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    6 of ‘The Greatest’ Songs

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    Hear superlative tracks from Billie Eilish, Kenny Rogers and Alabama Shakes.Billie Eilish opened her “Hit Me Hard and Soft” tour in Quebec this week.Julia Spicer for The New York TimesDear listeners,I’m going to keep things brief today, since I just got back from a whirlwind trip to lovely Quebec City, where I reported on the opening night of Billie Eilish’s world tour. I was curious to see how the 22-year-old Eilish would stage and perform the songs from her latest album, the sonically adventurous “Hit Me Hard and Soft” — especially those that require the oft-whispery-voiced singer to belt to the rafters. One of those songs has a lofty but familiar title: “The Greatest.”I have long dreamed of compiling an Amplifier playlist of different songs with the same name. Watching Eilish perform “The Greatest,” probably the emotional apex of the whole show, I realized she was offering me the perfect opportunity. I started to think of the many other artists who have bestowed that imposing moniker on one of their tunes — Cat Power, Lana Del Rey and Kenny Rogers among them.Perhaps I just have majesty on the mind because as I made my way home from the airport yesterday, I listened to (and eventually watched) one of the greatest baseball games I can remember, an operatic battle for a postseason berth between the Atlanta Braves and my New York Mets, who came back from the brink of elimination (twice!) to win the game, 8-7. In that spirit, I dedicate all six of these songs to Francisco Lindor and his two-run, ninth-inning home run: a moment of true greatness.If this is it, I’m signing off,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Billie Eilish: “The Greatest”In its muted opening sequence, Eilish coats that titular lyric in sarcasm: “Man, am I the greatest,” she sighs, reflecting on a doomed relationship that seems to have suffered from some lopsided affection. As the song builds to its cathartic conclusion, though, a soaring melody allows her defenses to drop away. “I loved you, and I still do,” she sings. “Just wanted passion from you, just wanted what I gave to you.”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mitski’s Sharp Take on a Creative Life, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Arca featuring Sia, Kelis, Tambino 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.Mitski, ‘Working for the Knife’Mitski monumentalizes an artist’s self-doubts — the creative impulse versus the editorial knife — in “Working for the Knife.” The track begins as a trudging march with stark, droning synthesizer tones, but Patrick Hyland’s production expands into ever-wider spaces with lofty, reverberating guitars. Mitski sings about missteps and rejections at first, but her imagination perseveres: “I start the day lying and end with the truth.” JON PARELESArca featuring Sia, ‘Born Yesterday’This unexpected collaboration just had to happen. Sia has a memorably broken voice and a songwriting strategy of victim-to-victory that has brought her million-selling hits, both on her own and behind the scenes. Arca, who has made music with Björk and Kanye West, has an operatic voice and a mastery of disorienting electronics from eerie atmospherics to brutal beats. In “Born Yesterday,” Sia wails, “You took my heart and now it’s broken,” confronting a partner’s betrayal. Arca twists the electronic track all over the place, bringing in and warping and subtracting a four-on-the-floor beat, pumping up the drama as Sia decides whether she’ll be “your baby any more.” The twists never stop. PARELESTainy with Bad Bunny and Julieta Venegas, ‘Lo Siento BB:/’Cynics might see a Tainy-produced track featuring Bad Bunny and the beloved pop-rock icon Julieta Venegas as the type of collaboration engineered in major label conference rooms. But “Lo Siento BB:/” is a seamless matchup that leverages both artists’ capacities for pointed vocal drama. Venegas’s sky-high melodies and funereal piano transition into El Conejo Malo’s signature baritone. Sad boys, sad girls and sad people, consider this your new anthem. ISABELIA HERRERARobert Glasper featuring D Smoke & Tiffany Gouché, ‘Shine’The Black church has been close to the center or at the very root of many big changes in American popular music; and over in the jazz world recently, gospel has been reasserting its influence. The pianist and bandleader Robert Glasper is a main driver of the trend, and this week he released “Shine,” an early single from the forthcoming “Black Radio 3,” featuring the rising M.C. D Smoke and the vocalist Tiffany Gouché. Glasper gifts the session with a signature sparkly harmonic vamp, and D Smoke projects farsighted conviction on his verses; Gouché’s vocals are beatific. This is the trinity that made the first “Black Radio” a smash, and has fed Glasper’s star formula: a gospel core, backpack-generation rap wisdom and bravado performances from female singers. But the track’s low-key showstopper is the bassist Burniss Travis, who’s doing more here than you might at first realize, which is exactly the intent. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOglaive and ericdoa, ‘Mental Anguish’This is one of the standout tracks on “Then I’ll Be Happy,” the new collaborative EP from the rising hyperpop stars glaive and ericdoa. At the beginning, it has some of the parchedness of early emo, but then lightning-bolt squelchy synths arrive, and fraught vocals that sound like they’re being microwaved in real time. JON CARAMANICAJames Blake featuring SZA, ‘Coming Back’James Blake is smart to let SZA upstage him in “Coming Back.” It starts as one more slice of his usual keyboard-and-falsetto melancholy, but when SZA arrives she challenges both his morose narrative — “Don’t you have a clue about where my mind is right now?” — and his stolid music, as she bounces syllables around the beat and brings new zigzags to the melody. Blake rises to the competition, chopping up the production and pepping up his tune. Even so, the song may not convince her to come back. PARELESJustin Bieber featuring TroyBoi, ‘Red Eye’It has been clear for a long time, but just to spell it out: Justin Bieber is the world’s savviest beat-shopper. While the lyrics of “Red Eye” flaunt the prerogatives of glamorous bicoastal American living — “You should be hopping on a redeye”— the track, by the British producer TroyBoi, plays with electronics, reggaeton, Afrobeats, dubstep and dembow: so digital, so professional, so perky, so slick. PARELESC. Tangana and Nathy Peluso, ‘Ateo’Latin pop’s geographical borders are dissolving. C. Tangana, a rapper turned singer from Spain, and Nathy Peluso, an R&B-loving singer from Argentina, find a meeting place amid the light-fingered guitar syncopations of bachata, a style from the Dominican Republic. “Ateo” translates as “atheist,” but the song quickly makes clear that desire and bachata add up to “a miracle come down from heaven”; now they’re believers. PARELESKelis, ‘Midnight Snacks’Kelis’s first new song in seven years sneaks up on you. Full of whispered astral funk and understated steaminess, it’s a welcome return for one of R&B’s left-field luminaries. CARAMANICATambino, ‘Estos Días’Tambino lets genres slip through his fingers like fine grains of white sand. On “Estos Días,” a sliced-up baile funk rhythm blends into dance-punk verve, only to burst into the soaring drama of a pop ballad. The track is a meditation on the protests that spread across the world last year, and the police violence that continues to plague marginalized communities. “Nos mata la policía,” he intones. “The police kill us.” But in the trembling fragility of the Peruvian-born artist’s voice, there lies a kind of radical hope. “Yo voy hacer mejor/Dejar todo el dolor,” it quivers. “I’m going to do better/Leave behind all the pain.” HERRERASusana Baca, ‘Negra del Alma’Susana Baca, the Afro-Peruvian songwriter and folklorist who has also served as Peru’s Minister of Culture, marks the 50th year of her career with her new album “Palabras Urgentes” (“Urgent Words”), connecting age-old injustices to the present. “Negro del Alma” is a traditional Andean song commemorating a complicated past, when Andean natives met Afro-Peruvians and fell in love. Baca complicates it further, meshing disparate Peruvian traditions of marimbas, hand percussion and horns. But her voice carries through the song’s anguish and determination. PARELESSuzanne Ciani, ‘Morning Spring’Suzanne Ciani’s “Morning Spring” is the first taste of “@0,” a new charity compilation showcasing the works of ambient creators past and present. Here, orbs of synth bubbles float to the surface like a cool carbonated drink, while others wash beneath, ebbing and flowing like the low tide. Ciani — a synth pioneer recently celebrated in the documentary “Sisters With Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines” — renders an aquatic concerto, its symphonic movements receding and transforming at every turn, like the curling crests of ocean waves. HERRERAKenny Garrett, ‘Joe Hen’s Waltz’As his contribution to “Relief,” a forthcoming compilation benefiting the Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund, the esteemed alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett provided an unreleased outtake from the sessions for his standout 2012 album, “Seeds From the Underground.” With a teetering melody and a swaggering mid-tempo swing feel, “Joe Hen’s Waltz” pays homage to the saxophonist Joe Henderson, nodding to his knack for slippery melodies that seem to move through a house of mirrors. In Garrett’s quartet at the time, much of the energy was being generated by his partnership with the pianist Benito Gonzalez, whose playing is rooted in Afro-Latin clave and the influence of McCoy Tyner, but has an effervescent phrasing style of its own. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Golden Globes Celebrated Sia’s ‘Music.’ Autistic Activists Wish They Hadn’t.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Golden Globes Celebrated Sia’s ‘Music.’ Autistic Activists Wish They Hadn’t.Three decades after “Rain Man,” detractors say this new film about an autistic character is regressive and potentially harmful.Maddie Ziegler, left, and Kate Hudson in “Music.” Ziegler plays the title character, which the director, Sia, has said is based on an autistic boy she knew.Credit…Merrick Morton/Vertical EntertainmentFeb. 11, 2021Updated 5:45 p.m. ETWhen Charlie Hancock first heard about a new musical movie centered on a girl on the spectrum, she was thrilled. “I thought, ‘Great. I love musicals,’” said Hancock, a first-year student at Oxford University who is autistic and wrote an essay on the film. “‘This could be an opportunity for more representation and perhaps a type that we haven’t seen before.’”Her excitement quickly turned to distress.As details emerged in the last few months about that film, “Music,” which is directed and co-written by the pop star Sia, disability rights advocates grew increasingly concerned about potential bias in the plot as well as the decision to cast a performer who wasn’t autistic. Those worries escalated into a backlash in November, when the trailer’s release set off a fight between the musician-turned-filmmaker and her online critics, and again in January, when leaked scenes seemingly endorsed a controversial physical restraint technique. Then, to the surprise of industry insiders and the autism world alike, the film garnered two Golden Globe nominations last week. Though Sia has since offered an olive branch to detractors, the anger remains.“Nominating ‘Emily in Paris’ is one thing. It’s a harmless bit of mediocre fluff,” Ashley Wool, an autistic actress in upstate New York, said, referring to the Netflix series that also received surprise Globe nominations. “‘Music’ is something that’s doing active harm to people. This gives it a veneer of legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve.”The film will be available on demand Feb. 12 in the United States but has already opened in Sia’s native Australia to dismal reviews and a weak box office. It follows a girl named Music and her newly sober half sister, Zu (Kate Hudson), who becomes Music’s guardian. Music, played by Maddie Ziegler, can’t speak, and viewers are simply told that she is a “magical little girl” who sees the world differently. Song-and-dance interludes illustrate what’s going on inside Music’s head. Sia, who has said Music was based on an autistic boy she knew, has described the film as “‘Rain Man’ the musical, but with girls.”Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in “Rain Man.” Disability rights advocates say Hoffman’s character played into stereotypes about autism. Credit…United ArtistsYet that 1988 film represents exactly the kind of stereotypical portrayal that disability rights advocates say they don’t want to see in 2021: a neurotypical star (Dustin Hoffman) playing an autistic savant stereotype. Research shows that disabled characters are overwhelmingly played by nondisabled actors on film and TV. A recent rare exception was Pixar’s 2020 animated short film “Loop” that won praise for featuring a nonspeaking autistic actress of color in the lead voice role.Like Music, the “Loop” actress and character had difficulty forming words but still frequently vocalized. More common is the casting of a nonautistic performer like Ziegler. The actress, a recurring Sia collaborator, ultimately replaced “a beautiful young girl nonverbal on the spectrum” who found the experience “unpleasant and stressful,” Sia said in a tweet.Because there are so few autistic characters onscreen, choices about depictions matter greatly, critics contend. “Some people might say any representation is better than nothing. I’ve heard that argument as a Black person. I’ve heard it as queer person. I’ve heard it as a woman. I’ve heard it as an autistic,” said Morenike Giwa Onaiwu, a visiting scholar in humanities at Rice University. “I’m tired of the scraps and the crumbs. I’d rather not see us on the screen than see us in a way that fuels stigma.”Publicists for “Music” did not reply to requests to speak to Sia or to clarify details surrounding the film for this article. Publicists for Hudson and Ziegler, who was 14 when the film was shot in 2017, did not respond to requests for comment.Many detractors say problems with the film are, as Hancock put it, “baked into its very DNA” because Music isn’t really at the center of “Music.” Instead, they say, it’s Zu who is given a complex narrative of growth and depth; Music merely serves as a catalyst to help Zu on her journey to become a better person. It’s “the idea that we’re not characters or people in our own right,” Hancock added, “but we exist in order to inspire the nondisabled people in our lives and, by extension, the audience.”After the first trailer dropped in November and activists on Twitter criticized the film’s approach, Sia reacted angrily, arguing that she had spent three years on research and that her intentions were “awesome.” When one autistic performer said she felt that “zero effort” had been made to cast an autistic lead, Sia replied, “Maybe you’re just a bad actor.”Musical interludes in Sia’s film, with Hudson, left, and Ziegler, serve to illustrate what’s going on in Music’s  mind.Credit…Merrick Morton/Vertical EntertainmentFor autistic artists, the fact that Sia said a neurotypical actress was recast as the lead sends the troubling message that autistic people are bad hires.