Allison, Sophie (Soccer Mommy)

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    Soccer Mommy's ‘Tidal Wave’ of Feelings on ‘Sometimes, Forever’

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    The songwriter Sophie Allison finds new sonic frontiers alongside Oneohtrix Point Never on her third studio album, “Sometimes, Forever.”“I don’t know how to feel things small,” Sophie Allison, the songwriter behind Soccer Mommy, sings in “Still,” which closes her third studio album, “Sometimes, Forever.” She continues, “It’s a tidal wave or nothing at all.”With each album, she has expanded the ways she conjures those tidal waves. Allison, 25, started releasing home-recorded Soccer Mommy songs on Bandcamp as a teenager, layering her vocals and guitars, and she dropped out of N.Y.U. in 2017 after her dorm-room recordings landed her a recording contract.She formed a band and toured extensively, and on her studio albums “Clean” (2018) and “Color Theory” (2020), she confidently tapped a legacy of guitar-driven 1990s indie rock: Liz Phair, the Breeders, the Cure, Alanis Morissette, Smashing Pumpkins. Her tunes maintained a sturdy, old-fashioned clarity, even as her lyrics faced disorder, determinedly exposing her fears, depression and self-destructive impulses. “I am the problem for me, now and always,” she sang in “Royal Screw Up” on “Color Theory.”The same struggles run through “Sometimes, Forever,” pushing toward new extremes of misery and (possibly delusional) rapture. “Wherever you’re going I’m going too/Nothing else matters when I’m with you,” Allison vows in “With U,” amid a stately swell of Beatles-esque chords that could promise bliss. But there’s a streak of masochism in her devotion: “I’ll take the pain, feel it every day/Just to have you look at me,” she sings.Even a seemingly happy situation holds ominous undertones. “Shotgun” is the album’s more-or-less poppiest song. Its verse rides a grungy bass line as Allison recalls “coffee and menthol on your breath” and problems with drugs. But she realizes, “This feels the same without the bad things,” leading into a chorus that switches to euphoric major chords and promises “Whenever you want me I’ll be around.” Yet why is she thinking about weapons?Allison writes orderly tunes, with neatly delineated verses and choruses. Her melodies often rise and fall symmetrically and her singing stays levelheaded, almost reserved. But she chose a chaos agent as her producer: Daniel Lopatin, who makes albums as Oneohtrix Point Never and composed the white-knuckled score for “Uncut Gems.”Lopatin knows how to weaponize nebulousness. Working with Soccer Mommy, he used reverb, distortion, synthesizer tones and guitar feedback, at every volume level from subliminal to overpowering, to create backdrops that can easily warp from sumptuous to menacing. Allison fully unleashes him in “Unholy Affliction.” She sings, with a sinking melody, about a compulsive, unattainable, all-consuming perfectionism: “Carve me up and let the colors run,” she offers. Behind her, the production deploys distorted bass lines, salvos of drums, bleary Mellotron notes and down-tuned guitars, all battering just under her voice, clawing at her.In “Darkness Forever,” she confronts suicidal feelings. “Head in the oven didn’t sound so crazy,” Allison sings, alone amid echoes; then a lurching dirge rises around her like a haunted castle. The music is much more upbeat in “Don’t Ask Me,” a galloping rocker with gusts of guitar noise recalling My Bloody Valentine, but the best the lyrics can hope for is temporary numbness. “No more fire in my veins/My will is gone I don’t feel a thing,” she sings; later, she concedes, “I know it comes back around.”Throughout the album, Soccer Mommy staves off despair with musical craftsmanship. The modestly titled “Newdemo” — billed as just another work in progress — is a ballad that starts with Allison singing and strumming a lo-fi guitar. She sings about impending storms and destruction, but the music ascends into a glimmering psychedelic wonderland, with simulated cellos and sitar. Wistfully, warily, Allison observes, “What is a dream but a hope you hold onto?/A lie that you wish would come true.” She doesn’t expect it to last, but for the moment, she’s singing.Soccer Mommy“Sometimes, Forever”(Loma Vista) More

