Del Rey, Lana

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      16 Songs to Soundtrack Your Fourth of July Barbecue

      by

      Listen to a genre-crossing hourlong summer playlist featuring Lana Del Rey, Funkadelic and Tom Petty.Tom Petty says take it easy, baby.Gus Stewart/Getty ImagesDear listeners,At last, the season of late sunsets, languid beach days and endless barbecues is upon us. This calls for a playlist.Today’s genre-crossing collection could definitely work as a soundtrack to your upcoming Fourth of July party, and there are a few references to Independence Day sprinkled here and there. But for the most part, I wanted to avoid the glaringly obvious and create a fun, breezy playlist that can be enjoyed all summer long.Appropriately for a Fourth of July gathering, all of the artists featured here are American. Well, except one: I forgot that the ’90s one-hit wonders Len were actually Canadian, but I wasn’t about to remove “Steal My Sunshine” from a summer playlist.This is a long one, because the best and most characteristic part of a summer day is the feeling of suspended time, the sense of a Saturday that may go on forever. Here’s to an endless-seeming summer, and to no one stealing your sunshine.Also: We won’t be sending out a new Amplifier on the Fourth, because I wouldn’t want to compel you to check your email on a holiday. We’ll resume our regular schedule next Friday. Til then!Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Lana Del Rey: “Doin’ Time”When I first saw this cover on the track list of her 2019 opus “Norman _____ Rockwell,” I had my doubts, but now I must agree with all the people in the dance: Lana Del Rey is indeed well qualified to represent the L.B.C. (Listen on YouTube)2. Sublime: “Badfish”It’s poor form to mention Sublime at a barbecue without then playing one of its songs, so here’s my all-time favorite, the wrenching but always buoyant “Badfish.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Solange: “Binz”Slightly under two minutes of immaculate vibes from Solange’s sonically fluid 2019 album, “When I Get Home.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Mariah Carey: “Honey”A sun-kissed summer jam from the elusive chanteuse. “Honey,” from Carey’s 1997 album “Butterfly,” famously found her embracing a more hip-hop-indebted sound. (Listen on YouTube)5. Len: “Steal My Sunshine”Centered around a clever sample of Andrea True Connection’s “More, More, More,” the ubiquitous “Steal My Sunshine” made Len one of the ’90s’ most memorable one-hit wonders. Warning: May cause spontaneous singalongs. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Breeders: “Saints”Kim Deal conjures the tactile pleasures of a day at the carnival in this blazing little ditty from the Breeders’ classic 1993 album “Last Splash,” before growling that memorable refrain, “Summer is ready when you are.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Eleanor Friedberger: “Roosevelt Island”This ode to a leisurely day on New York City’s most underrated island, by the Fiery Furnaces frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger, would almost sound like a spoken-word poem were it not for that deliciously funky keyboard lick. (Listen on YouTube)8. A Tribe Called Quest: “Can I Kick It?”A pitch-perfect soundtrack to, well … just kicking it. Phife Dawg forever and ever. (Listen on YouTube)9. Erykah Badu: “Cel U Lar Device”Badu reworks Drake’s “Hotline Bling” to fit her own singular personality on this centerpiece from her 2015 mixtape “But You Caint Use My Phone.” The voice mail menu instructions toward the end of the track never fail to crack me up. (Listen on YouTube)10. Funkadelic: “Can You Get to That”One nation, under a groove. (Yes, I know that album came out years after “Maggot Brain.” The sentiment remains!) (Listen on YouTube)11. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “American Girl”Fun fact: Not only was “American Girl” recorded on the Fourth of July, it was recorded on the Bicentennial. Petty manages to imbue this perfect song with enough specificity and antic poignancy that it still, after all these years, feels more personal than anthemic. (Listen on YouTube)12. Bruce Springsteen: “Darlington County”Because the title track of “Born in the U.S.A.” would have been a little too obvious, and anyway, this one’s just as fun to sing along to. Sha la la, sha la la la la-la. (Listen on YouTube)13. Luke Combs: “Fast Car”Speaking of singalongs, this current hit and surprise contender for song of the summer is sure to unite multiple generations of barbecue-goers who know all the words by heart — some to Tracy Chapman’s peerless original, and some to the country star Combs’s reverent homage. (Listen on YouTube)14. Beyoncé: “Plastic Off the Sofa”The most laid-back and sumptuous moment on Beyoncé’s 2022 dance-floor odyssey “Renaissance” is an invitation for a moment of summertime relaxation. (Listen on YouTube)15. De La Soul: “Me, Myself and I”Rejoice: It’s the first Fourth of July when De La Soul’s discography is on streaming services! (Listen on YouTube)16. Miley Cyrus: “Party in the U.S.A.”Just try not to put your hands up. I dare you. (Listen on YouTube)Summer is ready when you are,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Ultimate Fourth of July BBQ Soundtrack” track listTrack 1: Lana Del Rey, “Doin’ Time”Track 2: Sublime, “Badfish”Track 3: Solange, “Binz”Track 4: Mariah Carey, “Honey”Track 5: Len, “Steal My Sunshine”Track 6: The Breeders, “Saints”Track 7: Eleanor Friedberger, “Roosevelt Island”Track 8: A Tribe Called Quest, “Can I Kick It?”Track 9: Erykah Badu, “Cel U Lar Device”Track 10: Funkadelic, “Can You Get to That”Track 11: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “American Girl”Track 12: Bruce Springsteen, “Darlington County”Track 13: Luke Combs, “Fast Car”Track 14: Beyoncé, “Plastic off the Sofa”Track 15: De La Soul, “Me, Myself and I”Track 16: Miley Cyrus, “Party in the U.S.A.”Bonus tracksWhat I learned from writing Tuesday’s newsletter, about musical odes to Ohio is that The Amplifier is blessed with a very strong contingent of readers from the Buckeye State. Quite a few of you wrote in with your own favorite Ohio tunes, but the most requested by far was the Pretenders’ “My City Was Gone.” Akron’s own Chrissy Hynde beautifully and elegiacally captures the feelings of disillusionment that arise when you go home and — no thanks to industrialization and overdevelopment — don’t recognize your old stomping ground. Consider this one added to the Ohio playlist.Also, for a new column called The Answer, the good folks at The New York Times’s Wirecutter came by my apartment to interview me about my turntable, my vinyl setup and my preferred gear for listening to records. As someone used to doing the interviewing, it felt very strange to be the one answering the questions and even stranger to be the subject of a photo shoot in my apartment. (My neighbors had no idea why I was suddenly so important.) But check out the article to see my suggestions for setting up a relatively inexpensive stereo system, along with my (currently quite depressed) collection of New York Mets bobbleheads. Wirecutter has a daily newsletter full of independent product reviews that you can sign up for, too.Plus, it was a big week for new music: The Playlist features the triumphant returns of both Olivia Rodrigo and Sampha, along with 10 other fresh tracks. I also listened to Fall Out Boy’s updated version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” so you don’t have to. (Seriously, don’t.) More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Lana Del Rey’s Private Audition With Joan Baez

