More stories

  • in

    A Rare Look at Bob Dylan in the Studio, and 13 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Tems, Adia Victoria, Cuco 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.Bob Dylan, ‘Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight (Version 2)’“Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight (Version 2)” is from the latest deep dive into the Bob Dylan archives, the five-CD “Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 1980-1985.” The track is similar in feel — though full of Dylan’s improvisatory variations — to the take that appeared on “Infidels” in 1983, with a new mix that dials back the unfortunate 1980s drum sound. Dylan had a superb studio band, with the Jamaican team of Sly (Dunbar) and Robbie (Skakespeare) on drums and bass, and a conversational interplay between Mick Taylor (formerly of the Rolling Stones) on slide guitar and Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) on electric guitar. It’s not the most radical discovery in the set — which also includes rarities like “Enough Is Enough” and “Yes Sir, No Sir” — but it arrives with live footage of the sessions, a rare glimpse of Dylan in motion in the studio. JON PARELESThe War on Drugs featuring Lucius, ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’The War on Drugs trades psychedelic haze for 1980s heft in “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.” Adam Granduciel sings about coming to terms with the past, breaking up, letting go and moving on, deciding — with the voices of Lucius as a choir — “We’re all just walking through this darkness on our own.” Deploying neat, reverberating guitar and synthesizer hooks like Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” the song is a booming march toward a willed recovery. PARELESTems featuring Brent Faiyaz, ‘Found’This stellar duet between the young Nigerian singer Tems and the R&B crooner Brent Faiyaz is saturated with an easy melancholy. On the song from Tems’s new EP, “If Orange Was a Place,” she sounds anxious and unraveled: “I feel I might just be coming undone/Tell me why you can’t be found.” When Faiyaz arrives, he’s alternately soothing and cloying. “Found” has echoes of SZA’s insular angst, and also the robust, earthen texture of mid-1990s R&B. It’s utterly swell. JON CARAMANICACarly Pearce and Ashley McBryde, ‘Never Wanted to Be That Girl’A stoic and affecting back and forth between Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde, both coming to the realization that they have a man in common. It’s a timeless trope, and an effective one — neither one attempts to out-sing the other, a gesture of their shared frustration (unlike in, say, Reba McEntire’s blistering 1990s duets with Linda Davis, which delved into throat warfare). CARAMANICAAdia Victoria, ‘Mean-Hearted Woman’After dabbling in electronic textures with her 2019 album, “Silences,” Adia Victoria circles back, at least partway, toward bluesy roots-rock on her new album, “A Southern Gothic.” Its songs deal with power, mortality and, in “Mean-Hearted Woman,” heartbreak and revenge. Lingering on one chord, with a plucked guitar and a persistent tambourine, she sings about being dumped and replaced, and while her voice stays quiet and breathy, she moves bewilderment and heartache to fury, with a death threat that’s no less menacing for staying quiet. PARELESCuco, ‘Under the Sun’“Under the Sun” is a shape-shifting statement about the journey to self. Cuco immerses us in interdimensional psych rock, only to quickly shift to a cumbia interlude, and then to a wave of lightning guitar licks. In the video, he leaves a lit candle at an altar featuring the artwork for his 2019 album “Para Mi.” Consider this a new era, one where all bets are off. ISABELIA HERRERASnail Mail, ‘Valentine’“Why’d you want to erase me?” Lindsey Jordan — the songwriter behind Snail Mail — yowls in “Valentine.” It’s a song about affection, obsession, estrangement, jealousy and bewilderment, with tempestuous quiet-LOUD-quiet indie-rock dynamics that mirror a passionate, messy, still unresolved relationship. PARELESMoor Mother, ‘Rogue Waves’For years, it has felt painfully imprecise to slap the “hip-hop” label onto the music of Camae Ayewa, a poet, electronic musician and Afrofuturist who performs as Moor Mother. (Not that that’s stopped streaming services and other grid jockeys from trying.) But two confluent things have been happening recently: Ayewa is embracing lower-slung, more head-nodding beats, and hip-hop itself is becoming a spacier, gooier, more abstract zone. The new Moor Mother album, “Black Encyclopedia of the Air,” features guest spots from rising rappers and vocalists, like Pink Siifu and Orion Sun, on most tracks. But on “Rogue Waves,” over a hydraulic swinging beat, Ayewa goes it alone — confronting subject matter that’s sometimes abstract and evocative, elsewhere tender and intimate. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCraig Taborn, ’60xsixty’In the same week that he announced his first solo album in 10 years (coming Oct. 8), the pianist Craig Taborn released another collection of music that’s similar in nature, but not quite the same. “60xsixty” contains 60 restive and fleeting pieces, all about a minute each, that play back-to-back at 60xsixty.com in a randomized order that’s different each time you visit the site. You’re unable to pause or skip: The listener’s usual sense of control is stripped away, as is the very notion of a finished product — Taborn has said he may swap out some tracks for new ones in the future, keeping the total number at 60. The current range of tracks varies from 12-tone-scale improvisations on acoustic piano to the kind of squelchy, three-dimensional electronic music that Taborn makes with his project Junk Magic. On other tracks, he’s most concerned with stirring up ambient sound. RUSSONELLOOneohtrix Point Never and Elizabeth Fraser, ‘Tales From the Trash Stratum’Leave it to Oneohtrix Point Never and the Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser to craft the ultimate experiment in glossolalia. “Tales From the Trash Stratum” runs like a New Age seminar on mushrooms: OPN collages glitchy arpeggios, synth crashes and delicate piano keys; Fraser’s echoed sighs and angel-dust melodies flicker in and out of the production. It’s a blast of neurological delirium and decay, rendered as soothingly as possible. HERRERAAmaarae featuring Kali Uchis, ‘Sad Girlz Luv Money (Official Remix)’Last year, the Ghanaian American artist Amaarae quietly released “The Angel You Don’t Know,” an imaginative, buoyant album that masterfully harnessed all kinds of Afro-diasporic sounds, including R&B, Southern rap and Nigerian highlife. “Sad Girlz Luv Money” was an immediate standout: a breezy Afropop anthem for midnight trysts. On the official remix, the Colombian American singer Kali Uchis whispers hushed, silky come-ons in Spanish, and Amaarae’s sky-high melodies and smoky raps curl over the beat. HERRERALindsey Buckingham, ‘Swan Song’A frenetic drum loop, like a pummeled punching bag, drives “Swan Song” from Lindsey Buckingham’s new, self-titled album, recorded solo in the studio and released after his severance from Fleetwood Mac and emergency triple-bypass surgery. The mix feels inside-out, with his voice enclosed by percussion while his flamenco-tinged acoustic guitar and wailing electric guitar both poke outward. He taunts mortality — “She says it’s late, but the future’s looking bright”— with fast fingers. PARELESIann Dior featuring Lil Uzi Vert, ‘V12’What a dreamily beautiful song from Iann Dior, a sweet-sounding sing-rapper with just the faintest of barbed edges, and Lil Uzi Vert. Together, they’re boastful and playful, and yet the production has an elegiac edge, as if sadness were an inevitable byproduct of success. CARAMANICAOuri, ‘Chains’Ouri — the Montreal composer and electronic producer Ourielle Auvé — sketches a track being assembled and tweaked on the spot with “Chains,” from her album “Frame of a Fauna,” due Oct. 22. She dials in swooping sounds, echoey vocal syllables, a glitchy beat, tentative chords; the dance beat solidifies, falls away and reappears, briefly locking into syncopation with wordless vocal syncopations before evaporating. The video shows Ouri concocting a CGI dancer who leaps out as flesh and blood: virtual efforts turning physical. PARELES More

