Dry Cleaning (Music Group)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares99 Views

    Dry Cleaning: It’s Spoken Rock ’n’ Roll, but We Like It

    by

    The British rock band’s distinctive sound comes from the vocalist Florence Shaw’s carefully delivered observations that float somewhere between stand-up, poetry and comedy.LOS ANGELES — At the Primavera Sound festival at Los Angeles State Historic Park, the British band Dry Cleaning played under the bright sunlight of a September afternoon. Festooned with tattoos, the guitarist Tom Dowse rocked out, grimacing and jutting out an impudent tongue now and then. A breeze wrapped the bassist Lewis Maynard’s long hair across his face, making him look like a headbanging plushie. The drummer Nick Buxton pummeled away as if in AC/DC’s engine room. But the vocalist Florence Shaw didn’t fit the picture at all.Instead of snarling or roaring like the music would seem to demand, she delivered a jumbled sequence of alternately humdrum and surreal observations in conversational tones that shifted subtly between dismay, disapproval and daydream. Wearing a long black lace skirt and a sparkly gold camisole, she curled her fingers around the mic stand like the stem of a wineglass and pulled distractedly at the hair at the top of her head, as if having a knotty heart-to-heart with a close friend.To twist a lyric from Dry Cleaning’s new album, “Stumpwork,” out Oct. 21, it’s a weird premise for a band — but I like it. So do a growing numbers of others. The London group recently embarked on a world tour that will take it through 17 countries. Its 2021 debut, “New Long Leg,” entered the U.K. album chart at No. 4. That feat reflected both the record’s originality and Dry Cleaning’s position at the forefront of the “speak-sing” movement: a trend that encompasses groups like Yard Act, Wet Leg and Black Country, New Road who have little in common besides vocalists who incant barbed social commentary rather than sing.Sitting at a garden table in Primavera’s artists-only enclosure, Shaw admitted that fronting a cult band was not on her bucket list. “It’s a very surreal turn of events,” she said, widening her eyes as if still surprised. “Totally unexpected. I like bands, but I never planned to be in one at all.”Until a few years ago, the 33-year-old earned her living as a visiting lecturer, teaching fashion drawing and illustration at art colleges. Then her friend Dowse suggested she contribute to a new band he’d pulled together with Buxton and Maynard. The three men had a long history of playing in various hardcore punk and noisy groups, mostly as a sideline to their primary occupations. But when Shaw came along to add her spoken-word collages to their tough, clangorous sound, something clicked.On paper, the formula looks like it ought to be irritating — pretentious, or simply awkward — but ultimately, it makes a magical sort of sense. While her bandmates weave riffs and textures drawn from across alternative rock history, Shaw doesn’t raise her voice, but commands attention through timing and phrasing, along with the shuffle-mode flow of her perceptions. Lines that could be from a transcript of a tetchy interpersonal skirmish will be followed by a pensive fragment plucked from some regretful or aggrieved interior monologue. Shaw has invented a strikingly original mode of nonmelodic songwriting that floats somewhere between stand-up, poetry and the fourth-wall-breaking soliloquies of a female comic auteur like Phoebe Waller-Bridge.“I’m not hugely well-informed about politics, really,” Shaw said. “But I’m quite sensitive to how things feel and I know they don’t feel good!” Max Miechowski for The New York Times“She’s brilliant, she really reminds me of myself!” said Jason Williamson, the vocalist in Sleaford Mods, widely regarded as the progenitor of the current wave of British speak-sing groups. “There’s this mixture of extremely realistic observations with absurdism. Things that are just really bizarre. It doesn’t make a lot of sense — but then it does. She conveys meanings with just one word.”Expertly deploying pauses and stretching out syllables, Shaw is a virtuoso of intonation. “I am very interested in small differences,” she said. “I really enjoy that game where you put the emphasis on a different place in a sentence — and it means something completely different. The same words can sound scared instead of proud.”When Dry Cleaning was recording part of the new album in a Bristol studio, Shaw went out on foraging missions, trawling the streets for overheard remarks, shop signs and unusual sights, which she’d jot down in her phone’s notepad. Another expedition involved visiting a “car boot sale,” a flea market particular to the U.K. in which ordinary folk park their cars in a field and sell bric-a-brac from the trunk. Shaw also likes to collect words. “Stumpwork,” the title of a song as well as the new album, is something she’s been aching to use for ages.“I like the sound of it,” she said. “It’s a type of embroidery, like the braiding on military uniforms or American sportswear. Originally it was used to described the raised characters and padded people in tapestries.”Musically, “Stumpwork” is a conscious and concerted effort on the part of the band to show it’s more than post-punk. Leaving behind the first album’s gaunt sound and tense bass lines, the new LP shifts forward in time to the early ’90s and lo-fi “slacker” bands like Pavement. “I was thinking a lot about Stephen Malkmus when I was doing my guitar parts, that sort of wonkiness,” Dowse said, explaining that he played a Jazzmaster guitar because “it’s what all the ’90s groups like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. used.”Compared to “New Long Leg,” in some ways “Stumpwork” is an American album. The debut felt like a wet, wintry day, a mood mirrored lyrically in lines like “it was chucking it down” and “raincoat sweat.” In contrast, “Stumpwork” has the dazed, heat-hazy vibe of a drunken summer afternoon. Although Shaw still drops the odd glum line like “looks like strains and setbacks are on the way,” the ground-down despondency of “New Long Leg” has opened up to allow