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      The Friendship Harmonies of boygenius

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn 2018, the rising indie rock singers Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus teamed up to form boygenius, a collaborative side project that quickly took on outsized importance. For fans, it reinforced the characteristics that made each singer so appealing individually, and also created a new layer of lore.The debut boygenius EP was released in 2018, but it wasn’t until last week that the group released its first full-length project, “The Record.” It continues the group’s familiar combination of emotionally acute songwriting, rich harmonies and inside-joke banter.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how the music of boygenius overlaps with the solo work of its three members, the ways in which friendship can be rendered in musical terms and how even the most beloved artists can be subject to a backlash cycle.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticCat Zhang, an associate editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. 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

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      12 New Christmas Songs for a Vast Array of Holiday Moods

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      Hear tracks by the Linda Lindas, David Byrne, Summer Walker and others that lean cozy, confrontational and lightly comedic.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.Silversun Pickups, ‘Just Like Christmas’The grungy Los Angeles band Silversun Pickups heard potential in “Just Like Christmas,” which was more like a country song when the Minnesota band Low introduced it on its 1999 album, “Christmas.” It’s a song about touring Scandinavia, seeing — and scoffing at — the snowy image of Christmas but feeling its attractions anyway. With sleigh bells and rippling, echoing guitars, Silversun Pickups find a chiming optimism in the song, embracing a joyful illusion even as they realize it’s temporary. JON PARELESSamara Joy, ‘Warm in December’Samara Joy sings with a jazz trio in “Warm in December,” taking on an aspiring standard as she goes swooping, quivering and hopping through her phrasing. The way she leaves room for her backup to improvise echoes the exchange of affection that the song promises. PARELESPhoebe Bridgers, ‘So Much Wine’Phoebe Bridgers’s annual Christmas cover is, by now, a modern tradition; she’s previously released renditions of such holiday laments as Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” and Tom Waits’s “Day After Tomorrow.” This year, she tackles the folk duo the Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine,” a dark but ultimately tender tale of Yuletide overindulgence. While the original version is played for macabre comedy (“I had nothing to say on Christmas Day when you threw all your clothes in the snow”) Bridgers, characteristically, amps up the pathos and issues an impassioned plea to sober up for the holidays. “Listen to me, butterfly,” she sings in a trembling voice, “there’s only so much wine that you can drink in one life.” LINDSAY ZOLADZThe Tribe, ‘This Christmas’This team-up of soft soul music stalwarts takes on Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” with charm and adoration. High points include Freda Payne’s careful, tender entreaty to “shake a hand,” and Michael McDonald absolutely howling, “The fireside is blazing bright/And we’re caroling through the night.” (The song also features Kenny Loggins, Richard Marx and several other singers and musicians.) Proceeds from the track benefit the Donny Hathaway Legacy Project (DHLP), a mental health-focused charity established by Donnita Hathaway, Donny’s youngest daughter. JON CARAMANICASam Smith, ‘Night Before Christmas’’Tis hardly the season for something unholy, so Sam Smith’s “Night Before Christmas,” a new holiday original written with the musician’s longtime collaborator Simon Aldred, is tasteful, traditional and sweetly soulful. “With everything closed now, there’s nowhere to go,” Smith sings over a sparse guitar arrangement, but the atmosphere soon grows merrier with the addition of piano, percussion and a fleet of backup singers. “Baby, this time of year can make you feel old,” Smith sings on the chorus. Coziness, though, is the cure: “But when I’m with you, I don’t feel the cold.” ZOLADZThe Linda Lindas, ‘Groovy Xmas’This is how you do it — a jubilant, surf-ish rock jam about the small details of holiday thrill, including the ones that never, ever change: “Same playlist every year/Mariah brings the cheer/And pumpkin spice lattes are here.” The Linda Lindas continue to extract maximum happiness from every available moment, including watching the cat lap up water from the Christmas tree stand. CARAMANICAStars, ‘Christmas Anyway’Stars, the long-running Montreal indie-rock band, offers a pandemic-era Christmas song in “Christmas Anyway,” singing about a long-delayed reunion — “Two years since we did this” — fraught with unresolved tensions. Amid strumming guitars and a stolid backbeat, they sing about how “we got through it somehow,” and how a holiday can offer at least a temporary reconciliation. PARELESSummer Walker, ‘Santa Baby’“Santa Baby” is one of the classic holiday flirtations, and Summer Walker is one of contemporary R&B’s great emotional reckoners — an optimal match. But Walker’s version of this classic is restrained, and almost a little reluctant. Just a sweet little plea for some seasonal blessing. CARAMANICADavid Byrne, ‘Fat Man’s Comin’’David Byrne applies his quizzical-observer perspective in “The Fat Man’s Comin’,” a brief, brawny and elaborately arranged chamber-pop bolero about “a roly-poly man in the dark, he’s riding.” It’s perfectly poised between objectivity and amusement. PARELESOld Crow Medicine Show, ‘Trim This Tree’“Trim This Tree,” an original from Americana stalwarts Old Crow Medicine Show, is a spirited, occasionally hilarious snapshot of Christmas in modern, overdeveloped Nashville: Sloshed reindeer ride by on a pedal tavern, the ornaments are exclusively from Dollar Tree, and, as the frontman Ketch Decor puts it in a Springsteenian croak, “In front of this Airbnb, there’s a Joseph and a Mary and Jesus all lit up like a Walmart.” Even in such environs, though, the group’s rollicking sound manages to rustle up some genuine down-home cheer. ZOLADZImogen Clark, ‘I Got Dumped for Christmas’The Australian songwriter Imogen Clark bashes her way through the self-explanatory “I Got Dumped for Christmas,” with sleigh bells and power-pop guitars. “Your timing was extraordinary,” she jabs, nicely capturing how seasonal expectations can go so badly awry. PARELESNorah Jones, ‘The Christmas Waltz’Norah Jones has nearly doubled the track list for the expanded version of her 2021 album “I Dream of Christmas,” mostly with bluesy, louche studio tracks and live remakes. Her version of the vintage Tin Pan Alley song “The Christmas Waltz” — written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, once recorded by Frank Sinatra — cheerfully trades a waltz for a shuffle, bringing in a quivering harp and an insinuating saxophone, playing with meters but still sounding fond. PARELES More