  • in

    Songs to Accompany a Dreamy Summer Dinner Party

    John Cale, Sharon Van Etten, Donavon Smallwood and other creative types make suggestions for an eclectic playlist sure to help set a festive mood.When creating a playlist for a dinner party, it can be useful to think ahead and imagine the end of the night — should things conclude with whiskey and delayed goodbyes on the couch or with dancing into the wee hours? Because music, after all, can not only set the tone but also help determine the entire trajectory of an evening. Where to begin, though? Curating the perfect lineup can feel like a daunting task, and even music obsessives can fall into ruts and benefit from others offering up song suggestions. Recently, we asked a range of artists, musicians and other creative types to do just that, and to share a few tips on putting your selections together. More

  • in

    Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan, Our Most Underappreciated Comic

    As he turns 80, don’t be fooled by his serious music. From the start, his work has been filled with a cockeyed humor that can range from corny jokes to dark wit.At the end of “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the Coen brothers movie set in the Greenwich Village music scene of 1961, the title character, a gifted but struggling folk singer on the verge of giving up, leaves the stage of the fabled Gaslight Café as a newcomer fills his spot. What’s clear after the first note is that it’s Bob Dylan at the start of one of the greatest careers in pop music More

  • in

    Bob Dylan Center, Featuring Archival Materials, to Open in 2022

    Following the acquisition of the singer-songwriter’s once-secret archives in 2016, a Tulsa-based foundation will put lyrics, photos and films on display in Oklahoma.Dylanologists, rejoice — the archives are going on display.Starting May 10, 2022 — six years after the secret Bob Dylan Archives were revealed and acquired by the foundation of an Oklahoman billionaire — some 100,000 pieces of ephemera will be available to visit in Tulsa.The opening of the Bob Dylan Center, announced on Wednesday, will include rare and never-before-seen lyric manuscripts, photographs, songs and footage, alongside a new “immersive film experience” and a “recreation of an authentic studio environment,” organizers said. Public admission information will be released later in the year, while a founding membership (limited to 250 people) is available now for $7,500.The three-story center in the Tulsa arts district — designed by the architecture firm Olson Kundig — was founded by the American Song Archives and its backer, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which along with the University of Tulsa acquired Dylan’s archives for between $15 million and $20 million in 2016. (Originally appraised at more than $60 million, the bulk of the materials were donated.)In announcing the acquisition, The New York Times called the troves “deeper and more vast than even most Dylan experts could imagine, promising untold insight into the songwriter’s work.” (And yet, of course: “Amid these mountains of paper, Mr. Dylan, the man, remains an enigma.”)The George Kaiser Family Foundation, named for the oil and banking magnate and Democratic donor, also operates the Woody Guthrie Center down the street. An early hero of Dylan’s, Guthrie was born in Oklahoma, and Dylan, now 79, noted at the time that “it makes a lot of sense, and it’s a great honor” for their archives to be held together, alongside the foundation’s cache of Native American art.George Kaiser said that he obtained the singers’ archives to facilitate both scholarly study and tourism, with hopes of revitalizing Tulsa. (The Guthrie and Dylan centers sit near the city’s Greenwood district, once known as Black Wall Street and the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the 1921 atrocity that has recently been revisited by journalists, historians and popular culture.)As a tease along with its announcement, the Dylan Center also publicized the existence of what it called a “heretofore-unknown recording” of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” captured at an East 3rd Street apartment in 1962. The song, with updated lyrics, was eventually released the following year on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”Separately, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami said this week that it would host an exhibition titled “Retrospectrum,” featuring some 120 drawings, paintings and sculptures by Dylan, building on a collection that originally debuted in Shanghai. The show runs from Nov. 30 through April 17, 2022. More