for moments of carefree joy and quiet contentment.If there’s gloom here, it stems less from personal life than from the political atmosphere. The track “Conservative Hell” expresses the outlook of the band and many of their generation. “Scandal after scandal, the levels of corruption and lying at the top of the government, and it feels like it’s almost completely unchallenged,” Dowse said. “I think it’s numbed everyone out.”While her bandmates weave riffs and textures drawn from across alternative rock history, Shaw commands attention through timing and phrasing.Max Miechowski for The New York TimesOn “Stumpwork,” Shaw gets explicitly polemical now and then. She’ll talk about seeing “male violence everywhere” or distill the U.K.’s dire deadlock into the three-line panorama “Nothing works/everything’s expensive/And opaque and privatized.” But her true forte is the micro-politics of ordinary life: petty humiliations and hassles, the way that advertising and media implant desires and anxieties in your head. “I’m not hugely well-informed about politics, really,” she said. “But I’m quite sensitive to how things feel and I know they don’t feel good!”That remark ended with a burst of laughter. Smiles and merriment are a constant in her conversation, in marked contrast with how Shaw comes across on record and onstage. The blanket description “deadpan” annoys her because it misses the subtle shades of gray she works with. Referencing a review that described her as sounding like “a bored fashion model reading from the pages of Grazia magazine,” Shaw noted that another time, “Someone said our gig was great but we spoiled it by smiling between the songs. Like we were breaking character. You can’t win!” Cue another burst of laughter.Williamson placed Dry Cleaning in a British lineage of groups who combined observational humor, gritty social realism and the vividness of everyday vernacular: “They’re a classic English band in the vein of the Jam, the Specials, Ian Dury and the Blockheads.”One way that Englishness manifests in Dry Cleaning is the gap between the music’s dramatic intensity and the mildness of Shaw’s emotional palette and low-key delivery. “There can be something very tender about that,” Shaw said. “Because in a way it’s sort of a failure to express oneself at the right moment.”“Missing the moment that you should get really angry and instead feeling it later — that’s a real hallmark of my life,” she added. “I think I’d much rather be a person who could emote functionally, at the right time. But it takes me a long time to process things and a lot of my performance is about exorcising those residual feelings. Maybe that’s a bit British.” More

    More stories

    • 50 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Best Albums of 2021

      by

      Less isolation didn’t mean a return to normalcy. Albums with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Olivia Rodrigo, Moneybagg Yo and Allison Russell stood out in 2021.From left: Grant Spanier; Noam Galai/Getty Images; Bethany Mollenkof for the New York TimesJon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesSongs of Trauma, Fear and TriumphThe past year was awash in recorded music — not only the stuck-at-home recordings that musicians occupied themselves with when touring evaporated during the pandemic, but also many albums that had been made before the lockdowns but had been shelved in hopes of some return to normalcy. The albums that resonated most with me during 2021 were songs of reflection and revelation, often dealing with traumas and crises, transfigured through music.1. Bomba Estéreo, ‘Deja’The Colombian duo Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs tied to the ancient elements: water, air, fire, earth. Each new one broadened an album that entwines folklore and electronics, personal yearning and planetary concerns. With Liliana Saumet’s tartly endearing singing and rapping and Simón Mejía’s meticulously kinetic productions, the songs dance through their fears. (Read our interview with Bomba Estéreo.)Simón Mejía and Liliana Saumet of Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs.Valerie Amor C2. Allison Russell, ‘Outside Child’Allison Russell, the longtime frontwoman of Birds of Chicago, transforms a horrific childhood — she was abused by her stepfather — into songs of joyful survival. “I’m still rising, stronger for my pain and suffering,” she sings. Drawing on soul, country, folk and deep blues, she connects her own story to myth and metaphor, remembering the trauma yet decisively rising above it. (Read our interview with Allison Russell.)3. Mon Laferte, ‘Seis’Sometimes visitors can see what residents take for granted. Mon Laferte is from Chile, but she has been living for more than a decade in Mexico and has immersed herself in its music. On “Seis,” she wrote songs that draw deeply on regional Mexican traditions — mariachi, banda, ranchera, corrido, norteño — to sing, in a voice that can be teasing or furiously incendiary, about deep passions and equally deep betrayals. (Read our interview with Mon Laferte.)Mon Laferte drew on Mexican traditions for one of two albums she released this year, “Seis.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times4. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’Tamara Lindeman, who writes songs and records as the Weather Station, surrounded herself with a jazzy, intuitive backup group for “Ignorance,” clearly aware of Joni Mitchell’s folk-jazz precedent. The rhythms are brisk and precise; winds, keyboards and guitars ricochet respectfully off her breathy vocal lines. She sings about impending disasters, romantic and environmental, and the widespread disregard for what’s clearly about to happen. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)5. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist born in Niger. Like Tinariwen, his band plugs North African rhythms and modal vamps into rock amplifiers and drums. But “Afrique Victime” further expands the sonic possibilities for Tuareg rock, from ambient meditation to psychedelic onslaught. Six-beat rhythms and skeins of guitar lines carry Moctar’s voice in songs that can be modest and introspective or unstoppably frenetic.6. Julien Baker, ‘Little Oblivions’“Beat myself until I’m bloody/And I’ll give you a ringside seat,” Julien Baker sings in one of the brave, ruthlessly self-indicting songs that fill “Little Oblivions,” an album about the toll of one person’s addictions on everyone around her. She played all the instruments herself, scaling her sound up to arena size and chiming like U2, even as she refuses herself any excuses or forgiveness. (Read our review of “Little Oblivions.”)7. Black Midi, ‘Cavalcade’The virtuosic British band Black Midi bristles in every direction: with jagged, skewed funk riffs; with pointed dissonances; with passages of Minimalistic, ominous suspense; with lyrics full of bitter disillusion. And then, just to keep things unsettled, come passages filled with tenderness and wonderment, only to plunge back into the fray. (Read our interview with Black Midi.)8. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Olivia Rodrigo, now 18, fixates on a breakup with an adolescent’s obsessiveness on “Sour,” building on the audience she found as a cast member in Disney’s “High School Musical.” With Taylor Swift as a role model for craftsmanship, her songs are as neatly detailed as they are wounded, and the production whipsaws through styles — calm piano ballad, ethereal choir harmonies, fierce distorted guitars — to match every mood swing. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)Olivia Rodrigo’s songs are neatly detailed.Erica Hernandez9. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’“Songwrights Apothecary Lab” was the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s pandemic project; she consulted neuroscientists, music therapists and ethnomusicologists to devise music for healing, and an online user’s guide prescribes the purpose of each song. But the songs are equally effective off-label; they encompass meditations, serpentine jazz compositions, calm or turbulent improvisations, open-ended questions and sly bits of advice, the work of a graceful, perpetually questing mind. (Read our interview with Esperanza Spalding.)10. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’A life of luxury can’t mollify Tyler, the Creator. He’s no longer the trolling provocateur he was a decade ago when he emerged with Odd Future, but he’s still intransigent and high-concept. After singing through most of his 2019 album, “Igor,” he’s back to rapping, now simulating a mixtape with DJ Drama as hypeman. In his deep voice, he raps about all he owns and all he can’t control — mostly romance — over his own dense, detailed productions, at once lush and abrasive. The album peaks with an eight-minute love-triangle saga, “Wichita”: a raw confession, cannily orchestrated. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)Tyler, the Creator swings back to mostly rapping on his 2021 album.Luis “Panch” PerezAnd here are another 15 deserving albums, alphabetically:Adele, “30”Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince”Khaira Arby, “New York Live”Billie Eilish, “Happier Than Ever”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Promises”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Rhiannon Giddens with Franceso Turrisi, “They’re Calling Me Home”Idles, “Crawler”Ka, “A Martyr’s Reward”Valerie June, “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers”L’Rain, “Fatigue”Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams”Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raise the Roof”Omar Sosa, “An East African Journey”Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales”Jon CaramanicaProcessing Pain, Blurring BoundariesIn the second year of global quasi-paralysis, what made the most sense were, once again, albums that felt like wombs and albums that felt like eruptions. When there was nowhere to go, literally or metaphorically, there were still places to retreat — to the gut, to history, to memory, to forgetting.1. Mustafa, ‘When Smoke Rises’Did you mourn this year? Were you broken in some way that was beyond words? Mustafa’s debut album was there with you, a startling, primal chronicle of relentless loss and the relentless grace required to navigate it. In moments when the ground buckled, this album was a cradle. (Read our interview with Mustafa.)Mustafa’s debut album is a profound meditation on loss.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times2. EST Gee, ‘Bigger Than Life or Death’The latest in a string of excellent releases from the Louisville, Ky., rapper EST Gee, whose verses are refreshingly burly and brusque, and who tells stories sprinkled with surprisingly vivid left-field details. A bold back-to-basics statement, utterly free of filigree.3. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’The most important new pop star of the year delivered a debut album of poppy punk and punky pop that’s sometimes musically blistering and always emotionally blistered. A reminder that a failed relationship might leave you icy or bruised or drained, but in truth, it frees you to be emboldened. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)4. Moneybagg Yo, ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’Moneybagg Yo is a casually sassy rapper — a don of tsk-tsking, fluent in arched eyebrows, dispositionally blunt. This is his fourth major-label album, and it’s punchy and robustly musical. À la peak 2 Chainz, Moneybagg Yo boasts so long and so intently that he sounds fatigued, and in turn, uproarious.5. PinkPantheress, ‘To Hell With It’This is music about listening to music, about the secret places we burrow into in order to make sure our favorite songs can wash over us unimpeded. The singing is sweet and melancholic, and the production flirts with memory and time — stories of right now and back then, all told as one. (Read our review of “To Hell With It.”)6. Summer Walker, ‘Still Over It’The most emotionally direct vocalist working in R&B today, Summer Walker is a bracing listen. And this album, her third full-length release, is rawly vindictive and unconcerned with polish, the equivalent of a public-facing Instagram account that feels like a finsta. (Read our notebook on Summer Walker.)Summer Walker’s third album is appealingly unpolished and intimate.Theo Wargo/Getty Images7. Lana Del Rey, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’Lana Del Rey albums have become pop music’s most compelling ongoing saga about American loneliness and sadness. This, the better of her two albums this year, is alluringly arid and dreamlike. (Read our review of “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.”)8. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’In which the rapper who introduced himself a decade ago as the genre’s great anarchist reveals something that was long clear to close observers: He reveres tradition. Brick-hard rhyme structures. Ostentatious taunts. Mixtape grit. All of it. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)9. Playboi Carti, ‘Whole Lotta Red’Just an unyieldingly odd record. Notionally a cousin of mid-2010s SoundCloud rap, it also has echoes of 1980s industrial rock and also the glitchcore of the 2000s. It’s buoyant and psychedelic and totally destabilizing.10. Kanye West, ‘Donda (Deluxe)’“Donda” lives at the intersection of Kanye’s “Yeezus” era and his Jesus era. On the one hand, there’s scabrous, churning production that sets a chaotic mood. On the other, there are moments of intense searching, gasps for air amid the unrest. (Read our notebook on “Donda.”)11. Rauw Alejandro, ‘Vice Versa’Rauw Alejandro, the most imaginative meta-reggaeton Latin pop star, dabbles in drum ’n’ bass and baile funk on his second major-label album. But the star is his hypertreated voice, which is synthetically sweet and appealingly lush, almost to the point of delightful suffocation. (Read our review of “Vice Versa.”)Rauw Alejandro’s latest album puts a spotlight on his vocals.Thais Llorca/EPA, via Shutterstock12. Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’Outlandish, eccentric, lustrous, mercenarily maximalist pop from the sing-rapper with the richest and keenest pop ear not named Drake.13. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Blood Bunny’Openhearted and effortlessly catchy indie punk-pop about lovelorn confusion and beginning to figure out you’re too cool for that. (Read our notebook on Chloe Moriondo.)14. Kidd G, ‘Down Home Boy’Why yes, those are Juice WRLD cadences in the singing on the year’s best country debut album. (Read our interview with Kidd G.)15. The Armed, ‘Ultrapop’Shrieking sheets of nervy noise — a battering ram.16. Carly Pearce, ’29: Written in Stone’A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album.17. Yeat, ‘4L’If “Whole Lotta Red” is too coherent for you, try Yeat.18. Conway the Machine, ‘La Maquina’A cold, cold, cold growl of a classic-minded hip-hop album.19. Farruko, ‘La 167’“Pepas” is here, along with a confidently expansive range of reggaeton styles.Farruko’s “La 167” is a showcase for reggaeton styles.Rich Polk/Getty Images20. Mickey Guyton, ‘Remember Her Name’A pop-country winner that feels both universal and singular. (Read our interview with Mickey Guyton.)… and 20 more albums for a more well-rounded year.42 Dugg, “Free Dem Boyz”Gracie Abrams, “This Is What It Feels Like”Aespa, “Savage”Jay Bahd, “Return of Okomfo Anokye”Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud, “The Plugs I Met 2”Ivan Cornejo, “Alma Vacía”Jhay Cortez, “Timelezz”Dave, “We’re All Alone in This Together”Drake, “Certified Lover Boy”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Cody Johnson, “Human the Double Album”NCT 127, “Sticker”RXK Nephew, “Crack Dreams”serpentwithfeet, “Deacon”Spirit of the Beehive, “Entertainment, Death”Don Toliver, “Life of a Don”Rod Wave, “SoulFly”Tion Wayne, “Green With Envy”Wiki, “Half God”Young Thug, “Punk”Lindsay ZoladzOpening Up Hearts and MindsIn an emotionally hung over year when so many people were trying to process loss — of loved ones, of charred or flooded homes, of the world as we once knew it — some of the best music offered an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with feelings we may have rushed right by before truly acknowledging. Sometimes we just needed a voice to capture and echo the absurdity all around us, but other times records gave us a way of experiencing nothing less than mass catharsis.1. Adele, ‘30’It takes a certain kind of record to make me want to quote Rumi, but Adele really killed this, so let me say: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”Adele has been our mass-cultural bard of heartbreak for the past decade, but in her music — save for the handful of instant-classic ballads scattered across her discography — I did not really get the sense that she was truly open in all the terror and glory that implies. Then she turned 30. “I’m so afraid but I’m open wide,” she sings on the divine “To Be Loved,” her imperial voice trembling but assured. Most breakup albums are full of anger, scorn, and blame, but this one is remarkably self-directed, a grown woman making a deeply considered choice to leap into the void and break her own heart wide apart. “I took some bad turns that I am owning,” she sings, audibly italicizing that last phrase, as if the preceding 10 tracks in all their startling honesty hadn’t already made that clear.On “19,” “21,” and “25,” Adele acted wise beyond her years: “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” she chided an ex on an album about being in her mid-20s, which also included a world-wearied number called “When We Were Young.” “30” refreshingly winds back the clock and finds her admitting that all along she was “just a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around” her. But now she sings like a mature woman who knows there’s still plenty of time to get wine-drunk on the everyday wonders of her own freedom, to break her heart open again and again in her newly omnivorous and sonically eclectic songs. This, at last, is Adele living up to her promise, pop majesty at the highest count. (Read our review of “30.”)Adele breaks her own heart open on “30.”Cliff Lipson/CBS2. Tyler, The Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’He’s still on the boat! Tyler has never sounded this breezy yet in control, but for all the luxurious braggadocio, there’s a darker undercurrent at work, too. “I remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions,” he raps at the beginning of the album; by the stunning penultimate track, the heart-tugging epic “Wilshire,” he’ll have to admit that’s impossible. Full of playful reflections on his past (“I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers”) and auspicious blessings for his future, “Call Me” finds Tyler dropping a stone into that murky blue and discovering unexplored new depths. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)3. Snail Mail, ‘Valentine’Lindsey Jordan begs, bargains and finally accepts the pain of heartache in this searing song cycle that further establishes her as one of indie rock’s brightest young stars. There’s a raw immediacy to these 10 songs that make them almost feel hot to the touch — the thrashing title track, the keening acoustic ballad “Light Blue,” even the slinky, synth-driven vamp “Ben Franklin.” Her nimble guitar work highlights a sharp ear for off-kilter melody, but at the core of “Valentine” is Jordan’s passionately hoarse voice, lungs filled to the brim with sound and fury. (Read our review of “Valentine.”)4. Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Heaux Tales’The chatty, candid interstitials woven through this wonderful album play out like an adult reunion of those young girls in the classroom from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” — now grown women swapping secrets, recollections and hard-earned wisdom. “Heaux Tales” is a prismatic, multiperspective snapshot of female desire in the 21st century, enlivened by the testimonies of friends like Ari Lennox and H.E.R. but made cohesive by the soulfully versatile voice of Jazmine Sullivan. She breathes life into a spectrum of emotions, from the sassy assertion of “Pick Up Your Feelings” to the naked yearning of “The Other Side,” proving that it would be too limiting to choose between being a hard rock or a gem. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? (Read our review of “Heaux Tales.”)Jazmine Sullivan explores the multiple dimensions of female desire in the 21st century on “Heaux Tales.”NAACP, via Reuters5. Illuminati Hotties, ‘Let Me Do One More’The indie producer turned surprisingly ebullient frontperson Sarah Tudzin is a personable and occasionally hilarious guide through the surreal ruins of late capitalism. “You think I wanna be a part of every self-appointed start-up?” she seethes in a punky, cartoonish voice, but a few songs later she’s exhausted enough to sound resigned to inevitable compromise: “The corner store is selling spit, bottled up for profit,” she sighs, “can’t believe I’m buying it.” Still, Tudzin’s songs glow with the possibility of human intimacy amid all the rubble, and they show off her mastery of so many different genres that by the end of the record, it seems like there’s no ceiling to her talent as both a producer and a finger-on-the-pulse songwriter. (Read our interview with Illuminati Hotties.)6. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Hell hath no fury like a young woman out to prove she’s no one-hit wonder. From the opening guitar-crunch of the Zoomer primal scream that is “Brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo proves there’s so much more to her than could be expressed even in a song as exquisitely expressive as her seismic smash “Drivers License.” Rodrigo fashions teen-girl sarcasm into a lethal weapon on the dream-pop “Deja Vu,” rails against the Instagram industrial complex on the barbed social critique “Jealousy, Jealousy” and transforms a sample of one of her idol Taylor Swift’s sweetest love songs into a tear-streaked heartbreaker on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” If it feels comparatively weak on the back end, that’s only because the first half of this album is probably the most impressive six-song run anybody put together this year. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)7. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician who records as the Weather Station, came up with a winning solution on her stirring album “Ignorance,” which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet. The graceful melancholy of “Tried to Tell You” surveys the natural beauty we’ve been too numb to mourn, while the sparse, jazzy “Robber” is a kind of musical tone-poem about large-scale corporate destruction. With her nimble voice — sometimes high and fluttery, other times earthy and low — and evocative lyricism, the songs of “Ignorance” animate, as one of her bandmates puts it, “the emotional side of climate change,” employing music’s depth of feeling to ignite political consciousness. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station finds artful ways to sing about the climate crisis.Angela Lewis for The New York Times8. Low, ‘Hey What’If only every band could sound this adventurous 30 years into existence. As their eerily heartfelt harmonies cut through with rhythmic blurts of electronic noise, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk sound, quite literally, like ghosts in the machine, imbuing vast, steely soundscapes with a disarming beauty. Following the sonic reinvention of the stunning 2018 album “Double Negative,” the Duluth band have continued to frame human yearning amid a churning and apocalyptic backdrop, with career-best songs like “Disappearing” and “Days Like These” capturing both the difficulty and the necessity of finding light in a dark age.9. Lucy Dacus, ‘Home Video’Lucy Dacus’s wrenching third studio album is as much an achievement of memoir as it is of songwriting, a vividly conjured coming-of-age story so personal that she used her own teenage diaries for research. “In the summer of ’07, I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she sings on “VBS” (as in, Vacation Bible School), before a gradual and all-consuming doubt begins to creep in. By the final song, when a friend tells her she’s afraid that their desires have rendered them “cursed,” Dacus responds, “So what?” As thoughtfully crafted as a collection of short stories, “Home Video” achingly chronicles the tale of a young person who loses her religion