      by

      Joan Baez: In 2019, Lana, whom I’d heard about from my granddaughter, Jasmine, invited me to sing with her in Berkeley. I said, “Why? Your audience could be my great-grandchildren.” And she said, “They don’t deserve you.”Lana and I are sort of opposites. When I was starting out, I wouldn’t let anyone else onstage. I had two microphones — one for me, one for my guitar — and I stood barefoot, singing sad folk songs. I didn’t even write for the first 10 years, and she’s a songwriter. On the CoverKaty GrannanI stopped singing three years ago; it was time to move on. After 60 years as a musician, I started painting. An artist friend said I need to loosen up and make mistakes so, if a painting isn’t working out, I dunk it twice in the swimming pool to see if it becomes something interesting. A hose will also do.If people want to learn from me, I tell them to look beyond the music to my engagement with human and civil rights. My voice was what it was, but the real gift was using it. A documentary has just been made about me [“Joan Baez I Am a Noise,” 2023]. There’s footage of me marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Grenada, Miss., in 1966. At another point in the film, I mention in a letter to my parents that I want to save the world. Lana doesn’t make such grand political statements — at Berkeley, she brought me out to do it for her. And yet, amid the colorful chaos and glitter of her show, she was at one point, I believe, barefoot.The singer delivers a joke in a Southern accent.Katy Grannan & Yumeng GuoLana Del Rey: I was having a show at Berkeley three years ago and wanted Joan to sing “Diamonds & Rust” (1975) with me. She told me she lived an hour south of San Francisco, and that if I could not only find her but also sing the song’s high harmonies on the spot, she’d do it. I was given a vague map to get to a house distinguishable only by its color and the chickens running in the yard. At one point during my audition, she stopped me with a steely look to let me know I didn’t get it right. By the end, she said, “OK, that’s good. I’ll sing with you.”culture banner More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Morgan Wallen Makes It Four Weeks at No. 1 With ‘One Thing at a Time’

