like “Tell me your dreams and I’ll show you the way.” More fragmentary bits of text (“Can I get a pass?” and “I want what I can’t have”) were more aggressive. The work moves between these emotional poles with smart instrumental writing, including some ferocious yet melodically supple passages in rhythmic unison.Norman’s “Difference” was likewise a showcase for yMusic’s abilities in both precision and abandon within the same piece. As in some of his recent orchestral works, Norman here alternates between hushed stasis and manic volleys of virtuosic eruption. In those extremes, CJ Camerieri’s muted trumpet brought a quizzical, mellow edge to some moments, while Nadia Sirota’s sinewy viola (and headbanging stage presence) took the lead in nervier ensemble episodes.The performance by yMusic validated the idea of a concert in the round, but was perhaps more notable for its premieres.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesNorman’s score, as is often the case, was exquisitely paced. Ideas don’t overstay their welcome, but even when that threatens to become the case, he tends to pile on fresh material just in time (and long past the point where another composer might stop). As the patterns deepen and the lengths of phrases extend, to the point of beggaring belief, Norman’s music makes you want to cheer for him — as well as for the artists who bring it to life.Both of those pieces would probably have come across just fine in Zankel’s regular configuration. The real barrier to intimacy with audiences might not be the space’s design, but the fact that music like this most often comes to town for a single night, then disappears.What if audiences were allowed to find this music over the course of a week, or even a full month, like they can with orchestral and operatic programming? What if yMusic had a residency that featured the newly commissioned works multiple times? They certainly wouldn’t have trouble filling out additional programs; the rest of Thursday’s concert featured yet more novelty in a half-hour of miniatures composed by the group’s members. (That happened thanks to some encouragement from Paul Simon, one of the pop musicians who have collaborated with yMusic in the past.)As yMusic wrote in program notes for the concert, original group composition is expected in pop but unusual in classical music. Some of the results in the nine-section suite were tentative — not quite songs, even with Sopp’s vocalizations. But there was also promise, such as the dense chords and almost-bluesy trumpet writing of “Sober Miles” and the occasionally Minimalist-influenced miniatures like “Zebras” and “Three Elephants.”A recording of all this music is unlikely to be released within the year. I know I’d like to revisit the Loggins-Hull and Norman pieces much earlier. And the same goes for seeing yMusic’s creativity and ensemble spirit again — no matter how the Zankel stage is situated.yMusicPerformed on Thursday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Ice Spice, Hip-Hop’s New Princess, Is Just Warming Up

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      Last year, the Bronx rapper emerged from the drill scene with a pop-friendly sound, and attracted the attention of Drake. Now she’s releasing her first EP.On a cold, damp afternoon earlier this month, Ice Spice didn’t want to be recognized, so she covered her signature bounty of red curls with a wig of long blonde tresses, and wrapped that wig in a pink scarf. After a quick stop at her dentist in Bushwick to get her veneers adjusted, the rising hip-hop star hopped in a black SUV to head up to the area around Fordham Road in the Bronx where she grew up.At first, she was muted on the ride, pulling a makeup case out of a pink Von Dutch bag and applying foundation, mascara and lip liner while playing a string of sentimental songs by the Atlanta R&B singer Mariah the Scientist from her phone through the car’s stereo.But by the time the SUV crossed over into the Bronx, Ice Spice — wearing a black Prada fleece, black Balenciaga tights and black Uggs, her long nails painted in an exaggerated French manicure — had livened up, playing her latest single, “In Ha Mood,” on repeat, and rapping along with quiet force:“Oh, they mad ’cause I keep making bops/Oh, she mad ’cause I’m taking her spot/If I was bitches, I’d hate me a lot.”These are the sort of coolly but directly confident verses that have made Ice Spice, 23, one of the most signature voices in New York drill music, as well as an emerging pop culture touchstone, beloved both for what she says and how she comes off while saying it.