“First, it’s undermining autistic people’s capabilities and making us out to be infants,” Chloé Hayden, an autistic actress in Australia, said. “Second, if your film is about inclusion, but you’re not making the actual film set inclusive, it completely belittles the entire point.”Critics have also taken issue with two scenes showing Music having a meltdown and being subjected to prone restraint, a practice in which people, often disabled, are put in a facedown position while force is used to subdue them. Versions of the method have been linked to serious injuries and death. But when a saintly neighbor, played by Leslie Odom Jr., restrains Music, it’s portrayed as an act of kindness: He lies on top of her and says he’s “crushing her” with his love. Later, in a public park, he instructs Zu on how to use the restraint on Music.“It really shows that a project about autism will be hollow and not serve our needs — and can even be harmful to us — if we’re not helping tell the story,” Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said. “This is something that could kill people.”In an emailed statement, Odom said, “When we make something or when we sign up to help someone we respect make something, our hope is always that the work is the beginning of a conversation. The filmmakers make the art, but we don’t get to dictate or decide the contents or parameters of the ensuing conversation. The other half of the conversation regarding this work is just beginning. I am listening.”Following the news earlier this month that “Music” had been nominated for two Golden Globes (best musical or comedy, and best actress for Hudson), three advocacy organizations — Gross’s network, CommunicationFIRST and the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint — joined to issue an open letter expressing “grave concerns” about the restraint scenes and calling for the film to be pulled from release.The letter noted that “a committee of nonspeaking and autistic people” had been invited to screen the film and provide feedback in late January, and the filmmakers “failed to respond and address” their recommendations, including cutting the prone restraint scenes entirely.Hours after the nominations, Sia tweeted an apology and said that her “research was clearly not thorough enough” and that she had “listened to the wrong people.” The star, who soon after deactivated her Twitter account, also announced that a warning would be added to the film stating that it “in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people,” and that those scenes would be removed from “all future printings.” Those scenes remained in a screener provided to a New York Times critic reviewing the film.A change.org petition calling for the film to be “canceled” has nearly 19,000 signatures. But Onaiwu of Rice University said she was not looking to destroy anyone’s career, even if she condemned the film.“It’s not about demonizing Sia. You’re not canceled. We need allies and powerful voices,” Onaiwu said. “Use your platform to try to help dismantle ableism and promote neurodiversity and make opportunities for autistic people. You can use your experience to do that.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Music’ Review: A Woefully Misguided View of Disability

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Music’ Review: A Woefully Misguided View of DisabilityThe pop star Sia’s feature directorial debut, about an autistic teenager, at times seems indistinguishable from mockery.Maddie Ziegler, left, and Kate Hudson in “Music,” directed by Sia.Credit…Merrick Morton/Vertical EntertainmentFeb. 11, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETMusicDirected by SiaDrama, MusicalPG-131h 47mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The cringeworthy drama “Music” introduces its central character in a song and dance sequence so gasp-inducingly crass, the scene almost demands that the movie be shown in theaters. At least then, audiences would be able to exercise the right to walk out.The film is directed by the pop singer and songwriter Sia, and it stars her frequent collaborator, Maddie Ziegler, as an autistic teenager named Music. The film begins with Ziegler performing an interpretive dance set to a new song by Sia about bodies failing and spirits being set free.