      by

      The country superstar’s latest album easily held off new releases by Lana Del Rey and Jimin of the K-pop group BTS.Another week, another No. 1 for Morgan Wallen, the mullet-maned country superstar whose latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” notches a fourth time at the top despite competition from new releases by Lana Del Rey and Jimin of the K-pop giants BTS.In its latest week out, “One Thing at a Time” had the equivalent of 197,000 sales in the United States, including 236 million streams and 17,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since its release a month ago, the 36-song album has been streamed about 1.3 billion times in the United States.New releases take up the next three spots on the chart, though none was popular enough to present much of a challenge to Wallen.“Face,” a six-track, 20-minute release by Jimin, opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 164,000 sales, including 124,000 copies sold as a complete unit — it came out in a variety of collectible CD packages, which included one bonus song — and just shy of 20 million streams. Jimin is the third of BTS’s seven members — after RM and J-Hope — to put out a solo album since BTS announced a pause in full-group activities last year.Jimin’s song “Like Crazy” tops the latest Hot 100 singles chart, replacing Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers.” Its success was largely driven by sales, with five versions of Jimin’s single selling 254,000 copies as downloads and CD singles. (Billboard determines chart positions on the Hot 100 by looking at streams, sales and radio airplay.)Del Rey’s “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” starts at No. 3 on the album chart with the equivalent of 115,000 units, including 36 million streams and 58,500 copies sold as vinyl LPs. Another young country hitmaker, Luke Combs, opens at No. 4 with “Gettin’ Old,” which had the equivalent of 101,000 sales, including 85 million streams.SZA’s “SOS” falls two spots to No. 5 in its 16th week out, and “So Much (for) Stardust,” the eighth studio album by the rock band Fall Out Boy, opens at No. 6. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Lana Del Rey ‘Ocean Blvd’ Review: Into the Deep, Without Leaving the Shallow