“I’m just naturally super chill and nonchalant about a lot of things,” she said. “I’ve always been that way, since I was a baby.”On Friday, she’ll release her first EP, “Like..?,” which gathers her previous singles with some new songs, all of which feel of a piece. While the sound of the Bronx drill scene she emerged from is often unrelenting and harsh, the style of her EP, she said, is “pop drill” — spacious, up-tempo and a little skittish, with careful use of melody and just the right amount of punch.“I was getting a lot of hate when I first put out my anything — content, music, whatever,” Ice Spice said, but added, “hate could take you a long way.”Luisa Opalesky for The New York TimesUnlike many New York drill rappers, who tend toward the antic, Ice Spice raps with equanimity: calm, controlled and almost reticent, letting each line linger ever so slightly, almost as if to draw you to her before she again pushes you away.“She makes this thing we call sexy drill,” said Nicole Racine, founder of Talk of the Town, a media company that documents New York drill music. “Her being sexy, being feminine, not the rah-rah drill that we expect.”Just a few months ago, Ice Spice didn’t need to hide behind decoy wigs, but that changed during one hectic week in August. First, Drake expressed admiration for her music — she posted a screenshot of his message — and then flew her along with her manager and producer, RIOTUSA (who goes by Riot), on a private jet to his annual festival in Toronto, OVO Fest.“I probably had like $200 to my name on that trip,” Riot said, chiming in from the back seat of the SUV. “It kind of felt like the flight was like me flying into a new life.”Ice Spice said she was “mad broke” at the time, laughing as she remembered the “fake-ass purse” she was carrying.A few days after the event, she released “Munch (Feelin’ U),” the song that would become her true breakout, inaugurate a delicious new piece of slang and establish her signature visual identity: golden curls, bold outfits, intense eye contact.“We slept on that record because that was the only song we had that didn’t have a sample,” said Riot, whose father is DJ Enuff, an influential New York radio figure. At the time, the dominant sound of New York drill relied on familiar samples; earlier, they’d released “No Clarity,” based heavily on Zedd’s decade-old trance-pop hit “Clarity.”But the originality of “Munch” turned out to be a blessing — a hit reliant upon an older hit can feel contingent, saying less about the new artist than about the durability of the older one. “I’m happy the first song that ever really blew up for me like that was an original song, with an original word,” Ice Spice said. “I’m just so proud of that.”The response, fueled by social media, was instant. “I remember the week ‘Munch’ came out, I had went to the mall, right?” Ice Spice said, characteristically unperturbed. “And a bunch of kids started running up to me like, ‘Yo, are you the “Munch” girl?’ And like, taking pictures of me and recording me.”Before stopping at New Capitol diner for an M&M cookie, she popped by St. James Park, where the “Munch” video was filmed, hoping to use the bathroom — it was locked — and quipped, “They should name it Munch Park.”Ice Spice’s 2022 track “Munch (Feelin’ U)” became her breakout and established her signature visual identity.In the wake of the success of “Munch,” Ice Spice signed to 10K Projects/Capitol Records, and had her first taste of financial success — “I got 2 milli for using a mic,” she posted online at one point. But riding down the blocks where she grew up, making the trip back for the first time since handing out Thanksgiving turkeys alongside fellow Bronx rapper Lil Tjay, she expressed a little exhaustion. “People won’t ask you directly, like, ‘Hey, can you buy me a house?’ I mean, they will actually,” she said. But she was even more frustrated about the things she couldn’t yet do: “It’s just weird now being at a certain place and not being able to just help everybody that you want to help.”Born Isis Gaston to a Black father and a Dominican mother who divorced when she was still a toddler, Ice Spice has five younger half siblings. She’d written poetry and raps since childhood, and her father routinely encouraged her to freestyle with him. (“We would be walking to school and he would be trying to get me to rap about my day,” she recalled.) She didn’t begin writing full songs until 2019, inspired by the breakout wave of Brooklyn drill rappers that included Sheff G and Pop Smoke, and didn’t record any of them until 2021, after a video of her doing the #BussItChallenge gained traction and she had a brief flirtation with extreme virality.