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      Phoebe Bridgers’s Feature on SZA’s ‘SOS’ Album, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Paramore, Sparklehorse, Lana Del Rey 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.SZA featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Ghost in the Machine’​“I need humanity,” SZA sings in “Ghost in the Machine,” a largely computerized track from her new album, “SOS.” Even the voices behind her sound quantized. Phoebe Bridgers, breathily multitracked, arrives midway through the song — singing about liminal spaces like “an airport bar or hotel lobby” — but their organic, analog presence can’t deny what numbers can deliver. JON PARELESLana Del Rey, ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’The name of Lana Del Rey’s new single — the title track from her forthcoming eighth album — may seem like a mouthful, but as she repeats it across this nearly five-minute ballad, it becomes a hypnotic incantation. “Ocean Blvd” continues in the pleasantly meandering, piano-driven style that has served Del Rey so well on her last few albums, spotlighting her lyrical musings and the swells of emotion in her vocals. She moves elegantly between the minute and the universal here, making an observation about a specific time stamp in a Harry Nilsson song one moment, and the next imploring, vulnerably, “Love me until I love myself.” ZOLADZCaroline Polachek, ‘Welcome to My Island’Caroline Polachek’s playful “Welcome to My Island” sounds like several different songs — from several different eras of pop — spliced together. There’s a bit of Blondie’s “Rapture”; a potent reminder why Polachek covering the Corrs’ “Breathless” was such a no-brainer; and a healthy dose of Olivia Rodrigo’s spoken-word angst on the bridge. (Rodrigo’s collaborator Dan Nigro was a producer on the track, alongside Danny L Harle, A.G. Cook and Jim E-Stack.) What brings it all together is an absolute monster of a chorus, on which Polachek sings the lyric from that gives her forthcoming second album its title, as if she’s shouting it off the peak of a mountain: “Desire, I want to turn into you.” ZOLADZParamore, ‘The News’“I worry and I give money and I feel useless behind this computer,” Hayley Williams sings on “The News,” a vertiginous exploration of modern information overload. The lyrics don’t necessarily offer a solution, but the pervasive anxiety evoked by Zac Farro’s skittish drumming and Taylor York’s dissonant riffs at least let Williams know that she’s not alone. ZOLADZSparklehorse, ‘It Will Never Stop’Mark Linkous, who recorded as Sparklehorse, died by suicide in 2010; his family discovered the previously unreleased “It Will Never Stop” among his recordings. It’s a noisy, low-fi stomp with just about everything distorted, vocals included, and it’s equally rowdy and desperate. “Please don’t vaporize into the sun,” Linkous sang, suddenly blasting louder as he added, “my love.” PARELESKate NV, ‘Oni (They)’Sparkling and kaleidoscopic, the Russian experimental musician Kate NV’s “Oni (They)” is an intricate, miniature world unto itself. Kate weaves a colorful tapestry of retro-futuristic synthesizer sounds and an elastic rhythm section, singing, in Japanese, lyrics written by the producer Takahide “Foodman” Higuchi. ZOLADZHarvey Mandel, ‘Moon Talk’The guitarist Harvey Mandel has been active since the 1960s, playing with Canned Heat at the 1969 Woodstock festival and straddling jazz, rock and blues with John Mayall. Now 77, he has made a freewheeling new instrumental album, “Who’s Calling.” “Moon Talk” is a funk track with echoes of Miles Davis’s “On the Corner” and a jabbing, wriggling, sliding, squealing guitar lead that’s anything but mellow with age. PARELESJackie Mendoza, ‘Pedacitos’Jackie Mendoza strives to restore someone’s sense of self-worth in “Pedacitos” (“Little Pieces”), insisting, “I can see your tears/You can throw them away.” Produced by Mendoza and Rusty Santos, who has worked with Animal Collective, the song is harmonically and spatially ambiguous, with harplike plucking, swooping electronics and vocals wafting in from all directions. Yet Mendoza makes her reassurance sound like everyday common sense. PARELESWeezer, ‘I Want a Dog’Some animal shelter should benefit from “I Want a Dog,” Weezer’s song about the pure support of a prospective pet. It’s from the band’s current project, “SZNZ,” a cycle of songs based on the seasons, headed now for winter. The track expands from acoustic vulnerability to multitracked, Queen-style, massed-harmony domination, all well within Weezer’s skill set. And the sentiment — loneliness searching desperately for loyal companionship — is eternal. PARELES More

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      Lizzo’s Disco Dance Party, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phoebe Bridgers, KeiyaA, Wild Pink 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.Lizzo, ‘About Damn Time’The disco revival continues on Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” which features a rubbery, “Get Lucky” bass line and a bridge overflowing with Diana Ross glitter (“I’m comin’ out tonight, I’m comin’ out tonight”). More of a crowd-pleaser than last year’s Cardi B duet “Rumors,” “About Damn Time” is the first official single from Lizzo’s long-awaited album “Special,” which will be out July 15. If this track is an indication, she hasn’t switched up the formula too much, and at times — the Instagram-caption one-liners; the obligatory flute solo — it can feel a little paint-by-numbers Lizzo. But the song is best when she leans more earnestly into its emotional center, belting, “I’ve been so down and under pressure, I’m way too fine to be this stressed.