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      Soccer Mommy Stretches Her Sound, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phife Dawg, Omar Apollo, Zola Jesus 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.Soccer Mommy, ‘Shotgun’Sophie Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, continues to stretch beyond the sparse indie-rock of her early songs. “Shotgun” previews an album due in June — “Sometimes, Forever” — that is produced by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin), an auteur of big, blurry implications. “Shotgun” is a promise of devotion to someone who might be troubled. It places Allison’s breathy, dazed vocals above a hefty beat and a low, twangy riff; as the chorus vows “Whenever you want me I’ll be around,” new layers of echoey guitars and sudden drum blasts loom, suggesting that her path isn’t entirely clear. JON PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Humble Quest’“Humble Quest,” the title track of the new album by Maren Morris, carefully balances humility and a growing determination: “I was so nice till I woke up/I was polite till I spoke up,” she sings. The verses are dogged and subdued, with steady drums and descending piano chords; the chorus leaps upward, insisting, “Damn I do my best/Not gonna hold my breath.” But the song tapers off at the end, returning to the piano chords; the quest continues. PARELESKurt Vile, ‘Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)’As usual, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile is an ambling, amiable presence on “Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone),” a gently psychedelic ditty in no particular hurry to get to where it’s going. “Standing on top of Mount Airy Hill … thinkin’ ’bout … flying,” he begins, sounding like a cross between Bill Callahan and John Prine, the kindred spirit he collaborated with on the 2020 EP “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV.” Beginning with that release, Vile has begun to embrace more directly the country inflections of his music and vocal delivery, and here they add to the song’s eccentric charm. “I’ve been around, but now I’m gone,” he vamps, letting that last word fly loose in an airy falsetto before adding a winking line that doubles as the title of his forthcoming album: “Watch my moves.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFlock of Dimes, ‘It Just Goes On’Under her solo moniker Flock of Dimes, Jenn Wasner tends to make knotty, intricate indie-rock, enlivened by unexpected chord changes and unusual time signatures. She’s described the hypnotic “It Just Goes On,” though, as “perhaps one of the most simple and direct songs I’ve ever made,” and the understated arrangement allows her dreamy vocals to shine. The first track on a B-side companion piece to her excellent 2021 album “Head of Roses,” “It Just Goes On” is a slow-motion reverie centered around a murky guitar riff that hangs, like Wasner’s evocative lyrics, in a state of suspended possibility: “If it never started, it doesn’t have to end, it just goes on.” ZOLADZJane Weaver, ‘Oblique Fantasy’The English songwriter, singer and guitarist Jane Weaver reaches back to the clockwork Minimalism of 1970s kraut-rock in “Oblique Fantasy,” a patiently evolving assemblage of guitar and synthesizer lines — picked, strummed, fluttering, blipping, peaking into feedback — over an unswerving, motoric beat, as she lives up to her promise: “I will get under your skin.” PARELESKilo Kish featuring Miguel, ‘Death Fantasy’The avant-pop singer Kilo Kish has a pipe dream: the demise and undoing of all frameworks, definitions and limits that might constrain her. On “Death Fantasy,” from her new album “American Gurl,” Kish raps in a breathless staccato about her ambition: “I have a death fantasy/Death of my aesthetics, this falsing fiction carved in my way,” she chants. On Instagram, Kish referred to the song as a “manifesto” and a “declaration of freedom.” But with lurching drums, neon-drenched synths, Miguel’s sky-high, looping vocalizations and a jarring flatline, “Death Fantasy” is less anthemic — it’s more a trance-like spell, conjured to convince you of the promise of starting anew. ISABELIA HERRERAPhife Dawg, ‘Forever’Well-earned 1990s nostalgia and grown-up regrets fill Phife Dawg’s “Forever,” the title track from a new album, released six years after his death, that blends his last raps with tribute verses from guests. Phife Dawg had reunited with A Tribe Called Quest, but he died before their final album together was released in 2016. In “Forever,” he rhymes through the group’s history as “four brothers with a mic and a dream.” A plush soul string section, a lurching beat and old-school turntable scratching accompany him as he recalls the group’s ascent. Suddenly he silences the track and, a cappella, he admits, “Lack of communication killed my tribe/Bad vibes.” But bygones are bygones, he declares: “Despite trials, tribe-ulations, no doubt we were built to survive.” PARELESOmar Apollo, ‘Tamagotchi’The 24-year-old singer Omar Apollo has a knack for jagged, irreverent pop songs. On “Tamagotchi,” he conscripts the Neptunes