“Once that happened I was like, Oh, if I could do it one time, I’m pretty sure I could do it again,” she said. “That’s when I knew I could be an artist.” Sensing an opportunity, she rushed to complete her first song: the squelchy, tough-talking, Brooklyn drill-esque “Bully Freestyle.” She began recording more tracks, and documenting the process, eventually releasing promo trailers for each to gin up attention and enthusiasm.All of her released songs so far have been produced by Riot (born Ephrem Lopez Jr.). The two met when they were both studying communications at SUNY Purchase, where Ice Spice also played volleyball, as she did at the Catholic high school she attended in the Bronx.They found a common language in drill songs that didn’t shy away from the personal, and that were lyrically emphatic, line by line. “I like to hear catchy stuff and I always be thinking like, Damn, what should I caption this? So I just started coming up with mad captions,” she said. She also found that writing personal stories came naturally. “There’s like this type of therapy to it,” she said. “It’s just like a relief whenever I complete a song.”Before “Munch,” attention came in fits and starts, not all of it positive. “I was getting a lot of hate when I first put out my anything — content, music, whatever,” she said, but added, like a sophisticated child of the internet, “hate could take you a long way.”Even now, she’s still something of a lightning rod. Because social media spins tizzys from even the barest scraps of information, there was prurient interest after Drake unfollowed her on Instagram after the Toronto trip. “We’re cool,” she said. “We spoke after that a couple times and we’re good. There’s no beef.” When she was being roasted for her lackluster performance at Rolling Loud in September, her first festival appearance, she “was just happy they were talking about me, really.”But she has benefited greatly from the online attention, too. Her fandom is still settling on a name: Spice Cabinet? Spice Rack? Spice Cadets? Munchkins? And she has seamlessly been absorbed into the meme universe — split portraits of her alongside Tupac, XXXTentacion, Martin Luther King Jr. and Princess Diana float around the internet, and her lyrics (“How can I lose if I’m already chose?”) pop up in tweets and captions. She decided to record “Princess Diana,” from her new EP, after seeing memes flying around the internet late last year calling her this generation’s Princess Diana.“I like to hear catchy stuff and I always be thinking like, Damn, what should I caption this? So I just started coming up with mad captions,” Ice Spice said of her writing style.Luisa Opalesky for The New York Times“Who don’t wanna be a princess?” she said quietly, as if acknowledging something that she’d already known for a while, and assumed everyone else did, too.In perhaps the ultimate indication of pop culture absorption, Lil Nas X, the effortless channeler of virality, dressed as her in the “Munch” video for Halloween, sporting a neon tank top and a wild wig.“The hair is definitely iconic,” she conceded. “When I was in high school, I was straightening my hair, trying to be something that I’m not. Now it’s flattering seeing a wave of Afros. I enjoy that. I feel like that’s great for Black women especially, making Afros more like just a normal staple look, you know?”Racine, of Talk of the Town, said, “She’ll make the sexy drill mainstream, she’s just gonna open more doors.” But drill, the aesthetic that has delivered Ice Spice’s first dose of fame, may only be a convenient way station.“She’s a pop star,” Riot said. “People say drill just to box people in.”Ice Spice agreed that her aspirations stretch beyond that sound. “For me personally, I think I have passed that,” she said. “I do want to be a mainstream artist. I want diamond records and plaques and Grammys. So I think in order to get that, you do have to surpass just one subgenre.”Back in the car, she scrolled through new music, both from the EP, and a verse she recorded for a remix of PinkPantheress’s “Boy’s a Liar,” which has a similar tempo to her own songs but a completely different texture. It’s her first adventure out into the world beyond drill but unlikely to be her last.“I’ve tried Detroit beats. I’ve tried trap. I’ve tried hyperpop,” she said. She speaks Spanish, and has been chatting with the Dominican rapper Tokischa about possibly working together.On her way home from the Bronx, she stopped at a mall in Elizabeth, N.J., so she and Riot could buy True Religion jeans for an upcoming video shoot, which would take its visual cues from the early 2010s, perhaps the last era, pre-drill, in which New York rap truly spurred national conversation. On the way, they dove into a conversation about whether New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, could ever truly fall off.“I just feel like there’s never been a moment where it was dead,” she said. “You can name a year and I can say an artist from New York that was popping, lit, that year. We was singing them songs in the parties.”For maybe the first time all day, she betrayed just the slightest bit of agitation: “Like, I would be mad if one day somebody refers to 2022 as when New York fell off when it’s like, ‘Hello, I’m here.’” More