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmelia Moore, ‘Crybaby’In “Crybaby,” Amelia Moore moans, “Do you like to make me cry, baby, because you do it all the time.” The production heaves and twitches with up-to-the-minute electronics: reversed tones, programmed drums, little keyboard loops, computer-tuned vocals. But the song’s masochistic drama stays rooted in the blues, and in the ways a human voice can break and leap. JON PARELESCisco Swank and Luke Titus featuring Phoelix, ‘Some Things Take Time’The multi-instrumentalist bedroom beat-makers of Instagram, who live by the loop and have lately turned overdubbing into a visual art form — or, at least, into visuals — are a mini-movement by now: Jacob Collier, DOMi and JD Beck, Julius Rodriguez. The list continues, and it’s bound to grow. If they’re all different, most are united in their worship of Stevie Wonder, more for his solo-studio mastery than for the extended-form genius of his compositions. The moment is understandably more interested in texture and groove than in duration or arc. Then it tracks that “Some Things Take Time” — the fun-loving debut album from Cisco Swank and Luke Titus, a duo of young polymaths — is barely the size of a mixtape: just 24 minutes across 11 tracks. And wisely, the tracks themselves aren’t overstuffed. The album’s title tune is a breezy blend of Titus’s sizzling snare patter; Swank’s rich piano harmony, no-notes-wasted bass line and synthesizer strings; and the falsetto flurries of Phoelix, the Noname accomplice who contributes a guest spot. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKay Flock featuring Cardi B, Dougie B and Bory300, ‘Shake It’A deeply strategic song that sounds deliciously happenstance, “Shake It” solves a few conundrums at once. First, for more than a year, sample drill has been the prevailing sound of New York rap, primarily from Brooklyn and the Bronx. But even though artists like Kay Flock and B-Lovee have had minor radio breakthroughs, the sound could still benefit from an ambassador. Enter Cardi B, who is due for a re-emergence, and is almost certainly the only mainstream rap star currently working who could hop on this rowdy of a drill song so seamlessly. Which isn’t to say without effort: This is a return to adaptable form for Cardi, reminiscent of the way she adopted Kodak Black’s flow on her breakout single “Bodak Yellow.” Her verse here is punchy and clipped — she’s morphing to the sound, not imposing herself onto it.Inside Lizzo’s WorldThe Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.‘Big Grrrls’: The singer wanted a new kind of backup dancer. In her pursuit of proper representation, she created a TV show.‘Feel-Good Music’: Lizzo says her music is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.Why ‘Truth Hurts’ Matters: In 2020, The New York Times Magazine put her No. 1 hit on its list of songs that define the moment.Diary of a Song: Watch how Lizzo made “Juice,” a party song that packs all of her joy and charm into three danceable minutes.Technically, this song belongs to Kay Flock, who is currently in jail: He was arrested in December and charged with murder. It also features Bory300 and Dougie B, another promising Bronx rapper who has the most limber verse here. Unlike the sublimated anxiety of the recent Fivio Foreign hit “City of Gods,” which strains to mold his brusque style into something soft-edged and arena-scaled, “Shake It” is nothing but abandon. It’s true to sample drill heritage, with bits of Akon’s “Bananza (Belly Dancer)” and Sean Paul’s “Temperature” woven throughout. But it has its eyes on bigger targets. An early snippet was made available as part of the highly viral New York video show “Sidetalk,” a favorite of insiders and voyeurs alike, giving “Shake It” a running start toward the kind of online ubiquity that makes for a contemporary pop hit without forsaking the essence of drill. JON CARAMANICAEdoheart, ‘Pandemonium’“Pandemonium” is the explosive title track of a new EP by Edoheart, a singer and producer who was born in Nigeria and is based in New York. It’s four minutes of brisk, skewed, constantly shifting African funk with rhythmic double vision: staggered guitar arpeggios, sputtering drumbeats, distant horns and overlapping voices proclaiming, “Change must come!” and, believably, “I’m free!” PARELESKeiyaA, ‘Camille’s Daughter’KeiyaA — the songwriter, instrumentalist and producer Chakeiya Camille Richmond — liquefies everything around her in “Camille’s Daughter.” Keyboard chords melt into wah-wah and echo, the beat drifts in late and haltingly, and KeiyaA starts and ends verses where she pleases, trailed by ever-shifting clouds of her own backup vocals. “Never will you replicate me,” she taunts, utterly secure in every self-made fluctuation. PARELESNaima Bock, ‘Giant Palm’Weightless and unpredictable (“I float high, high above it all”), the Glastonbury-born artist Naima Bock’s “Giant Palm” sounds a song you’d hear in a pleasant dream. Bock used to be in the British art-rock group Goat Girl, but her solo material leans more into the traditions of European folk and the off-kilter pop she heard during a childhood spent in Brazil. There’s a bit of ’70s Brian Eno in her vocal delivery and an echo of John Cale in her arrangements, but the fusion of her disparate cultural influences makes for an enchanting sound entirely Bock’s own. ZOLADZPhoebe Bridgers, ‘Sidelines’In Phoebe Bridgers’s world, even the most wholehearted love song is usually bittersweet: “Had nothing to prove, ’til you came into my life, gave me something to lose,” she sings on “Sidelines,” her first new song since her breakout 2020 album “Punisher”; it will be featured in the forthcoming Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends.” “I’m not afraid of anything at all,” Bridgers insists at the beginning of the song, before listing off a series of potential fears (earthquakes, plane crashes, growing up) in the sort of granular detail that makes her previous statement sound a little ironic. “Sidelines” features what has by now become Bridgers’s signature multi-tracked vocals — here, they glimmer with an almost Vocoder-like iridescence — which make her sound at once numb and, quite poignantly, wrestling with something ghostly right under the surface. ZOLADZWild Pink, ‘Q. DeGraw’Wild Pink hails from Brooklyn, but the group specializes in the sort of open-air, stargazing indie rock that usually gets associated with the Pacific Northwest. Like its