to mastermind his latest vision: there’s Pharrell’s signature four-count start, a muted Spanish guitar loop coiling under bilingual bars about Apollo’s ascendant celebrity. But the best part of “Tamagotchi” is that Apollo doesn’t take himself too seriously: “I’m making bread (Bread)/Sound like Pavarotti,” he snickers at one point. By the honey-soaked R&B bridge, you’ll be drenched in his charisma. HERRERAFrya, ‘Changes’Frya, from Zimbabwe, has clearly listened to Adele: where she applies vibrato, her approach to syncopation and sustain, and where she makes her voice build and break. But she has a songwriter’s gift: how to turn words and sounds into an emotional connection. “Say my name please in that tone again,” she begs in “Changes,” as it climbs from piano ballad to orchestral plea, perfectly strategized and emotionally telling. PARELESSon Lux and Moses Sumney, ‘Fence’The magnificently eerie “Fences,” from the soundtrack to the metaverse movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” deals in falsetto reassurances and gaping abysses. Over sustained electronic tones, tolling bass notes and orchestral swells, Moses Sumney sings an apologetic, waltzing refrain — “Only meant to give you my all/never meant to build you a wall” — that multiplies its vocal harmonies but sounds ever more bereft. PARELESZola Jesus, ‘Lost’“Everyone I know is lost,” Nika Roza Danilova, who records as Zola Jesus, wails on the doomy, kinetic new single from her forthcoming album, “Arkhon.” The track begins with a decidedly post-apocalyptic vibe: earthy, guttural rumbles, synthesizers that toll like air-raid sirens, and a percussive series of sharp breaths, spliced together to create the song’s beat. But Danilova’s powerful vocal soon provides a stirring counterpoint and a defiant sign of life, like a signal flare shot up through an icy landscape. ZOLADZMarvin Sewell, ‘A Hero’s Journey’The guitarist Marvin Sewell, who’s usually heard injecting soul and scruff into other people’s bands, takes a moment to ruminate alone on “A Hero’s Journey.” He plays the acoustic guitar with a shivering slide, returning frequently to a mournful motif on the higher strings. Though understated, the track is a standout on “Black Lives,” a two-disc compilation of new music performed by a wide stylistic range of contemporary jazz artists. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMark Turner, ‘Waste Land’At first, the occasional clatter from Jonathan Pinson’s drums seems like the main source of agitation on an otherwise low-key track: The interplay between Mark Turner’s tenor saxophone and Jason Palmer’s trumpet — both of them doused in reverb, played with crystal clarity and zero hurry — is almost placid. But there is a worried tension in the space between their horns, one that doesn’t get totally exposed until near the end. Finally, we’re left without resolution, as the band rises toward a landing that never fully comes. RUSSONELLO More

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      Pop Smoke’s Memory Lives On, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Xenia Rubinos, Swedish House Mafia, Soccer Mommy 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.Pop Smoke, ‘More Time’“Faith,” the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, includes collaborations with Kanye West, Dua Lipa, 42 Dugg, Future and others. But this track, early in the album, is jarring and stark. Not simply because it’s still eerie to hear Pop Smoke rapping with a blend of menace and joy, but because of its chilling beat — produced in part by the rapper’s longtime collaborator Rico Beats, but also in part by Nicholas Britell, who has scored “Moonlight” and “Succession.” It is a familiar trick, these reverberating keys that stand stern sentry, but no less effective for it. Here is a splash of theater more visceral than any radio hit, any pop crossover. JON CARAMANICAXenia Rubinos, ‘Working All the Time’Xenia Rubinos’s “Working All the Time” is only two minutes long, but it’s as intricate as an arduous jigsaw puzzle. There are waves of skittish synths, air horns straight out of a Funk Flex set on Hot 97, a bridge that sounds like the glitchy maximalism of hyperpop, and last but not least, an interpolation of the traditional rumba “Ave María Morena.” Somehow, Rubinos makes sense of all these disparate pieces using her brassy, featherlight voice. Blink and you’ll miss that it’s a workers’ anthem, too: In one verse, Rubinos sings, “You better keep me poor and busy or I’d be a danger.” It’s a warning for those who try to crush the power of the people. ISABELIA HERRERASwedish House Mafia, ‘It Gets Better’I suppose you can absorb this song on the internet, where it is currently available. But the slick return of Swedish House Mafia — the Brobdingnagian kings of mainstream EDM, the clout champions of biggest-room house music — cries out for an open field, a dizzying laser show, a loss of sense of time and place. Hug a friend; the soundtrack of shared mayhem is upon us. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Whenever You’re Ready’A brisk, ratcheting, evolving ska-meets-trap beat carries “Whenever You’re Ready” by Mahalia, a British singer whose mother is Jamaican. It’s a semi-breakup song that flaunts confidence instead of pain. The singer is letting him go because he’s angry at her now, but she’s sure he’ll be back: “You won’t be gone for good,” she sings. “No, I’m not worried.” JON PARELESCaroline Polachek, ‘Bunny Is a Rider’Singing about a woman so elusive that a “satellite can’t find her,” Caroline Polachek makes staccato syllables and short phrases bounce all around the beat, working equally as percussion and melody. They’re just a few of the syncopated layers in a playful yet strategic production — by Polachek and her frequent collaborator, Danny L. Harle from the PC Music circle — that juggles whistling, triangle, birdsong and the giggles and gurgles of Harle’s baby daughter. “I’m so nonphysical,” Polachek exults, over the sustained bass tone that cushions the chorus. Nonsense: The song is built for dancing. PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Rom Com 2004’“Rom Com 2004” could have been a straightforward indie-rock love song, vowing “Just let me be yours like no one else before” over a march beat, guitar chords and a chorus with a proud leap in the melody. But Soccer Mommy — Sophie Allison — handed over her demo to the producer BJ Burton with instructions, she has said, to “destroy it.” He obliged with glitches, distortion, speed variations and exposed moments — making the song more appealing because it plays hard to get. PARELESTurnstile featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alien Love Call’From the forthcoming Turnstile album, “Glow On,” comes this shoegaze space-soul collaboration with Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). The video compiles mayhem-esque live footage more in keeping with the hardcore band’s usual rhythms, but perhaps this is the meditation before the rage. CARAMANICADave McMurray, ‘Dark Star’Dave McMurray is a longtime Detroit tenor saxophonist with decades of experience in rock, jazz, pop and R&B, mostly as a side musician. But he’s just released his second album for Blue Note as a leader: “Grateful Deadication,” a tribute to the Grateful Dead songbook. His cover of the classic “Dark Star” channels the epically trippy M.O. of a Dead performance: McMurray declares the melody over Wayne Gerard’s twinkling, distorted guitar; eventually, a dug-in backbeat sets in. Then a coolly grooving section opens up, and the saxophonist dishes out a solo that’s laced with greasy Motor City attitude but still takes its time, as if to bask in the California sun. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHalf Waif, ‘Swimmer’The songs on “Mythopoetics,” Nandi Rose Plunkett’s new album as Half Waif, suffer and exult in all-consuming love. As “Swimmer” leaps from everyday sensation to all-out devotion and need — “I want to know they can’t take this away from me” — synthesizer arpeggios and vocal harmonies swarm around Plunkett’s ardent voice, like a suddenly racing heartbeat and an uncontainable obsession. PARELESYas, ‘Idea of You’A viscous tar pit of a track — slow, oozing bass tones, sparse drum-machine taps and gaping silences — hints at the difficulty of pulling free from an increasingly destructive relationship. Yas (the songwriter, singer, producer and violinist Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi) sings about being “in love with the idea of you” amid details of mental and physical abuse. The negotiations aren’t quite over; her voice rises to a fragile soprano as she decides, “You think that I want you back — I don’t.” PARELESKoreless, ‘White Picket Fence’Koreless — the Welsh producer Lewis Roberts — swerves between pastorale and rave on “White Picket Fence.” A keening female voice, uncredited and possibly built from samples, floats at first over a stately harpsichord; then fuzzy synthesizers arrive with a pulsing beat under that vocal melody, before it gets stretched and chopped up; then it’s sent back to harpsichord territory. In the video, directed by FKA twigs, club creatures climb out of a futuristic green car alongside a bucolic creek, where fishing ensues; urban artifice meets Nature. PARELESKarol G, ‘200 Copas’To a friend who’s still tearful about her ex, the Colombian songwriter Karol G (Carolina Giraldo Navarro) doesn’t mince words in “200 Copas” (“200 