but in the process gains autonomy, a sense of identity and the glorious strength to tell her own truths in song. (Read T magazine’s interview with Lucy Dacus.)10. Dry Cleaning, ‘New Long Leg’“Are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more?” the ever-droll Florence Shaw asks, one of many absurdist yet somehow relatable philosophical questions she poses on the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s singular debut album. The instrumentation around Shaw swells like a sudden squall, but her deadpan, spoken-word musings — a mixture of found text, overheard chitchat and offbeat poetry — are the eye of the storm, remaining steady and strangely unperturbed in all kinds of weather.11. Billie Eilish, ‘Happier Than Ever’No record grew on me more this year than Billie Eilish’s patient and personal sophomore effort, which shuns repeat-the-formula predictability and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. It’s somehow even quieter than her sumptuously ASMR-triggering debut, until those sudden moments when it isn’t — as on the corrosive conclusion to the Nine-Inch-Nails-like “NDA,” or the fireworks display of pent-up frustration that rips open the title track. Exquisitely sequenced, this is a rare pop album that doesn’t show all its cards right away, but instead saves its strongest material for the end, building toward a satisfying finale and a hint at the potential versatility of her future. (Read our review of “Happier Than Ever.”)Billie Eilish’s second album, “Happier Than Ever,” reveals itself at its own pace.Rich Fury/Getty Images12. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’The fluid and incandescent playing of the Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar transcends borders, seamlessly fusing Western psychedelia with North African desert blues. “Afrique Victime,” his strongest and most focused record to date, showcases not only his quicksilver fingerwork but his innate gift for melody and songcraft, proving in every one of these nine blazing tracks that shredding is a universal language.13. Bitchin Bajas, ‘Switched on Ra’This shouldn’t work, or at least not nearly as well as it does: A drone synth outfit tackling the otherworldly compositions and complex harmonies of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra? But Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas approach the task with equal parts reverence and playfulness, assembling an Arkestra of 19 different analog synths and in the process creating a prolonged musical meditation on time, space and the meaning of retrofuturism. The vibes are exquisite, and the whole thing sounds like the Muzak that would play in an intergalactic portal’s waiting room.14. Remi Wolf, ‘Juno’Here’s to anyone who takes a technically skilled voice and chooses to do something delectably weird with it. The Palo Alto native Remi Wolf’s pipes are strong enough to have propelled her to Hollywood on the 2014 season of “American Idol,” but she’s since carved out a much less conventional path, making bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas, melodies and truly wild wordplay (“I love my family intrinsically, like Anthony Kiedis,” she sings, which — sure!). On “Juno,” one of the most promising debut albums of the year, Wolf throws everything she’s got at the wall — and a surprisingly high percentage of it actually sticks. (Read our interview with Remi Wolf.)Remi Wolf makes bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas.Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesSome runners-up worth mentioning:L’Rain, “Fatigue”Rostam, “Changephobia”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Lana Del Rey, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”/“Blue Banisters”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Palberta, “Palberta 5000”/Lily Konigsberg, “Lily We Need to Talk Now” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Silk Sonic’s Retro Roller Jam, and 12 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Bomba Estéreo featuring Yemi Alade, Saint Etienne, Dry Cleaning 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.Silk Sonic, ‘Skate’With a new single, “Skate,” it becomes ever clearer that Silk Sonic — the collaboration of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — is a project in vintage reverse engineering, finding and recreating the sounds and structures of the era when 1970s soul melted into disco. “Skate” — invoking bygone roller discos — has the scrubbing rhythmic guitars, the glockenspiel, the Latin percussion, the back-talking string section and the rising bridge of late 1970s hits. Can young 21st-century listeners feel nostalgia for a time before they were born? JON PARELESBomba Estéreo featuring Yemi Alade, ‘Conexión Total’Bomba Estéreo’s new single, “Conexión Total,” is an effervescent blend of pan flutes, marimbas and drum loops featuring the Nigerian Afropop idol Yemi Alade, whose 2014 song “Johnny” remains an anthem in the genre. The Colombian duo’s maneuver adds to a growing list of collaborations between African and Latin American artists, a much-needed reminder of the links between Afro-diasporic sounds and their origins. Euphoric lyrics from the lead singer Li Saumet and layers of carefully placed air horns coalesce into a prismatic summer jam, like a cool, carbonated drink foaming to the surface. ISABELIA HERRERASaint Etienne, ‘Pond House’You’d be forgiven for assuming that the looped, airy voice at the center of Saint Etienne’s new song belongs to the group’s lead vocalist Sarah Cracknell — but it’s actually a sample of Natalie Imbruglia’s 2001 song “Beauty on the Fire.” The British pop icons’ forthcoming “I’ve Been Trying to Tell You” (their first sample-driven album since the 1993 classic “So Tough”) is a collage of sounds culled from 1997 through 2001; they’ve described it as something of a concept album about late-90s optimism and the collective delusions of pop-cultural memory. Heady and idea-driven as that may sound, though, “Pond House” is as light as a sea breeze, a steady, aquamarine undertow drawing you into its hypnotic atmosphere. LINDSAY ZOLADZLos Lobos, ‘Los Chucos Suaves’Through