  • in

    Sally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cover, Dies at 81

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySally Grossman, Immortalized on a Dylan Album Cover, Dies at 81She picked out a red outfit and struck a relaxed pose on the cover of “Bringing It All Back Home,” leaving much for fans to guess about.Bob Dylan wanted his manager’s wife, Sally Grossman, to appear on the cover of his 1965 album taken at her home in Woodstock, N.Y. March 15, 2021, 6:53 p.m. ETOne of Bob Dylan’s most important early albums, “Bringing It All Back Home” from 1965, has the kind of cover that can strain eyes and fuel speculation. It is a photograph of Mr. Dylan, in a black jacket, sitting in a room full of bric-a-brac that may or may not mean something, staring into the camera as a woman in a red outfit lounges in the background.“Fans became so fixated on deciphering it,” the music journalist Neil McCormick wrote in The Daily Telegraph of London last year, “that a rumor took hold that the woman was Dylan in drag, representing the feminine side of his psyche.”She wasn’t. She was Sally Grossman, the wife of Mr. Dylan’s manager at the time, Albert Grossman.“The photo was shot in Albert Grossman’s house,” the man who took it, Daniel Kramer, told The Guardian in 2016. “The room was the original kitchen of this house that’s a couple hundred years old.”“Bob contributed to the picture the magazines he was reading and albums he was listening to,” Mr. Kramer added, a reference to the bric-a-brac. “Bob wanted Sally to be in the photo because, well, look at her! She chose the red outfit.”Ms. Grossman died on Thursday at her home in the Bearsville section of Woodstock, N.Y., not far from the house where the photograph was taken. She had long been a fixture in Woodstock, operating a recording studio, a theater and other businesses there after her husband died of a heart attack at 59 in 1986. She was 81.Her niece, Anna Buehler, confirmed her death and said the cause had not been determined.Ms. Grossman in an undated photo, taken in the same room, against the same fireplace, in which the 1965 album cover photo was shot. She and her husband ran recording studios and restaurants in Woodstock, and after his death she created the Bearsville Theater there. Credit…Deborah Feingold/Corbis via Getty ImagesSally Ann Buehler was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in Manhattan to Coleman and Ann (Kauth) Buehler. Her mother was executive director of the Boys Club (now the Variety Boys and Girls Club) of Queens; her father was an actuary.Ms. Grossman studied at Adelphi University on Long Island and Hunter College in Manhattan, but she was more drawn to the arts scene percolating in Greenwich Village.“I figured that what was happening on the street was a lot more interesting than studying 17th-century English literature,” she told Musician magazine in 1987, “so I dropped out of Hunter and began working as a waitress. I worked at the Cafe Wha?, and then the Bitter End, all over.”Along the way she met Mr. Grossman, who was making his name managing folk music acts that played at those types of venues, including Peter, Paul and Mary, whom he helped bring together.“The office was constantly packed with people,” Ms. Grossman recalled in the 1987 interview. “Peter, Paul and Mary, of course, but also Ian and Sylvia, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, other musicians, artists, poets.”The couple, who married in 1964, settled in Woodstock, where Mr. Grossman had acquired properties and which Mr. Dylan had also discovered about the same time, settling there with his family as well.In due course came the photo shoot for the album cover.“I made 10 exposures,” Mr. Kramer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2014. One image, with Mr. Dylan holding a cat, was a keeper. “That was the only time all three subjects were looking at the lens,” Mr. Kramer said.The photo, staged by Mr. Kramer with Mr. Dylan’s input, was an early example of what became a mini-trend of loading covers up with imagery that seemed to invite scrutiny for insights into the music. The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967) might be the best-known example.The album itself was a breakthrough for Mr. Dylan, marking his transition from acoustic to electric. Its tracks included “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm.”Ms. Grossman and her husband established recording studios and restaurants in Bearsville, and after his death Ms. Grossman renovated a barn to create the Bearsville Theater, bringing to life a vision of her husband’s. It hosted numerous concerts over the years. She sold the businesses in the mid-2000s.Ms. Grossman is survived by a brother, Barry Buehler.Though she knew many American musicians, Ms. Grossman had a special place in her heart for an order of religious singers from Bengal known as the Bauls, whom she encountered in the 1960s. She created a digital archive of Baul music. Deborah Baker, author of “A Blue Hand: The Beats in India” (2008), wrote about Ms. Grossman and her connection to the Bauls in a 2011 essay in the magazine the Caravan.“Despite all the famous musicians and bands who once passed through her life,” Ms. Baker wrote, “she found it was the Bauls she missed the most from those years.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

  • in

    Inside the Bull Market for Songwriting Rights

    @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More