Drinks”); she dismisses the guy with profanities after all the suffering he caused. Yet her 21st-century bluntness gets a traditionalist backing; while the rest of her album, “KG0516,” traverses modern Pan-American pop with all its technological tricks, “200 Copas” is an old-fashioned waltz backed by a few acoustic instruments, nothing more. The lyrics are decidedly impolite, but the predicament she sings about is not new. The new video has her leading a beach-bonfire singalong: solidarity against undeserving men. PARELESTainy and Yandel, ‘El Plan’“Dynasty” is a new collaborative album from Tainy and Yandel, two titans of reggaeton celebrating 16 years of eminence. With its sinister harpsichord, muted marimbas and a piercing dembow riddim, “El Plan” recalls the mid-00s reggaeton that required listeners practice dancing in front of the mirror. It’s all about the thrill of an after-hours dance-floor chase — the electrifying, will-it-or-won’t-it-happen energy of a night at the club. “Estoy esperándote y tú perreando sola,” Yandel says. “I’m waiting for you and you’re dancing alone.” Luckily, he knows he’s at the whim of his partner: “Pero tú dime cuál e’ el plan.” You tell me what the plan is. HERRERAMas Aya, ‘Momento Presente’It is easy to reference folkloric sounds, but have little to offer other than mere nostalgia. The instrumentalist Brandon Valdivia, better known as Mas Aya, escapes this fate masterfully on “Momento Presente.” More than a mere collision of past and present, the track is a study in the power of harnessing ancestral knowledge. Over six and a half minutes, Valdivia braids a skittish footwork beat with a flurry of Andean pan flutes, arpeggiated synths and polyrhythms. Halfway through, the voice of an elder reflects on centuries of protest, a reminder that the work of liberation is part of a continuum. One moment the song is celestial, transporting the listener 40,000 feet into the air. In another it is meditative, urging us into quiet introspection. HERRERAMatt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, ‘Trapezoids | Matching Tickles’In recent years the pianist Matt Mitchell and the drummer Kate Gentile have developed a book of pithy, one-bar-long compositions, which they play with small ensembles under the name Snark Horse. Through intense improvisation, taking equal cues from free jazz and metal, they morph and distend and scramble these little melodic fragments. On Friday, Snark Horse released its first album — a boxed set spanning no fewer than 49 tracks and five-and-a-half hours, mostly recorded at a three-day session in late 2019. “Trapezoids” is a Gentile composition, a crooked and incessant spray of notes, with Jon Irabagon’s saxophone further destabilizing the mix. It’s paired on this track with “Matching Tickles,” a Mitchell piece, which he plays more softly and abstractedly, as if it were the echo of another idea. RUSSONELLO More

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      5 Things to Do This New Year’s Weekend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This New Year’s WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDanceMaking the Old NewKenneth Shirley of Indigenous Enterprise in a scene from a short film that is streaming on the Joyce Theater’s website until Sunday.Credit…Danny UpshawSince September, the Joyce Theater has been offering a free virtual fall season that is as good as some of its best in-person ones. The secret has been surprise and an avoidance of the usual suspects. If that is a little less true of the latest batch of videos — available through Sunday at joyce.org/joycestream — the variety still provides plenty of spice.The connecting theme might be “tradition reimagined.” Indigenous Enterprise captures the beauty of Native American dances in urban settings. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo revives parts of the 19th-century ballet “Paquita” with an all-male cast. Streb Extreme Action does daredevil stunts with huge machines; it’s like a carnival side show performed by cool astronauts.Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. And Rennie Harris Puremovement shows once again how hip-hop can convey both can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it flash and hard-to-watch grief.BRIAN SEIBERTKidsBon Voyage to BoredomA scene from “Journey Around My Bedroom,” an interactive production that will livestream on Zoom through Jan. 10.Credit…New Ohio TheaterA room can be a refuge, but without an easy exit, it can also feel like a jail. For the Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, it was both: While under house arrest in 1790, he wrote “Voyage Around My Room,” a tribute to the creativity his imprisonment unleashed.Now de Maistre’s work has inspired New Ohio Theater for Young Minds’ first virtual presentation, “Journey Around My Bedroom.” Written by Dianne Nora and directed by Jaclyn Biskup, with songs by Hyeyoung Kim, this whimsical 35-minute play emulates Victorian toy theater, in which puppeteers manipulated cutouts on a tiny stage. (Myra G Reavis did the inventive design, assisted by Ana Maria Aburto.) Traveling in a failing dirigible, de Maistre visits Xavi, a contemporary girl who discovers that her own room offers hidden adventure.The production, which livestreams on Zoom Fridays to Sundays through Jan. 10, includes audience participation and a post-show discussion. Children can also follow the journey, though less interactively, in an on-demand video Jan. 11-Feb. 11. Tickets to gain access to these performances are pay-what-you-wish and available at newohiotheatre.org.LAUREL GRAEBERArtTime to Ponder Time ItselfClodion’s “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock” will be the topic of discussion on Friday during the Frick Collection’s “Cocktails With a Curator.”Credit…Claude Michel and JeanBaptiste Lepaute; via Frick Collection; Michael BodycombWhen the Frick Collection introduced its virtual series, “Cocktails With a Curator,” its deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, described the program as a way to show how the museum’s pieces are “relevant to issues we’re facing today.” That’s especially true for the artwork featured in the next episode: “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock,” by the 18th-century sculptor Clodion with the clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. Looking back on 2020, the passage of time has never felt so complicated.There’s also nothing simple about “The Dance of Time.” The three terra-cotta nymphs holding up a globe-encased clock are either witnessing the passage of time or represent it themselves. To find out more, make a metropolitan (or the mocktail alternative, a ginger ale hot toddy; both recipes are on the Frick’s website), and tune in to the museum’s YouTube channel on Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time to hear Salomon discuss the timelessness of this unique timepiece.MELISSA SMITHPop & RockSummerStage Is Just a Screen AwaySoccer Mommy and her band performed for SummerStage Anywhere in November. The show is available to watch on YouTube.Credit…via City Parks FoundationWhile its recently renovated stage in Central Park sat idle this past season, SummerStage — the nonprofit organization that typically floods the five boroughs with live outdoor music — sprouted roots in virtual space. Its season of free online programming, SummerStage Anywhere, is now complete, but is archived on their YouTube channel for latecomers to enjoy.Offerings are wide-ranging, crossing disciplines, genres and generations. Soccer Mommy, an indie-rock darling, performed her first and, so far, only full-band show in support of her latest album, “Color Theory.” ASAP Ferg joined Fab 5 Freddy, one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, for a conversation about creativity in the face of racial injustice. Gloria Gaynor and her band revisited hits from her disco heyday (including, of course, “I Will Survive,” a song that has special resonance these days). For those of us yearning for a time when we can once again spread our blankets and take in the sounds at Rumsey Playfield, this series provides a nice stopgap.OLIVIA HORNClassical MusicCatch Up With ‘Density 2036’Claire Chase recently released four full-length CDs for her ongoing “Density 2036” project.Credit…Karen ChesterPreviously, listeners curious about “Density 2036” — the ambitious, 23-year commissioning project that the flutist Claire Chase started in 2013 — have needed to stake out her concerts. (While Chase recorded her interpretations of a couple of the earliest works at the beginning of the project, studio renditions seemed to have taken a back seat to live dates in recent years.)Now four new full-length CDs, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, allow a global audience to catch up with the first half-decade of Chase’s initiative. (They’re also available digitally on Bandcamp.) Highlights abound in each set, thanks to a range of composers that includes Marcos Balter, George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros. And one particularly striking stretch on “Part IV” features a version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Bertha’s Lair” (with the composer heard on percussion alongside Chase). That fancifully vigorous piece is directly followed by a distinct yet similarly percussive work: “Five Empty Chambers” by Vijay Iyer.SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More