      by

      The singer and songwriter’s ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” asks big, earnest questions and isn’t afraid to get messy.“I wrote you a note, but I didn’t send it,” Lana Del Rey sings on her rangy ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” — a 16-song, 78-minute collection as sprawling, hypnotic and incorrigibly American as an interstate highway.Many of the tracks have the run-on, handwritten feel of letters never mailed, and this particular one, the fluttering piano ballad “Sweet,” is addressed to a paramour who seems unwilling to go as deep as the 37-year-old Del Rey. “Lately we’ve been making out a lot,” she sings, spinning her signature, soft-serve swirl of the sacred and profane, “not talking ’bout the stuff that’s at the very heart of things.”More than any of its predecessors, this Del Rey album is about the very heart of things. Its themes and lyrical preoccupations are philosophical and weighty: the existence of God; the afterlife; the precise moment the soul leaves the body; the concessions of marriage and motherhood; fate; familial bonds; and, on the strikingly melancholy centerpiece “Fingertips,” recent scientific progress into the attainment of eternal life. “God, if you’re near me, send me three white butterflies,” she sings three-quarters into the LP, in a voice that’s almost childlike in its surging sincerity. Throughout “Ocean Blvd,” an artist who arrived on the scene sounding like a nihilist is now searching and sincerely self-scrutinizing, sending earnest questions into a possible void.The album’s title itself suggests hidden depths beneath picturesque surfaces — something Del Rey knows a thing or two about. When she debuted with the 2011 viral hit “Video Games” and an awkward, excessively maligned “Saturday Night Live” performance, the musician born Elizabeth Grant was dismissed by some skeptics as nothing more than a pretty face, all retro artifice and pouty pastiche. But as she’s sharpened her pencil, most powerfully on the eerie 2014 LP “Ultraviolence” and her sublime 2019 album “Norman _____ Rockwell!,” Del Rey has proved to be an expert chronicler of her own interiority as well as a larger, more diffuse cultural subconscious. Del Rey, at her best, has a finger not just on the pulse, but somewhere beneath the flesh.And she is occasionally at her best here. “Ocean Blvd” is Del Rey’s strongest and most daring album since “Rockwell,” though it’s also marked by uneven pacing and occasional overindulgence. On an excellent four-song opening stretch, Del Rey establishes the album’s unhurried pace and her connection to that fabled tunnel, a sealed-up, subterranean bit of West Coast architecture — one of the few places in California where the sun can’t shine. “I can’t help but feel somewhat like my body marred my soul,” Del Rey croons on the mournful, gorgeously string-kissed title track.A few songs later, on the shape-shifting nightmare “A&W,” she finds an even darker line of inquiry: “Look at my hair, look at the length of it and the shape of my body,” she sings atop a droning, monotonous chord progression that conjures early Cat Power. “If I told you that I was raped, do you really think that anybody would think I didn’t ask for it?” The line is more shocking for the vaporous, ultra-femme falsetto in which she delivers it — as if the ballerina inside a music box opened her mouth and sang.Part of the thrill of Del Rey’s music is the sense that she can and will say absolutely anything, regardless of who it may offend. She makes a somewhat clumsy admission of her own white privilege on “Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing”: “I’m blue, I’m green, regrettably also a white woman/But I have good intentions even if I’m one of the last ones.” The line is complicated by the fact that, save for her brief forays into hip-hop on her grab-bag 2017 album “Lust for Life,” “Ocean Blvd” is more conversant with Black music than any other entry in her discography. Gospel is a particular touchstone. Some of the first voices heard on the record are Melodye Perry and Pattie Howard, onetime backing singers for Whitney Houston; later, the jazz musician Jon Batiste accompanies Del Rey on the pirouetting duet “Candy Necklaces” and stays, to testify, on a fiery three-minute interlude.At this unfettered stage in her career, Del Rey’s music is driven by a tension between freedom and structure; her greatest material finds its quivering equilibrium. Two six-minute compositions in the middle of “Ocean Blvd,” though, test the limits of Del Rey’s penchant for free verse. “Kintsugi,” an aching meditation on the deaths of several family members, mostly works; it’s discursive and diaristic, but a repeated refrain borrowed from Leonard Cohen (“that’s how the light gets in”) is an effective anchor. “Fingertips,” despite containing some of the record’s most piercing lyrics, simply drifts. The return of meter, on the elegant “Paris, Texas,” comes as a relief.Partly based on a piano-driven instrumental track by the indie composer SYML, “Paris, Texas” is one of 11 songs that Del Rey co-produced with Jack Antonoff, who has become a trusted collaborator. A handful of songs also evolved out of impromptu Sunday jam sessions that Del Rey’s boyfriend at the time, the film producer and amateur guitarist Mike Hermosa, recorded on his phone; a few of them (“Peppers,” “Let the Light In”) have a playful, flirtatious feel. (“When we broke up,” Del Rey said in a recent Rolling Stone U.K. interview, “I was like, ‘You know at some point we’re going to talk about the fact that you have half of this album.’” He is credited as a writer on five songs.)“Ocean Blvd” closes with a trio of those lighter and more irreverent tracks that stray from the heart of things, giving the album’s concluding moments the sense of a cosmic shrug: “Get high, drop acid, never die,” she sings in responses on the final track. But she also seems to have embraced the more superficial pleasures of gaudy, earthly delights. “Peppers” is at once inane and irresistible (“me and my boyfriend listen to the Chili Peppers”). Del Rey has asked God for guidance and accepted Anthony Kiedis’s scat-nonsense as the answer. What could be more Californian than that?That three-song suite that concludes “Ocean Blvd” can certainly feel like an anticlimax, or a retreat from the existential questions posed in its opening movement. But it’s also a perfect distillation of the duality that makes Del Rey’s 21st-century siren songs so singular. Nine albums into her career, she has become a musical mermaid, capable of breathing as easily on the surface as she can in the ocean’s darkest depths. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Lana Del Rey Talks Back to the Songbook