acclaimed 2021 album “A Billion Little Lights,” its towering new single “Q. Degraw” shows Wild Pink’s flair for the epic, but it’s less an anthemic rocker than a slow-smoldering mood piece. The frontman John Ross’s muffled vocals are buried under distortion that obscures them as diffusely as a moon behind clouds, though the moments they become legible are especially affecting. “I’ve been to hell and back again,” he murmurs, before adding tenderly, “I know you’ve been to hell too.” ZOLADZKisskadee, ‘Black Hole Era’Kisskadee pulls together progressive-rock (the Canterbury school to be precise), astronomy, chamber-pop, computer sound manipulation and faith in resurrection in “Black Hole Era.” The music is rooted in a lurching piano more-or-less waltz — the meters shift — and it grows ever more programmed, overdubbed, manipulated and elastic. A lot of transformations happen within five minutes. PARELESFKA twigs, ‘Playscape’FKA twigs keeps working her art and fashion connections. “Playscape,” with a diversely cast video that she directed, is a showcase for wool clothing and Isamu Noguchi sculptures. After a sustained intro — isolated syllables and vocal harmonies — that hints at both Meredith Monk and Take 5, she goes full late-1970s punk, channeling the wail and saxophone of X-Ray Spex to remake a song with terminology that survived into the 21st century: “Identity.” With a mostly one-note melody, FKA twigs wails, “Identity! When you look in the mirror do you see yourself?” It’s not a new song, but it’s still pointed. PARELESJoel Ross, ‘Benediction’With his octet, Parables, the vibraphonist Joel Ross plays what could be called chorales, though they involve no vocals. The group’s repertoire grew out of a series of casual improvisations that Ross played and recorded years ago with the saxophonist Sergio Tabanico. Ross went back and pulled small curves and dashes of melody out of those recordings, then taught them to the octet by ear. They developed into entire pieces over time, through a process of collective weaving, until each tune had taken on an illusion of contained endlessness, like Maya Lin’s land sculptures or an old song of praise. Indeed, Ross built the octet’s new album, “The Parable of the Poet,” around the structure of a church service. But these seven tracks don’t seek to raise the rafters so much as waft slowly up toward them. “Benediction,” the final track, begins with a sublimely peaceful intro from the young pianist Sean Mason; at the end, the track fades with the band still savoring the melody in harmonized communion. RUSSONELLO More

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      Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers’s ‘Red’ Duet, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Beyoncé, Let’s Eat Grandma, Beach House 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.Taylor Swift featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Nothing New’Like “Fearless” before it, Taylor Swift’s rerecorded and reclaimed “Red (Taylor’s Version),” out Friday, features a trove of newly recorded material from the vault. One of the best offerings is “Nothing New,” a melancholic meditation Swift wrote in 2012 and returned to nearly a decade later, enlisting the singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers as her very capable duet partner. The song is kind of a shadow version of “The Lucky One,” Swift’s incisive but ultimately peppy track about the price of fame on the original release of “Red.” “Nothing New” is much darker in tone and more sharply critical of a culture that moves from one young ingénue to the next: “How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?” Swift asks, foreshadowing some of the themes she’d explore on her 2020 album “Folklore.” Most striking, though, is the bridge, in which she imagines meeting the Eve Harrington to her Margo Channing, a predecessor with “the kind of radiance you only have at 17.” It’s hard not to picture the longtime Swiftie Olivia Rodrigo (“She’ll know the way and then she’ll say she got the map from me”), who seems to have fulfilled this prophecy to a T. But in the time that has passed from when Swift wrote this song to when she finally recorded it, the mournful “Nothing New” has transformed into something triumphant: It’s proof that Swift has outlasted her novelty and stuck around longer than her detractors imagined. Plus, she doesn’t seem to mind Rodrigo calling her “mom.” LINDSAY ZOLADZBeach House, ‘Superstar’Beach House’s music contains many gifts, but it’s the group’s ability to magnify life’s small dramas into sky-sized emotions that glitters. “Superstar” is a prodigious torch song that fits comfortably among other beloved anthems in the band’s catalog: the blissed-out “Myth,” the romance of “Lover of Mine.” Here, the duo immerses itself in the cosmos, the trick of light of a falling star guiding the nightmare of a relationship’s end. “When you were mine/We fell across the sky,” sings Victoria Legrand as the band once again harnesses an indescribable feeling and bottles it. ISABELIA HERRERABeyoncé, ‘Be Alive’There’s nothing subtle about the message of Black striving and ambition in “Be Alive,” Beyoncé’s song for “King Richard,” the movie about the father and tennis coach of Venus and Serena Williams. “This is hustle personified/Look how we’ve been fighting to stay alive,” she sings. “So when we win we will have pride.” The beat is blunt, steady and determined, and as Beyoncé pushes her voice toward a rasp, she girds herself in vocal harmonies, a multitracked family. The song insists on the community effort behind the triumph. JON PARELESIrreversible Entanglements, ‘Open the Gates’“Open the gates, we arrive — energy time,” Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) commands in the title track to the new album by Irreversible Entanglements, which backs her spoken words with a shape-shifting jazz quartet. “Open the Gates” is a concise but packed two-and-a-half minutes, with a six-beat bass vamp holding together prismatic, multilayered percussion and horns — a welcome that promises eventful times ahead. PARELESGirl Ultra, ‘Amores de Droga’“Amores de Droga” doesn’t require much to glow: a steady four-on-the-floor rhythm, the weightless melodies of the Mexican R&B chanteuse Girl Ultra, a couple of bleeding-heart lyrics. “A mi nadie me enseñó a querer,” Girl Ultra sings. “Yo no nací pa’ enamorarme.” (“No one taught me how to love/I wasn’t born to fall in love.”) It’s a refutation — a