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    Eminem Loses the Magic, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Clairo, Nathy Peluso, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Eminem, ‘Houdini’Eminem attempts to recapture past glories on his exhausting new song “Houdini,” the first single from his upcoming 12th album, “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce).” Atop a garish, carnivalesque beat that interpolates a sample of the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra,” the M.C.’s crass alter ego Slim Shady surveys the current cultural moment and strings together some stiltedly rapped jokes, desperate to offend at every turn. Oldest trick in the book. LINDSAY ZOLADZTwenty One Pilots, ‘Navigating’“Clancy,” the new album by the two-man band Twenty One Pilots, is the fourth installment in a series of concept albums. But “Navigating” doesn’t necessarily need a back story. It’s a psychological crisis, as Tyler Joseph sings about feeling dazed and disassociated, unable to speak but desperate for connection: “Pardon my delay — I’m navigating my head” is his closest explanation. The track is a buzzing, galloping, pumping merger of punk-pop and electro, opening with an arena-sized “Hey-oh” chant and trying to get through the crisis on sheer momentum. JON PARELESGirl Scout, ‘I Just Needed You to Know’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Clairo Takes a Defiant Leap on ‘Sling’

    The songwriter and producer’s second album is proudly retro and humbly indie, drawing on her emotional epiphanies and anxieties about the music industry.“Sling,” the second album from the introverted but openhearted musician Clairo, was inspired by two relatively common pandemic-era life changes: In the past year, the 22-year-old songwriter and producer born Claire Cottrill relocated to upstate New York, and adopted a dog.Fans have been acquainted with Joanie, a part chow chow/Great Pyrenees mix, via Clairo’s Instagram since she was a puppy. The musician’s gradual acceptance of Joanie’s unabashed dependency and unconditional love forms the emotional arc of the album. (Joanie is also credited with providing “chimes” and “snoring.”)One upstate lure was the scenic Allaire Studios in Shokan, N.Y., which Cottrill told Rolling Stone had a transformative effect on her sound: “Seeing mountains every day when you’re making music,” she said, “I suddenly felt the urge to put a horn on a song.” The transition from the gently kinetic pop of Clairo’s excellent 2019 debut album “Immunity” to the folk-pastoral “Sling” is a dramatic sonic leap akin to Taylor Swift’s shift between “Lover” and “Folklore.” Naturally, Clairo co-produced “Sling” with one of the architects of Swift’s Cottage of Sound, the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff.Clairo first came to prominence almost by accident, in 2017, when the charismatic, self-recorded video for her song “Pretty Girl” went viral. It was a YouTube phenomenon (75 million views) but its vibe now feels proto-TikTok: a casually dressed, slightly bored teenage girl passing time in her bedroom by performing for her camera and an imagined audience. The easy charm of the video may have unwittingly diverted some of the attention from Clairo’s songwriting, but it led to a record deal when she was 19.“Sling,” a strange, uncompromising and anti-commercial album, doubles down on the subtly defiant spirit that was already present on “Pretty Girl,” although this time Clairo’s target is not a narrow-minded partner but an entire industry poised to commodify and cash in on her artistry.“I’m stepping inside a universe designed against my own beliefs,” she proclaims on the bucolic but itchy “Bambi.” The album’s arresting first single, “Blouse,” features haunting backing vocals from fellow Antonoff collaborator Lorde; “Why do I tell you how I feel, when you’re too busy looking down my blouse?” the two women croon like a long-lost ’70s folk duo. “Mom, would you give me a ring? One for the ride, and one for the magazine,” she sings on “Management,” a winking critique of the sort of image creation she has felt pressured to stage in service of her career.Clairo may have initially arrived as an indelible product of the high-speed internet era, but the world “Sling” inhabits is miles from the nearest Wi-Fi connection. Its sound is proudly retro and humbly indie: Vampy