      by

      Hear a companion to her sprawling new album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.”Neil KrugDear listeners,I love these lyrics from the title track of Lana Del Rey’s sprawling ninth album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” which comes out today:Harry Nilsson has a song, his voice breaks at 2:05Something about the way he says “Don’t forget me”Makes me feel likeI just wish I had a friend like himSomeone to get me byDel Rey’s music is both vividly intimate and highly referential. She writes like a devoted but conversational fan of music history — talking back to the modern songbook and to many of her favorite artists, guided by popular song to her own personal epiphanies.Del Rey’s old-soul reverence collapses the distance between generations, too. People listening to Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” when it first came out — on “Pussy Cats” from 1974, the notorious chronicle of his “Lost Weekend” with John Lennon — were just as likely to be moved by that wrenching part when his voice breaks, but they probably wouldn’t have known its precise time stamp. Del Rey’s homage speaks the language of digital-era listening (“his voice breaks at 2:05”), but her emotional connection to Nilsson is so deeply felt, it seems to transcend time and turn him into a peer.Elsewhere on the album, the much-covered, centuries-old folk standard “Froggy Went a Courtin’” makes Del Rey feel connected to her ancestors when she hears it at a funeral. Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” echoes throughout “Ocean Blvd” like a cherished mantra. On “The Grants,” the album’s stirring, gospel-tinged opening number, she interprets the words of a pastor by likening them not to, say, a particular Bible verse, but to “‘Rocky Mountain High,’ the way John Denver sings.”“Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” is as rich, challenging and singular as anything Del Rey has released yet, and given that its run time is a daunting hour and 17 minutes, it’s going to require a little time to sink in. Today’s playlist puts some of its best songs in conversation with the other artists it references or, in the case of Father John Misty, features. May it serve as an entry point, or maybe just as a means to tunnel deeper into Lana Del Rey’s slow, subterranean sound.Maybe Del Rey would even say that these are some of the songs that explain her. Which reminds me: I’m still reading through your (many) great submissions from earlier this week, and I look forward to sharing some with you in Tuesday’s Amplifier.That’s how the light gets in,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Lana Del Rey Talks Back to the Songbook” track listTrack 1: John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High” (1972)Track 2: Lana Del Rey, “The Grants” (2023)Track 3: Tex Ritter, “Froggy Went a Courtin’” (1945)Track 4: Father John Misty, “Goodbye Mr. Blue” (2022)Track 5: Lana Del Rey featuring Father John Misty, “Let the Light In” (2023)Track 6: Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” (1992)Track 7: Lana Del Rey, “Kintsugi” (2023)Track 8: Harry Nilsson, “Don’t Forget Me” (1974)Track 9: Lana Del Rey, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” (2023)Bonus tracksLana isn’t the only artist to appreciate the broken beauty of Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” of course. Here are two cover versions I love: Neko Case’s spirited rendition, from her great 2009 album “Middle Cyclone,” and a faithful take from the Walkmen, on which the frontman Hamilton Leithauser sounds so much like Nilsson that it’s a little bit spooky.Also, if you’re looking for some newer music: On Fridays, our chief pop music critic, Jon Pareles, and I select some of the week’s most notable new songs for the Playlist, which you can listen to here. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Feist’s Electrifying Return, and 9 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Lana Del Rey, Pink, Janelle Monáe 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.Feist, ‘In Lightning’Leslie Feist’s first album since 2017, “Multitudes,” is due April 14, and “In Lightning” is the noisiest and most changeable of the three songs she has released in advance. She sings about lightning as illumination, as power and as revelation; is it “in lightning” or “enlightening”? The track begins with clattering drums and banshee vocal harmonies, then veers between hushed contemplation and a brawny, Celtic-flavored stomp. At the end, the vocal harmonies that were so cutting when the song began return as tentative queries. JON PARELESLana Del Rey, ‘A&W’Lana Del Rey works in liminal spaces: between breath and melody, between confession and persona, between image and experience, between commerce and art. The pretty but utterly bleak “A&W” has nothing to do with root beer or fast food; the initials echo “American whore,” something she calls herself in the song. She sings as a woman without illusions or hopes, a celebrity who’s always under scrutiny: “Do you really think I give a damn what I do/After years of just hearing them talking?” In this long, subdued, radio-defying track, she sings about a loveless hotel hookup that may have turned into a rape; “Do you really think anyone would think that I didn’t ask for it?” she wonders. Halfway through, the track turns to synthetic sounds and the lyrics drift into a different obsession: “Jimmy only love me when he