detox from poisonous love and all its dangers. HERRERATeddy Afro, ‘Armash (Stand Up)’Ethiopia is consumed in a civil war as its Tigray ethnic minority, formerly in control, moves against a democratically elected government that has been taking its own brutal measures. On Nov. 2, the government declared a state of emergency. That was the day Teddy Afro released “Armash,” a nine-minute plea for Ethiopian unity sung in Amharic. It has two chords, an expanding horn line and a voice with deep sadness and a tinge of Auto-Tune, as he sings, “Longing for a country, here, in my own motherland.” It has logged more than three million listens on YouTube, but music can’t heal everything. PARELESMelanie Charles, ‘All Africa (The Beat)/The Music Is the Magic’In 2017 Melanie Charles self-released “The Girl With the Green Shoes,” a tantalizing, 30-minute mixtape that sampled Kelela, Nina Simone and Buddy Miles, and shined a light on Charles’s rangy talents as a vocalist, flutist and producer. She returns this week with “Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women,” her debut for the major jazz label Verve, and this one is a mixtape too, of sorts: She samples or reworks a song by a different Black woman ancestor on nearly every track. Abbey Lincoln gets covered twice, in a medley that starts with “All Africa,” a rolling rumination on the ancient power of the drum originally on “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.” Charles layers four-part harmony and swathes of effects onto an incantation of “The beat!” and her band kicks into a scorching, slow-motion groove. It opens onto a blasted-out cover of “The Music Is the Magic,” one of Lincoln’s most enchanted compositions, but after just over a minute, it fades out. The proof of concept is there. Now we’re waiting for more. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOShamir, ‘Cisgender’Most of Shamir’s songs have been wrapped in sweetness. Not this one. “Cisgender” is an uncompromising declaration of gender fluidity: “I don’t wanna be a girl, I don’t wanna be a man,” Shamir declares. “I’m just existing on this God-forsaken land/You can take it or leave it.” The track is industrial, with brute-force drums and distorted guitar, insisting that limits are being pushed; variations of a four-letter word pop up in the lyrics. In the video, the singer has deer horns and cloven hooves. PARELESMitski, ‘The Only Heartbreaker’There’s sleek, poppy sheen to Mitski’s latest single, the second from her newly announced sixth album, “Laurel Hell,” but beneath the distortion-scorched surfaces of her early work, she’s been writing melodies this catchy and anthemic since her great 2014 album “Bury Me at Makeout Creek.” Co-written with Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, “The Only Heartbreaker” is propelled by punchy percussion and retro-sounding synthesizers that explode into a dramatic conflagration during the song’s bridge. Like so many of Mitski’s best songs, this one is about embracing emotionality and the inevitability of messiness: “I’ll be the bad guy in the play,” she tells a relatively reserved partner. “I’ll be the water main that’s burst and flooding/You’ll be by the window, only watching.” ZOLADZPinegrove, ‘Alaska’“Last month in Alaska,” Evan Stephens Hall sings at the beginning of the latest song from Pinegrove, stretching out those vowels with a twangy sense of yearning. (In the next verse, impressively, he’ll wring a similar kind of musicality out of the word “Orlando.”) Taken from the New Jersey indie-rockers’ forthcoming album “11:11” (out Jan. 28), “Alaska” is one of those cozy winter songs you want to wrap around yourself like a wool blanket. The lyrics showcase the vivid poeticism of Hall’s writing (“like a ladder to the atmosphere, the rungs each come again and again”) while the song’s driving rhythm and fuzzy guitars create an atmosphere that’s at once emotionally restless and as warm as a hearth. ZOLADZCamp Cope, ‘Blue’Following the righteous punk anger of Camp Cope’s great 2018 album “How to Socialize & Make Friends,” the Australian trio’s first single in three years is something of a departure: “Blue” is a twangy, acoustic-driven reflection, its sonic palette akin to something off Waxahatchee’s “St. Cloud.” But subsequent listens reveal singer Georgia Maq’s emotional perception to be as receptive and unflinching as ever, as the song depicts a relationship in which both partners are struggling with their own forms of depression: “It’s all blue, you know I feel it and I bet you do.” ZOLADZLet’s Eat Grandma, ‘Two Ribbons’“Two Ribbons,” the title song of an album due in April, puts a serene facade on all-consuming grief. It backs Jenny Hollingworth’s voice with, mostly, two chords from a calmly strummed electric guitar, along with underlying tones; Velvet Underground songs like “Pale Blue Eyes” are predecessors. Her voice and her words cope with suffering, death, mourning, survival, and moving on; the song is quietly shattering. PARELES.Mdou Moctar, ‘Live at the Niger River’Mdou Moctar, a Tuareg guitarist and singer born in Niger, and the other three members of his band, set up to perform on a bank of the Niger River during a scenic sunrise to play four songs — “Tala Tannam,” “Bissmilahi Atagh,” “Ya Habibti” and “Chismiten” — from the album they released this year, “Afrique Victime.” With just two guitars, bass and calabash, the music is live, unadorned and pristinely recorded. Drone harmonies make it meditative, even as the rhythms and guitar lines streak ahead. PARELESAdam O’Farrill, ‘Ducks’The trumpeter and composer Adam O’Farrill has a way of showing his ambition by turning the volume down, asking the members of his quartet, Stranger Days, to play their spare but not-simple parts with measured intention, so that all four instruments can be heard at the same volume. On “Ducks,” from “Visions of Your Other,” O’Farrill’s just-released album with Stranger Days, the drummer Zack O’Farrill (his brother) leaves space around every drum stroke. The busiest it gets is at the end of the track, when O’Farrill and the tenor saxophonist Xavier Del Castillo hold long notes together in taut harmony. RUSSONELLO More

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      Lucy Dacus Takes Confessional Songwriting to a New Level