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      Indie-Rock Supergroup boygenius Returns, and More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kim Petras, Yaeji, Arlo Parks and others.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.boygenius, ‘$20’The indie-rock supergroup boygenius — featuring Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker — never promised to be anything more than a one-off side project when it released an excellent six-song EP in 2018. But this week, the group returned with the promise of a full album and three new songs that prove that EP wasn’t a fluke. The poignant, Bridgers-led “Emily I’m Sorry” is a compassionate folk-rock portrait of a relationship on the brink of collapse, while Dacus steers the ship on the heartening “True Blue,” a vivid snapshot of a love that’s going stronger than ever. (“It feels good to be known so well,” Dacus sings. “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself.”) The revelation, though, is “$20,” a chugging rocker that finds the band kicking into a whole new gear, and allows Baker to inhabit a swaggering persona. “It’s a bad idea and I’m all about it,” she sings, sketching a scene full of indelible images (“It’s an all night drive from your house to Reno, to the T-Bird graveyard where we play with fire”). Halfway through, “$20” takes a thrilling turn when all three members of the band start singing different refrains in a round: Their voices converge and collide before the song erupts in a conflagration of primal screams — playing with fire, indeed.Fenne Lily, ‘Lights Light Up’On “Lights Light Up,” from the forthcoming album “Big Picture,” the English singer-songwriter Fenne Lily’s smooth, arpeggiated guitar playing has the fluidity of a babbling brook, and her murmured vocals flow with a similar kind of serenity. An undercurrent of melancholy and loss emerges from her lyrics, though, which chronicle a gradual acceptance of loss: “You didn’t listen when I told you I’m no dancer,” she sings, “now I dance alone all the time.”Yaeji, ‘For Granted’The New York-based musician and producer Yaeji has released two acclaimed house-inspired EPs and an impressionistic 2020 mixtape, but on April 7 she’ll finally put out her first full-length album, “With a Hammer.” The debut single, the shape-shifting “For Granted,” is certainly promising — a playful, sing-songy synth-pop track that, halfway through, explodes into skittish euphoria. “When I think about it, I don’t even know,” she croons dreamily, before letting her concerns go: “So I stop the thinking, let it rest and I’ll flow.”Arlo Parks, ‘Weightless’Arlo Parks works through indecision on the driving “Weightless,” the first single from her second album “My Soft Machine.” “I don’t wanna wait for you,” the young British artist sings on the chorus, “but I need you so I won’t go.” With its persistent beat and whooshes of melodrama, “Weightless” is a departure from the more muted sound she explored on her debut, “Collapsed in Sunbeams,” but the vivid lyrics still showcase her signature poeticism: “Cardamom and jade as your eyes screamed,” she sings, “on the night you showed your volcanic side.”Kim Petras, ‘Brrr’Kim Petras plays ice queen on the bold, commanding “Brrr,” a synth-pop track as industrial and echoey as a walk-in freezer. “Why don’t you take it out on me, if you think you’re so cold?” she asks a prospective paramour, delivering the line like a seductive dare.Ice Spice and Lil Tjay, ‘Gangsta Boo’Ice Spice cuts right to the chase on “Gangsta Boo” — “A baddie got’ get what she like/So what’s your sign, ’cause I like you?” — one of three new songs released today on her debut EP “Like..?” Her trusted producer RIOTUSA speeds up and adds some percussive crunch to a sample of P. Diddy’s “I Need a Girl Part 2,” while fellow Bronx rapper Lil Tjay drops in for an exuberant guest verse. “Gangsta Boo” doesn’t have the venomous attitude that made Ice Spice’s breakout single “Munch (Feelin’ U)” pop, but her effortless charisma sells the track just the same. More