four decades of recording, Los Lobos have always chosen their occasional cover versions instructively. During the pandemic they made their new covers album, “Native Sons,” filled with songs from Los Angeles bands including the Beach Boys, War, Buffalo Springfield and Thee Midnighters, along with one new Los Lobos song. “Los Chucos Suaves,” originally released in 1949 by Lalo Guerrero y Sus Cinco Lobos (!), recognizes an emerging Los Angeles pachuco culture, with elegant, zoot-suited Mexican Americans broadening their tastes — and dance moves — to Cuban music. Los Lobos’s version places Cesar Rosas’s rasp atop a mesh of cumbia and mambo, with distorted guitar, brawny baritone sax and frenetic timbales celebrating an early Latin cultural alliance. PARELESBéla Fleck featuring Billy Strings and Chris Thile, ‘Charm School’The album due in September from the banjo innovator Béla Fleck — who has collaborated with jazz musicians and chased down the banjo’s African roots — is “My Bluegrass Heart,” billed as his return to bluegrass. “Charm School” uses a classic bluegrass quintet lineup, with Fleck on banjo, Chris Thile on mandolin, Billy Strings on guitar, Billy Contreras on fiddle and Royal Masat on bass. But “Charm School” is by no means a traditional bluegrass tune; it’s a speedy, ever-changing suite, vaulting through keys, meters and tempos. The quintet alights in a seemingly familiar bluegrass zone only to dart off someplace else entirely, again and again. PARELESBarry Altschul’s 3Dom Factor, ‘Long Tall Sunshine’Barry Altschul’s drumming, and especially his rambunctious ride cymbal, is a study in something more than contrast: He knows how to skip across the surface of a beat while also giving it serious heft; his pocket is magnetic, but he’ll just as soon dice it up or splatter it to bits. Over an almost six-decade career in jazz, he’s played on both sides of the aisle, avant-garde and straight-ahead, and in his running trio — the 3dom Factor, with Jon Irabagon on saxophones and Joe Fonda on bass — he lassos it all together. “Long Tall Sunshine” is the title track from the 3dom Factor’s new live album, and it’s classic Altschul: brimming and charging but holding back too (thanks especially to Fonda’s bass), with a harmonically rangy melody that sets up Irabagon for an uncorked solo. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODry Cleaning, ‘Tony Speaks!’On its magnificently odd debut album “New Long Leg,” released earlier this year, the London band Dry Cleaning fused post-punk grooves with the deadpan musings of the frontwoman Florence Shaw, a sharp, dryly funny observer of modern life’s absurdities. But “Tony Speaks!,” one half of a double-A-side single the band released this week, is its most barbed and political track yet. The song is an unnerving meditation on the banal but weighty effect that systemic problems can have on individual psyches: “I’m just sad about the collapse of heavy industry, I’ll be all right in a bit.” But Shaw’s most piercing musings come when she widens her lens and ponders climate change; her reflections poised in a delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. “I always thought of nature as something dead and uninviting,” she mutters, “but there used to be a lot more of it.” ZOLADZAda Lea, ‘Damn’“Damn,” from the Montreal-based singer-songwriter Ada Lea, unfolds like a quiet epiphany: a gradual accumulation of feelings and frustrations that, in an instant, snap into a sudden clarity. Atop an understated arrangement of guitar and percussion, Lea (whose real name is Alexandra Levy) sings of gradually slipping into an emotional rut: “Every year’s just a little bit darker, then the darker gets darker,” she sings in a low, throaty drawl, “then it’s dark as hell.” But in the song’s closing moments, Lea recollects herself and summons all her energy into a spirited, defiant refusal of everything that’s gone wrong: “Damn the work, damn the music, damn the fun that’s missing.” It’s the sound of hitting bottom but finally looking up. ZOLADZEkyu, ‘Oh Dje’Ekyu, a songwriter from Benin, sings about destructive envy in “Oh Dje”: “When someone goes up, we want to take them down/When someone moves forward, we want to stop him.” His voice is husky and melancholy, with an electronic veil; the rhythm is ticking, ratcheting Afrobeats-meets-trap, while guitar licks and manipulated vocals ripple in the distance. Below them all are bassy, looming synthesizer tones, threatening, as the lyrics suggest, to drag down everything. PARELESNao, ‘And Then Life Was Beautiful’“Hope will come someday soon,” the English songwriter Nao (Neo Jessica Joshua) promises in her helium-high soprano in “And Then Life Was Beautiful,” the title song from her next album. To recover from the way “Change came like a hurricane” in 2020, she advises self-preservation, patience, contemplation and gratitude amid invigorating triplets, rising chromatic chords and airborne vocal harmonies. She’s determined to conjure a sense of uplift. PARELESSilvana Estrada, ‘Marchita’Silvana Estrada’s voice oozes quiet fury. It’s a quality that connects her to a long line of women in Latin America, whose voices are almost synonymous with the experience of suffering and abandonment: icons like Chavela Vargas and La Lupe. But unlike some of her forebears, the 24-year-old Mexican artist’s anguish is so quiet, so raw, it burns in her chest, smoldering under the surface. On “Marchita,” the rolling melismas of Estrada’s voice glide over the warmth of a Venezuelan cuatro, blooming into waves of violin and violoncello strings. “Me ha costado tanto y tanto/Que ya mi alma se marchita,” she weeps. “It’s cost me so much that my soul is withering,” she says. That is the kind of slow-burning despair that steals life from you. HERRERAGrouper, ‘Unclean Mind’Grouper, a.k.a. Liz Harris, effortlessly collapses the grittiest of emotions into simple jolts of sorrow. Though she is known for her hypnotic tape loops, breathy whispers and quiet piano arrangements, on “Unclean Mind,” Harris swaps the familiar, morose piano keys of previous releases for the strum of an acoustic guitar. Her harmonic vocals are weightless, almost