want to get high.” In this song, everyone is a user. PARELESJanelle Monáe, ‘Float’Since “Dirty Computer” in 2018, Janelle Monáe has focused more on acting than on music; the few songs the 37-year-old has released in the past five years have been one-off soundtrack recordings. The buoyant “Float,” though, certainly sounds like a harbinger of Monáe’s next era as a recording artist: It’s looser and more conversant with contemporary hip-hop than the musician’s work in the past. The Afrobeat heir Seun Kuti leads his late father’s ensemble Egypt 80 to provide some brassy fanfare while Monáe raps, “I had to protect all my energy, I’m feeling much lighter” in a carefree cadence that backs that assertion up. LINDSAY ZOLADZDesire Marea, ‘Be Free’The South African songwriter Desire Marea stirs up a maelstrom in “Be Free.” With lyrics in English and Zulu, it’s an exhortation and a reproach to someone who won’t accept his sexuality: “Maybe another day you will find courage to love me freely,” he sings, sympathetic but judgmental. Recorded with a 13-member live studio band, the song barrels ahead from the start: first with an insistent bass riff, accelerating with voices, brasses and four-on-the-floor drums, then rumbling and roiling under a solemn, string-laden plaint: “I just want to be free,” Marea insists. PARELESAnna B Savage, ‘Pavlov’s Dog’“Pavlov’s Dog,” from the London-based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage’s new album “In/Flux,” is a wonderfully tactile depiction of lust: panting backing vocals, escalating tension and Savage’s visceral, quivering voice. “Just call me Pavlov’s dog,” she sings against the atmospheric soundscape. “I’m here, I’m waiting, I’m salivating.” ZOLADZKelsea Ballerini, ‘Mountain With a View’With her strikingly candid new EP “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” the country star Kelsea Ballerini joins the recent ranks of peers like Kacey Musgraves and Adele in chronicling a young woman’s experience of divorce. “I’m wearing the ring still, but I think I’m lying,” Ballerini sings wrenchingly. “Sometimes you forget yours, I think we’re done trying.” The boldness of her confessionalism is paired with a sparse, airy new sound, full of echoing synthesizer chords, naturalistic sounds and plenty of empty space, evoking the home that Ballerini is suddenly learning to fill on her own. ZOLADZNaima Bock, ‘Lines’Following her lovely and eclectic debut album from last year, “Giant Palm,” the London musician Naima Bock’s new single, “Lines,” is dynamic and unpredictable, a folky rocker that rises and ebbs like the sea. Violin, saxophone and an unruly electric guitar all emerge at points to wrestle with Bock’s bracing vocal, but each one ultimately cedes the spotlight to her flinty presence. ZOLADZNickel Creek, ‘Holding Pattern’“Holding Pattern” is from “Celebrants,” the first album in nine years from the reconvened string trio Nickel Creek, due March 24. It’s a song that evokes the first months of the pandemic — “Washing my hands/Through the night can’t sleep for the sirens,” Chris Thile sings — and tries to draw comfort from companionship, urging, “Don’t forget we’re/Alone in this together.” The siblings Sara and Sean Watkins pick circular guitar patterns and add vocal harmonies, while Thile plays a counterpoint on mandola that rises like mist off a pond. PARELESPink, ‘When I Get There’At first, “When I Get There” sounds like a love song. It has basic piano chords and Pink singing, “When I think of you, I think about forever.” But soon it’s clear that she’s singing about someone who has died, maybe a songwriter: “Is there a song you just can’t wait to share?” It’s a careful crescendo that contemplates eternity. PARELESOval, ‘Touha’Plinking, glimmering, stuttering keyboard tones, somewhere between a piano and a music box, ripple across “Touha,” a track that previews “Romantiq,” the next album by Oval. Markus Popp, who has been recording computerized music since the 1990s as Oval, has long worked with loops, phantom spaces and electronic glitches. “Touha” proceeds in irregular flurries of keyboard activity and overlapping shards of melody, gradually interwoven with distant drones and glissandos and sporadic patterings of percussion. Aiming for neither dance nor meditation, it’s music for nervous introspection. PARELES More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

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

      by

      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

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Best Albums of 2021? Let’s Discuss.

      by

      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherOlivia Rodrigo and Tyler, the Creator released the only albums that appeared on the 2021 year-end lists of all three pop music critics for The New York Times. Beyond that, there was a diverse bounty: Memphis rap, Colombian electronic folk, British spazz-rock, Atlanta soul, Georgia country-rap, Chicago jazz abstraction, California Technicolor rock and Adele.On this week’s Popcast, a critic round table about the year in albums, with conversation about Rodrigo and Tyler, and also Lana Del Rey, Playboi Carti, Adele, Mdou Moctar, Snail Mail, Remi Wolf, Moneybagg Yo, Bomba Estéreo, Black Midi, PinkPantheress and much more.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, who writes about pop music for The New York Times and othersConnect 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