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      For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the singer used her childhood journals as source material.In November of 2018, while on tour with the group boygenius, the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus began performing a recently written song, “Thumbs,” partly at the urging of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, her bandmates in that project. Dacus had already drawn on her own life for the wry and charged songs on her first two solo albums, “No Burden” (2016) and “Historian” (2018), but “Thumbs” — a confessional song about a violent impulse felt toward a close friend’s abusive father — with its blunt reminder that a survivor owes an oppressor exactly nothing, resonated particularly deeply with her fans. “I’ve probably received more messages about that song than anything else I’ve written,” Dacus told me recently. On her solo tour in 2019, she occasionally closed her sets with “Thumbs,” prefacing each performance with a request that no one record it.Lyrically the song often feels like a short story — the father and daughter’s tense meeting at a bar after years of estrangement, as witnessed by a protective friend (“I would kill him / if you let me … I don’t know how you keep smiling,” the narrator sings); the way they “feel him watching / walk a mile in the wrong direction.” But like all the songs on “Home Video,” Dacus’s third album, out on June 25 from Matador, the source material came directly and almost entirely from the journals she’s kept faithfully from the age of 7. The album’s 11 songs, together a forthright exploration of coming of age, deep friendships and young queer love amid a Bible camp backdrop, volley between grief and humor and darkness. They are her most intimate and deliberately personal work to date.For her third solo album, “Home Video,” the 26-year-old Dacus mined her own life, consulting the journals she’s kept since she was 7.Candace Karch“It was intentional that I talk plainly on this album about things that actually happened because I hadn’t done that yet,” the artist says on an early May afternoon while on her front porch in Philadelphia. Dacus, who’s trying to wean herself off a habit of wearing all black, has on a dark blue sweater and bright red pants that match her shade of lipstick. We’re having tea and leftover birthday cake — cardamom, pistachio, olive — that a friend made for Dacus’s 26th birthday a couple days ago. The party occasioned the first reunion of newly vaccinated friends, which Dacus says felt “slightly skittish, but really fun.” On Instagram, she posted a photo of the aftermath, a table covered in so many Pollock-like swirls it was impossible to decipher what had occurred there. “I woke up this morning and deep-cleaned the table,” Dacus says, looking down at it a little ruefully. “We had a crab bake. I really hope it doesn’t smell.”Dacus moved to Philadelphia — a city that had slowly grown on her while she was on tour — from her hometown of Richmond, Va., and after recording “Home Video” in Nashville, at the end of 2019. Heading into 2020, she felt oddly hopeful. When Dacus and her band did a three-night residency at the Philadelphia club Johnny Brenda’s, the audiences erupted in chants afterward for Bernie Sanders. She played her last show in March, in Florida. The release of “Home Video,” which Matador had slated for as early as fall 2020, was pushed back; a slowed-down, remote version of production continued throughout the pandemic.In May of last year, two months into lockdown and recovering from back surgery, Dacus dreamed she was running around a house with her best friends and, as one does during a pandemic, promptly went on Zillow, where a fresh listing for a rambling, early-20th-century rowhouse appeared on her screen. She rounded up six roommates, packed up her sizable library and moved in last summer. As we talk, various housemates drift past us and the dogwood tree in the front yard, wheeling out the recycling, returning from rock climbing. Recently, Dacus signed papers to buy the house, where she’ll continue to live communally. “I think I need one week every four months completely to myself, but other than that I want to be around people,” she says. “I struggle with depersonalization, so it’s nice to have a hustle and bustle around me.”In 2017 and 2018, when she began writing songs for “Home Video,” Dacus occasionally allowed herself to consult particular entries in her old journals, to check a detail for accuracy, and stumbled into a memoirist’s classic quandary. Dacus tends to lean on her emotional memory, layered with hindsight and grown-up knowledge, over what her childhood self was willing to put on the page. “Almost reliably the perspective is true and the entry is not and I’m pissed about that because I would really like to know what I thought in the moment,” she says. “Who’s to know which one I should trust more?” Otherwise, for a long time she says she stuck to another writerly instinct, to not reread the entries: “If I was too close to the event, it wouldn’t hit as an actual story.”Early in lockdown, though, Dacus sat down and began to type up her journals, starting from the beginning grade school years and stopping at age 16, when she hit around 100,000 words. When she looked back at the writing of her teen years, certain omissions stood out. “I really was just hovering around the fact that I was not straight,” she says. “A lot of the songs, like ‘Triple Dog Dare,’ are about that.” “Triple Dog Dare,” which, more precisely, is about queer love forbidden by the church, closes the album with astonishing and dark undertones, intentionally referencing an idea from “A Little Life” (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara (also T’s editor in chief). “There’s a section in the middle of the novel where a parent is talking about losing a child and expresses the surprising relief that nothing worse can happen now,” Dacus says. “That idea really stuck with me.”At 26, Dacus is thoughtful and forthright when describing her sexual identity. “Gay is the overarching word, queer is the better overarching word and more specifically bisexual or pansexual,” she says. “I have no allegiance. I think gender is a joke.”DACUS WAS ADOPTED as an infant and grew up on the rural-suburban edges of Richmond, amid the kind of teenage wasteland territories of her songs — overpasses, cornfields, goat farms. “It was a little isolated but I was also around a bunch of people my age going through the same angsty time, so it was kind of a pressure cooker for weirdness,” she says. From her father, a graphic designer, she acquired a belated love of