Wurlitzers, woolly acoustic guitars and trilling woodwinds abound. At times, “Sling” sounds like Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic” had it been released on the D.I.Y. label K Records.Clairo co-produced “Sling” with Jack Antonoff, who has recently worked with Lorde and Taylor Swift.Adrian NietoUnfortunately, this sonic palette can make some of the less memorable songs bleed together, their meandering melodies and sludgy tempos failing to distinguish themselves. Tracks like “Partridge,” “Wade” and “Zinnias” get lost in dense, dizzying thickets of their own creation.Clairo sings in a low murmur that occasionally surges with great emotion — “Sling” makes the case that her most direct vocal precursor is either Elliott Smith or Phil Elverum — and her various co-producers have experimented with different methods of recording her voice. If the avant-pop producer Danny L. Harle threatened to drown it out with bells and whistles on her 2018 EP “Diary 001,” Antonoff sometimes gives it too much space to roam. Rostam Batmanglij, the atmospheric-pop-minded producer who collaborated with Clairo on “Immunity,” had helped her find a middle ground, buoying and giving structure to her delicate sensibility without overwhelming it.Clairo does pull off that balance, though, on the new album’s second track, “Amoeba,” a highlight anchored by funky, insistent keyboards and a steady beat — a song that manages to brood and saunter at the same time. Even more affecting is the acoustic ballad “Just for Today,” which, like the stunning “Immunity” song “Alewife,” finds Clairo to be a fearlessly vivid correspondent from the darkest corners of her depression. “Mommy, I’m afraid I’ve been talking to the hotline again,” she sings, her voice sounding childlike in its desperation but suddenly relieved by the release of this confession.“Just for Today” is further proof of a pleasant surprise: There was always more depth to Clairo’s sadness and songcraft than could be conveyed by the three-minute synth-pop ditty that made her famous. It also demonstrates that her music is at its most lucid and effective when an extended hand — or paw — is drawing her back up to the surface. The definitive version of “Just for Today” might be the demo she posted to Instagram in January 2021, the night after she wrote it. “At 30, your honey’s gonna ask you what the hell is wrong with me,” she croons, and then suddenly dissolves into giggles. A yelping Joanie has jumped up and thudded against her guitar, trying to snuggle into her lap.Clairo“Sling”(Fader Label/Republic Records) More

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    Lorde’s Sunburst, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Ava Max, Clairo, PmBata 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.Lorde, ‘Solar Power’About the last thing to be expected from a songwriter as moody and intense as Lorde was a carefree ditty about fun in the summer sun. “Solar Power,” the title song from an impending album, is just that, riding three chords and brisk acoustic rhythm guitar (and glancing back at George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90”) to celebrate hitting the beach, getting sun-tanned cheeks and tossing away her “cellular device”: “Can you reach me? No! You can’t,” she sings, and giggles. She has an offhand but attention-getting boast — “I’m kind of like a prettier Jesus” — and an invitation completely free of ambivalence: “Come on and let the bliss begin.” JON PARELESAva Max, ‘EveryTime I Cry’Just to be certain, I have Googled and confirmed that no one has yet referred to Ava Max as Una Lipa. There’s still time. (This is a compliment.) JON CARAMANICASaint Jhn and SZA, ‘Just for Me’A beat ticks along behind slow-pulsing synthesizer chords as Saint Jhn appears, claiming lovelorn angst but safely distancing it with Auto-Tune. But when SZA arrives, a minute and a half in, her voice leaps out. Like him, she proclaims a desperate, dangerous infatuation. Unlike him, she sounds like she means it. PARELESPmBata, ‘Favorite Song’Endlessly cheerful lite-pop-soul, “Favorite Song” is a bopping strut from PmBata, toggling between singing and rapping, though less hip-hop-influenced than his earlier singles like “Down for Real.” The come-ons are a little frisky, but the attitude is never less than sweet. CARAMANICAJomoro featuring Sharon Van Etten, ‘Nest’Jomoro is the alliance of two percussionists