imperceptible, but the sentiment is transparent. “Tried to hide you from my unclean mind,” she sighs, “Put it in a costume/Turning patterns with a perfect line.” We may not know what kind of relationship she refers to, but the enigmatic beauty of Grouper’s music is that it is immersive without being obvious, so potent it needs little explication to convey the trickiest emotions. HERRERADot Allison, ‘Long Exposure’The Scottish songwriter and singer Dot Allison has recorded, as leader and collaborator, with arty musicians like Kevin Shields, Massive Attack and Scott Walker beginning in the 1990s. Her new solo album, “Heart-Shaped Scars,” is her first since 2009. It’s largely acoustic and minimal, with songs that meditate on the unhurried growth of plants. “Long Exposure” intertwines Allison’s voice with steady guitar picking, single piano notes and a chamber-pop string section, but it’s far from serene. It’s an indictment of a partner’s gradually revealed infidelity that gathers pain and wrath from the realization that it went on so long. PARELES More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Olivia Rodrigo’s Emotional Road Trip, and 8 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Westside Gunn, Rosanne Cash, Dry Cleaning 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.Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Deja Vu’OK, now that she’s got her license, here comes the road trip. Olivia Rodrigo’s “Deja Vu” opens in the car, with the singer recalling fonder times with an ex. As on “Drivers License,” there are three parties — Rodrigo, that former beau and the specter of that person’s new love, and it’s unclear which of the other two causes Rodrigo more anguish. The lyrics are plain and pinpoint pained: “That was our place, I found it first/I made the jokes you tell to her.” About halfway through, “Deja Vu” turns severely Swiftian, with lyrical asides about listening to music, a yelping section almost directly cribbed from Swift’s “Cruel Summer’” and a familiar power struggle over who taught who about cool music. Rodrigo would like to make it clear, though, that she is no mere student: “Play her piano but she doesn’t know/That I was the one who taught you Billy Joel.” JON CARAMANICAWestside Gunn, ‘Julia Lang’Hazy, pugnacious and glowering, the latest from Westside Gunn is ragged in the best early ’90s way, so convincing in its fuzz and stagger that it’s almost like a recovered memory. CARAMANICARosanne Cash featuring John Leventhal, ‘The Killing Fields’Rosanne Cash considers her own past, her family’s Southern roots, and the South’s history of lynchings and injustice in “The Killing Fields.” She sings, “The blood that runs on cypress trees cannot be washed away/by mothers’ tears and gasoline.” The melody is mournful and minor-key; a lone, lightly strummed guitar supplies most of the accompaniment. And at the end, Cash resolves, “All that came before us/is not who we are now.” JON PARELESHalf Waif, ‘Take Away the Ache’Half Waif — the songwriter Nandi Rose — lets herself be buffeted by the paradoxes of love in “Take Away the Ache.” She sings, “I know that I’m asking for more than you can give/but isn’t love just living like that?” It’s a dizzying three-and-a-half minutes, veering amid minimal electronic abstractions, piano ballad and dance-floor thumper, all held together by passionate yearning. PARELESNaomi Cowan, ‘Energy’The Jamaican singer Naomi Cowan sets her usual reggae aside in “Energy,” an ingenious, multi-leveled mesh of syncopations and silences produced by Izy Beats. Plucked strings, sporadic bass tones, finger snaps, flickering electronic hi-hats and teasing, elusive backup vocals poke in and out of the mix as Cowan chides an ex who ghosted her before declaring, “Love and war, baby, I’m no casualty.” PARELESDry Cleaning, ‘Unsmart Lady’“If you like a girl, be nice — it’s not rocket science,” Florence Shaw deadpans on “Unsmart Lady,” a new single from the London four-piece Dry Cleaning that plays out almost like a psych-rock update of Nada Surf’s “Popular.” On Dry Cleaning’s excellent debut album “New Long Leg,” out on Friday, Shaw is equal parts frontwoman and spoken-word poet, weaving the random linguistic detritus of modern life into loose, surreal narratives. (She used to collect snippets of overheard conversations and intriguing phrases in her phone’s Notes app; when her friends asked her to join their band, she mined that found material for lyrics.) “Unsmart Lady” begins as a kind of curt, one-sided conversation, but by the end it has transformed into an imagistic meditation on the absurdities of femininity, like a “foot squeezed hopefully into a short boot.” Around her, the band unleashes its fury, but Shaw’s delivery stays steady — the gimlet eye of a storm. LINDSAY ZOLADZMdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’Mdou Moctar, a guitarist, singer and bandleader from Niger, deploys everything he has drawn from Saharan traditions and Western rock in the calm-to-storm buildup of “Afrique Victime,” the title song of an album due May 21. He warns, “Africa is a victim of so many crimes/If we stay silent it will be the end of us,” while the beat gallops ahead. Soon, his electric guitar leaps up from the band’s rhythmic core to trill, twirl, swoop and scream. PARELESAG Club featuring Icecoldbishop, ‘Noho’The excellent “Noho,” from the new album by the consistently refreshing AG Club, features a frictionless collision of Bay Area hip-hop traditions: the slow-and-low and the loopily exuberant. CARAMANICADopolarians, ‘The Bond’Dopolarians began in 2018 as a project uniting free-jazz musicians based in Arkansas with elder luminaries from the free-jazz world: the bassist William Parker, the drummer Alvin Fielder Jr. and the saxophonist Kidd Jordan. Their debut album, “Garden Party,” seesawed between singsong lyricism and reckless entanglement. The group has just released a new LP, “The Bond,” and while the lineup has changed — Brian Blade now fills the drum chair after Fielder died in 2019 at 83; Jordan, now 85, is no longer in the group — the loose but intense feel remains the same. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More