Bruce Springsteen that translated into her fantastically rocked-out rendition of “Dancing in the Dark” — a song Dacus says has been covered so many times it’s attained the status of a hymn — on her EP “2019” (2019). She credits her mother, a pianist who worked in musical theater, with turning her on to Prince and David Bowie. But as a kid, she admits, she mostly listened to Top 40 songs with her friends, musicians like the Shins that she’d discover from “Gilmore Girls” and church music. She wouldn’t buy her first guitar, a $100 Ibanez she found on Craigslist, until she was 19.Handwritten lyrics to “Partners in Crime,” a song on Dacus’s new album. The words and melody come first, she says. “I’ll go on a walk and sing to myself and go home and pick up the guitar and figure out chords.”Candace KarchIt was around this time that she came out to her then boyfriend and to her family. “I think they were cool with it, but they were not asking questions, not really following up,” she says of her parents. “It was more about me making sure they knew it than a piece of information that brought us together. I’m grateful there wasn’t a fight. It was more like, OK, next topic. Maybe one day. Maybe they’ll read this and ring me up about it.”Dacus was raised in what she characterizes as a fairly progressive church, but she also attended her friends’ churches, places that are referenced in her song “Christine” (“We’re coming home / from a sermon saying / how bent on evil we are”): “There was one church I’d go to a lot where they separated you by gender and they talked to you a lot about sex,” she says. “Like, the purpose of this church was to make sure kids did not have sex.”Talking to her parents about leaving the church was a conversation of coming-out-level difficulty that Dacus reserved for a drive. As she sings in “Brando,” “That’s only something you would say in the car.” “They’re both still Christian and I think they know that I’m not done with whatever journey I’m on and I think that brings them peace of mind,” she says.She sings about the confusion of religious feeling on “VBS,” a song whose title is an acronym for Vacation Bible School. The Dacus of this song, in her early teens, smokes nutmeg in her camp boyfriend’s bunk bed and tries not to laugh at his bad poetry. “He was my first boyfriend and he was a stoner who loved Slayer and we danced in a field with all these people to Christian rock and I thought, this is literally God that’s making me feel so good, when it was probably just endorphins and hormones,” she says.Concerts, Dacus says, fill a void that church once did. “For me, there’s no greater joy than hearing people sing together,” she says. On “Please Stay” and the stunning “Going Going Gone” (which was recorded in a single take), Baker and Bridgers join Dacus, the group reprising its boygenius harmonizing. In the days before my visit, the trio was commended on Twitter by the Chicks for their cover of “Cowboy Take Me Away.” They were also name-checked in an episode of “Mare of Easttown” when Mare’s daughter, Siobhan (Angourie Rice), is asked on a date to a boygenius show by a college radio DJ (Madeline Weinstein).“We were talking about it in our group chat and Julien said something like, ‘Welcome to the gay cultural zeitgeist,’ ” Dacus says. “For our band to basically be an indicator of gayness in a TV show is so funny — and also we only did one tour, so like, did this scene happen in November 2018?” The improbability factor puts boygenius in the pop cultural realm of Sonic Youth appearing on “Gilmore Girls,” the Pixies on “Beverly Hills 90210.” While there are no reunion plans on the horizon, Dacus, Baker and Bridgers message almost daily. “We started doing tarot together,” Dacus says. “Julien didn’t have a deck until recently, Phoebe has a really ornate one and I have the classic Rider deck. I love it. It’s like having a shared lexicon, having a ritual.”Dacus is eager to begin touring again this fall. She keeps a spreadsheet of song requests fans have made in specific cities. She’s excited to play the songs on “Home Video,” even though she hasn’t been able to listen to the entire album herself in a long time. To put out something so honest and vulnerable feels “scary, but good,” she says. It was her first grade teacher who gave her a blank composition book, her first journal — with the reminder that the writing she produced in it would be for Dacus’s eyes only, a pact she’s only now broken in adulthood. “It’s not that I had secrets to protect, but I wanted secrets,” she says. “So I had to find a way to create them.” More

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      Phoebe Bridgers Reworks Paul McCartney, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Andra Day, London Grammar, José González 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.Paul McCartney featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Seize the Day’Don’t take Paul McCartney’s enduring gifts — natural melody, succinctly surprising lyrics, sly chord progressions, tidy arrangements — for granted. Other songwriters don’t. Lest anyone has, the 78-year-old Sir Paul enlisted younger admirers (Beck, St. Vincent, Blood Orange, Anderson .Paak, Josh Homme, Dominic Fike) to rework the songs from his 2020 solo-in-the-studio album, “McCartney III,” as the new “McCartney III Imagined.” Phoebe Bridgers took on “Seize the Day,” a manifesto of unironic good intentions: “I’m OK with a sunny day when the world deserves to be bright.” She brings her own spirit of hushed discovery to the song, keeping McCartney’s march tempo but toning down his electric guitars. She ends her version with church bells, like a blessing. JON PARELESLucy Dacus, ‘Hot & Heavy’Since joining forces as boygenius, two-thirds of the band, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, have released searing solo albums that took their already strong songwriting to the next level. Now, it appears to be Lucy Dacus’s turn. “Hot & Heavy” begins in a synthesized glow, for a moment seeming like it might be a continuation of the stark sound she conjured on the recently released “Thumbs.” But it doesn’t take long for “Hot & Heavy” to kick into a gallop, coming alive with chiming guitars and gleaming pop-rock flourishes that recall “Full Moon Fever”-era Tom Petty. “You used to be so sweet,” Dacus sings on this tale of stinging nostalgia, “Now you’re a firecracker on a crowded street.