turned songwriters: Joey Waronker, Beck’s longtime drummer, and Mauro Refosco, a David Byrne mainstay. Of course they need singers, and they have assorted guests on Jomoro’s album, “Blue Marble Sky.” Sharon Van Etten provides sustain and suspense on “Nest,” singing about “the darkest corner, the back of the mind” over a steadfast march of synthesizer tones textured with bells, shakers and hand drums: physical percussion to orchestrate a mental journey inward. PARELESClairo, ‘Blouse’It was inevitable that current bedroom-pop songwriters would discover the hushed intricacies of predecessors like Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. Clairo embraces both, recalling Smith’s whispery vocal harmonies immediately and Drake’s elegant string arrangements soon afterward. She’s singing about a kitchen-table lovers’ quarrel and a situation neither man would think to portray: “Why do I tell you how I feel/When you’re just looking down my blouse?” PARELESEsperanza Spalding featuring Corey King, ‘Formwela 4’Over an eddying sequence of arpeggios plucked by Corey King on acoustic guitar, surrounded by the sounds of springtime, Esperanza Spalding sings in patient and gentle tones about long-term trauma, and about reaching out for support. “Wanna be grown and let it go/really didn’t let it go though,” she begins. When Spalding gets to the chorus, it mostly consists of one repeated line: “Dare to say it.” This track, released Friday, comes as part of Spalding’s Songwrights Apothecary Lab, an evolving project that imagines musical collaboration as a pathway toward healing. (It already yielded a suite of three powerful tracks, created with other prominent musicians and released earlier this year.) She and King wrote “Formwela 4” in response to a simple challenge: “Say what is most difficult to say between loved ones.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHypnotic Brass Ensemble featuring Perfume Genius: ‘A Fullness of Light in Your Soul’The Minimalism-loving Hypnotic Brass Ensemble has rediscovered “Sapphie,” an EP that was released in 1998 by the prolific English musician Richard Youngs and rereleased in 2006 by the Jagjaguwar label, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary with left-field, interdisciplinary collaborations. Youngs’s original version was a stark acoustic meditation, just quiet fingerpicking behind Youngs’s high, breaking voice, with musings like “Sometimes it’s better never than late/and there’s a spareness of days” and “Happiness leaves everything as it is/and the future isn’t anything.” Hypnotic Brass Ensemble adds inner harmonies and orchestrates them with Philip Glass-like motifs for brass and woodwinds and surreal reverberations as Perfume Genius sings in a rapt falsetto, trading Youngs’s solitude for immersive depths. The video — perhaps taking a hint from the song’s first line, “working around museums,” shows the visual artist Lonnie Holley creating images with spray paint, twigs and wire. PARELESJulian Lage, ‘Squint’The gangly, big-boned drum style on this track might be recognizable — particularly to fans of the Bad Plus — as the sound of Dave King when he’s having fun. The drummer is heard here in a newish trio, led by the virtuoso guitarist Julian Lage, and featuring Jorge Roeder on bass. “Squint,” the title track from Lage’s Blue Note debut, begins with the guitarist alone, causally demonstrating why he’s one of the most dazzling improvisers around; then King comes in and things cohere into that lumbering swing feel, held together by Roeder’s steady gait on the bass. RUSSONELLOPoo Bear, ‘The Day You Left’Poo Bear (Jason Boyd), a songwriter and producer with Justin Bieber, Usher, Jill Scott and many others, shows his own achingly mournful voice in “The Day You Left.” He’s a desperately long-suffering lover who knows he’s been betrayed for years, but still wants his partner back. The production, by a team that includes Skrillex, keeps opening new electronic spaces around him, with celestial keyboards in some, shadowy whispers in others. PARELESNoCap, ‘Time Speed’More glorious yelps from the Alabama sing-rapper NoCap, who, over light blues-country guitar, is enduring some push and pull with a partner. “I might be gone for a while, just write,” he urges, but confesses he’s not in the driver’s seat. If she feels compelled to stray, he says, “just don’t hold him tight.” CARAMANICA More