[embedded content]Ziegler’s dancing is as expressive as ever, but she has been directed to pantomime an exaggerated apery of disability. She gapes, her eyes wide and unfocused, as the choreography leads her through a cruel approximation of twitches and whoops. Neither Ziegler nor Sia are autistic, and their collaboration on this film reduces disability to mannerisms that look indistinguishable from mockery.The film spins away from this shocking opening to introduce its characters in a more realistic world. There, Music lives in New York with her loving grandmother, Millie (Mary Kay Place). When Millie suddenly dies, she leaves the teenager in the care of Music’s half sister, Zu (Kate Hudson, nominated for a Golden Globe in the role).Zu is ill-equipped for the responsibility of watching Music, but the attention of a handsome neighbor, Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr.), provides her with enough incentive to stick around. As Zu and Ebo begin to imagine what a family with Music could look like, they sing Sia songs composed specifically for the film in their fantasies.This is a bizarre movie, one that parades confused ideas about care, fantasy and disability with a pride that reads as vanity. It is audacious, in the sense that making it certainly took some audacity.MusicRated PG-13 for language, drug references and brief violence. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistCardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New SongsHear tracks by Bomba Estéreo, SG Lewis, Flock of Dimes and others.Cardi B barely offers listeners a chance to catch their breath on her new solo single, “Up.”Credit…YouTubeJon Pareles, Giovanni Russonello and Feb. 5, 2021, 11:48 a.m. ETEvery 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.Cardi B, ‘Up’[embedded content]On “Up,” her first solo single in several years, Cardi B’s preferred method of annihilating the haters is oxygen deprivation — her flow is so relentless that for nearly three minutes she doesn’t offer listeners a single moment to catch their breath. “Big bag bussin’ out the Bentley Bentayga/Man, Balenciaga Bardi back,” she raps with rapturous alliteration, before running that tongue twister back again, in case you didn’t catch it all the first time. “Up” is a homage to the steely Chicago drill sound that Cardi grew up on, and it also finds her reuniting with DJ SwanQo, who worked with her on the hardest-hitting song on “Invasion of Privacy,” “Get Up 10.” (He co-produced “Up” with Yung Dza.) Her tone is a bit more gleeful than the drill influence would suggest, and there are of course some classically comedic Cardi punch lines here, but the ravenous way she digs into this beat is serious business. LINDSAY ZOLADZSG Lewis featuring Nile Rodgers, ‘One More’Choices, chances. SG Lewis sings about the ways an encounter at a party could go: Will it evaporate amid distractions, or will continuing the conversation for just one more song and lead to romance? Either way, it’s a dance party, and the guitar scrubbing away at complex chords over the neo-disco beat belongs to the disco and dance-pop wizard Nile Rodgers. JON PARELESSia and David Guetta, ‘Floating Through Space’How far has the pandemic lowered the bar for triumph over adversity? “You made it another day, made it alive,” Sia sings over David Guetta’s echoey, synthetic adaptations of a Caribbean soca beat. It’s computerized happiness for a worldwide predicament. PARELESMiss Grit, ‘Grow Up To’Miss Grit is the alias of Margaret Sohn, a Michigan-born New York transplant who, like St. Vincent, is equally enamored of both textured guitar distortion and crisp, clean melody. (When Sohn was a student in NYU’s music technology program, she briefly considered a career in making effects pedals.) Miss Grit’s self-produced second EP, “Impostor,” is a confident and searching meditation on that psychological scourge Impostor Syndrome and her outsider status as a Korean-American growing up in the Midwest. But the single “Grow Up To” is more of an abstraction — albeit a hypnotically catchy one. Beneath a vocal with a hazy, deadpan cool that recalls Mary Timony, Sohn retraces the melody line with her guitar, snaking and sparking like a lit fuse. ZOLADZBomba Estéreo featuring Okan and Lido Pimienta, ‘Agua’Folklore, mysticism, nature and electronics converge in “Agua,” the first single from an album due in April by the Colombian group Bomba Estéreo, joined by Toronto-based expatriates: the Colombian singer Lido Pimienta and the Afro-Cuban vocal duo Okan. Voices harmonize to chant the four ancient elements — “Agua, tierra, aire, fuego” (“water, earth, air, fire”) — over traditional-sounding drums, handclaps and bird calls; then the synthesizers appear, blipping and arpeggiating, as Pimienta and Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet sing and rap about being inseparable from the natural world. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Two’“Can I be one? Can we be two?” Jenn Wasner asks on her stirring new single “Two.” The song — and its colorful, playfully choreographed video, directed by Lola B. Pierson and Cricket Arrison — is an exploration of the simultaneous needs for individuality and intimacy within a romantic relationship, but it also reflects the multiplicity of Wasner’s musical output. With her collaborator Andy Stack, she’s one-half of the band Wye Oak, while as a solo artist she releases music under the name Flock of Dimes. “Two” is driven by an irregular beat (Wasner recently joked on Twitter about her penchant for “odd time signatures”), as if to mirror the hesitant questioning of its lyrics. Even when she’s being somber or ruminative, Wasner has a touch of gallows humor, as when she muses memorably, “We’re all just wearing bodies like a costume til we die.” ZOLADZAlan Braufman (Angel Bat Dawid remix), ‘Sunrise’A slow, billowing, rafters-raising saxophone melody — distinctly in the spiritualist free-jazz tradition of Albert Ayler — becomes just one element in a digital swarm in this remix of a tune by the saxophonist Alan Braufman, from his 2020 quintet album, “The Fire Still Burns.” With the young multi-instrumentalist and composer Angel Bat Dawid at the controls, the track begins as a saxophone reflected upon itself, bouncing around the walls of an electronic prism; that leads into a steady, clipped, electronic beat, somewhere between deep house and ambient music. A veteran of New York’s jazz loft scene of the 1970s, Braufman only recently resuscitated his public career as a musician. “The Fire Still Burns,” featuring an intergenerational cast of side musicians, was a triumphant claim to artistic vitality, at age 69. This Dawid remix is another indication of what it means to stay engaged decades on, bringing the tradition ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOVic Mensa featuring Wyclef Jean and Chance the Rapper, ‘Shelter’“I’ll be your shelter,” Wyclef Jean promises, sometimes in a sweet falsetto and sometimes with hoarse vehemence, over mournful, syncopated guitar chords. But the track, even with hints of hope at the end, is an elegy, and raps by Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper matter-of-factly set out how many people aren’t sheltered from disease, poverty and racism: “Hospital workers in scrubs with no PPE/But they got money for riot gear,” Mensa observes. PARELESH.E.R., ‘Fight for You’How’s this for building anticipation: H.E.R.’s new song was nominated for a Golden Globe a day before it was even released! The soulful “Fight for You,” from the soundtrack of the upcoming Black Panther drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” strikes an appropriate balance between period-pic scene-setting and up-to-date cool, as lyrics like “all the smoke in the air, feel the hate when they stare” draw unfortunate parallels between past and present. ZOLADZJimmy Edgar featuring 24hrs, ‘Notice’The producer Jimmy Edgar has far-flung connections. He has collaborated with producers including Sophie and Hudson Mohawk and rappers like Danny Brown. The Atlanta rapper 24hrs sing-raps assorted phrases in “Notice,” but all the action is in the track: viscous bass tones stopping and starting, little whistling interjections, double-time boings and swoops and tinkles. There’s a slow, determined push forward, but at any given moment, it’s impossible to predict where it will land. PARELESArchie Shepp and Jason Moran, ‘Wise One’You can hear history coursing both ways, future sloshing up against past, as the pianist Jason Moran and the saxophonist Archie Shepp revisit John Coltrane’s “Wise One.” When Moran pulls an arpeggiated rumble into a rhythmic flow, or splashes a fistful of high notes onto the keyboard behind Shepp’s high warbling cry, it’s almost impossible to say whether the younger pianist is guiding his elder down a new path, or following his lead. Shepp became a Coltrane apostle more than half a century ago, and it was Trane who brought Shepp to Impulse! Records, helping him build a reputation as one of the leading jazz innovators of the 1960s. Moran came up decades later, idolizing them both. Shepp and Moran’s album, “Let My People Go,” is out now — only the latest in a long history of memorable piano-sax duet albums by Shepp, including ones with Mal Waldron and Horace Parlan. RUSSONELLOVampire Weekend, ‘40:42’ remade by Goose and Sam GendelEver conceptual, Vampire Weekend called on musician-fans to remake “2021,” a minute-and-a-half ditty about relationships and the passage of time (“Copper goes green, steel beams go rust”) from its 2019 album “Father of the Bride.” There were conditions: Each remake was to last exactly 20 minutes and 21 seconds, to be combined for an EP entitled (do the math) “40:42.” Both acts rose to the occasion. Goose, a methodical jam band from Connecticut, did a live jam, on video, with clear landmarks of Minimalistic stasis, playful crosscurrents and dramatic, attentive buildups. Sam Gendel, a saxophonist who has worked with Ry Cooder, Perfume Genius and Moses Sumney, came up with multiple, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure scenarios: breathy woodwind chorales, abstract modal drones, electronic meditations and loops, cozy fireside acoustic session, raucous jazz finale. Musicians delight in working with limited parameters and leaping beyond them. PARELESAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More