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFiona Apple, ‘Love More’Ten years ago, Sharon Van Etten released her first great album, “Epic,” an enduringly wrenching account of a troubled relationship’s dissolution. To commemorate its anniversary, an impressive and eclectic array of artists — Lucinda Williams, Courtney Barnett, Shamir — contributed to a covers collection called “Epic Ten.” The ultimate co-sign, though, comes from the indomitable Fiona Apple, who offers her own interpretation of the album’s beautiful closing track, “Love More.” Van Etten’s version was a sparsely poignant dirge, buoyed by gentle waves of harmonium chords. Apple, instead, anchors hers to an almost chant-like rhythm accompanied by playfully layered backing vocal runs — though her delivery of the song’s verses provides the smoldering intensity these lyrics call for. “Chained to the wall of our room,” goes the opening line. Leave it to Fiona to fetch the bolt cutters. ZOLADZAndra Day, ‘Phone Dies’“We can feel these vibes until my phone dies,” Andra Day offers, casually pitting the promise of romance against limited battery life. In Anderson .Paak’s blithe, tricky production, a frisky Brazilian beat carries Day’s multitracked vocals through a maze of chromatic chords that gives the illusion of climbing higher and higher, all the way to a sudden, giggly end. PARELESTirzah, ‘Send Me’It’s been three years since the London artist and Mica Levi collaborator Tirzah released her hypnotic debut album “Devotion,” but the new single “Send Me” transports the listener right back to that singularly chill head space. “Send Me” is built from simple materials — a repeated guitar lick, a hi-hat loop and Tirzah’s sultry, Sade-like vocals — but combined they somehow create a dense, enveloping atmosphere. “Let me heal and now I’m sure, now I’m sure,” Tirzah sings, her words seeming to turn to vapor on the exhales. It’s a whole vibe. ZOLADZSaweetie and Drakeo the Ruler, ‘Risky’It’s only April, but Saweetie is already wishing you a very pretty summer. Her new single “Risky” is at once effortless and exuberant, patiently waiting for whenever the weather permits you to roll the windows down. Drakeo the Ruler’s murmuring flow provides a perfect counterpoint to Saweetie’s bombast (“All this ice drippin’ on my body like a runny nose”), while a minimalist beat provides plenty of space for her personality to shine like a freshly painted ride. ZOLADZMick Jagger with Dave Grohl, ‘Eazy Sleazy’For Mick Jagger, quarantine fatigue has curdled into sarcastic exasperation. “Eazy Sleazy” is a late-pandemic rant, a stomping, mocking checklist of sloppy rhymes and coronavirus-year phenomena, from “Cancel all the tours/football’s fake applause” to “TikTok stupid dance” to “Way too much TV” to wacky conspiracy theories. Dave Grohl, an accomplished student of classic rock, reconstituted the full Rolling Stones sound behind Jagger’s rhythm guitar, and every few lines there’s a scream tossed into the mix. The chorus looks forward to a “freaky” reopening, when “It’ll only be a memory you’re trying to remember to forget”; this song will be a throwaway souvenir. PARELESLondon Grammar, ‘Lord It’s a Feeling’Hannah Reid, London Grammar’s singer, plays a not-so-impartial observer in “Lord It’s a Feeling.” She stacks up the misdeeds of a friend’s callous, cheating lover — “I saw the way you laughed behind her back” — before revealing, “I can admit that I have been right here myself.” A decorous string orchestra backs her at first, as she sings in her purest tones. But when her own stake becomes clear, a beat kicks in, her voice hardens and the observer becomes the accuser. PARELESJosé González, ‘Visions’It’s a small world. José González, born in Sweden to Argentine parents, carries on a British tradition of folky, meditative singer-songwriters. “Visions,” built from vocal harmonies and acoustic-guitar picking, takes an eternal perspective on “sentient beings” who should “look at the magic of reality/while accepting the honesty that we can’t know for sure what’s next.” Accompanied by his guitar drone, distant electronics and bird song, he notes, as a kind of mantra, “We are here together.” PARELESLea Bertucci, ‘An Arc of the Horizon’Place is central to the music of Lea Bertucci, a multi-instrumentalist and sound artist whose recordings often spring from questions about how physical environments express themselves through sound. But her work isn’t meant to just document the sonic qualities of a place; through a process of layering and abstraction, Bertucci gives us something closer to the residue of an experience or a vanished memory. On her new self-released album, “A Visible Length of Light,” ambient recordings she captured in New York, Rio de Janeiro, California and Nebraska haunt tracks featuring lightly droning organ, bass clarinet, wood flute and saxophone. It’s not clear where the sounds on “An Arc of the Horizon” were captured, but instead the music — spatial more than melodic — becomes an environment of its own. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOWadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart and Mike Reed, ‘Super Moon Rising’Rustle, resonance and attentive listening are the coins of the realm when the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, the multi-reedist Douglas R. Ewart and the drummer Mike Reed come together. They’ve performed as a trio only rarely, but all three are improvisers and organizers with roots on the Chicago avant-garde and histories of involvement in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. “Super Moon Rising” is the centerpiece of their new album, “Sun Beans of Shimmering Light,” which connects to a long tradition of recordings by AACM-affiliated musicians that treat sparse and spacious free improvising as a style unto itself. RUSSONELLOSpirit of the Beehive, ‘Rapid & Complete Recovery’“Rapid & Complete Recovery” passes, briefly, as one of the milder, more approachable songs in Spirit of the Beehive’s catalog of dense, overloaded, compulsively morphing and often nerve-racking songs. It’s from the Philadelphia band’s new album, “Entertainment, Death,” and with its jazz-tinged opening bass vamp and acoustic-guitar syncopations it could pass for Laurel Canyon pop-folk — if not for its nagging high synthesizer tones, its cranked-up drums, its swerve into spoken words and the way instruments and vocals echo and melt at the end. “No limitations, you know what I’m after,” Zack Schwartz and Rivka Ravede calmly sing, perhaps as a partial explanation. PARELES More