Paramore Steps Into a New Era, and 8 More New Songs
Hear tracks by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Dram 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.Paramore, ‘This Is Why’Paramore has regrouped after Hayley Williams’s 2020 and 2021 solo albums showed how far her music could stretch beyond punk-pop and new wave. On the title song of its first LP since 2017, “This Is Why” (due in February) Paramore goes for wiry syncopation, not punk drive and power chords. “If you have an opinion, maybe you should shove it,” Williams sings, with biting mock-sweetness, over a backbeat and a hopping bass line. Choppy, clenched guitar chords — with more than a hint of INXS — goad her as she sneers an irritated response to a sourly divided national mood: “This is why I don’t leave the house.” JON PARELESYeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Fleez’For much of their smoldering new album, “Cool It Down,” the once hyperactive Yeah Yeah Yeahs effectively reinvent themselves as purveyors of lush, slow-burning art-rock (see: the apocalyptically gorgeous, almost “Disintegration”-like leadoff single “Spitting Off the Edge of the World”). “Fleez,” however, harkens back to the barbed sound of their 2003 debut, “Fever to Tell,” and to the glory days of the indie sleaze sound the New York trio helped pioneer. Ironically — or perhaps as a reminder of how indebted that aesthetic was to the echoes of downtown past — the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do this by interpolating the funky groove and titular refrain of the South Bronx greats ESG’s 1983 single “Moody.” “I make my transformation, and it feels ni-i-i-i-i-ce,” Karen O vamps atop a chunky Nick Zinner riff and a shuffling Brian Chase beat — still, after all these years, a chemistry experiment that produces singular sparks. LINDSAY ZOLADZLCD Soundsystem, ‘New Body Rhumba’LCD Soundsystem’s first new song since 2017, for the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s film of the Don DeLillo novel “White Noise,” is the band’s latest jaunty, motoric complaint about money and mortality. “I need a new love and I need a new body/to push away the end,” James Murphy proclaims. LCD Soundsystem digs in, once again, to the late-1970s moment when punk, minimalism and dance music found a common stomping ground. “New Body Rhumba” is brawny and discordant, juggling sarcasm and sincerity, taunts and yearnings. Its final stretch, tootling and pounding over an insistent drone, may be a deathbed revelation, as Murphy belts, “Go into the light!” PARELESCaitlin Rose, ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’It’s been nearly 10 years since the country-influenced indie musician Caitlin Rose’s most recent album, the whip-smart 2013 release “The Stand-In.” Later this year, she’ll break that long silence with her third record, “Cazimi,” out Nov. 18. The latest single, the stomping, sassy “Nobody’s Sweetheart” finds the silver lining in the single life, with Rose musing in her knowing drawl, “When you’re nobody’s sweetheart, you make the rules.” Even better, she adds, you’re “nobody’s fool.” ZOLADZFrankie Cosmos, ‘F.O.O.F.’Robert Smith was in love on Friday, Rebecca Black had to get down on Friday and now Greta Kline — leader of the indie-pop project Frankie Cosmos — freaks out on Friday. That’s what the playful acronym “F.O.O.F.” stands for and, accordingly, the latest single from Frankie Cosmos’s forthcoming album “Inner World Peace” is alive with Kline’s signature wry, muted humor. “It’s still Wednesday, I have to wait two more sleeps ’til I can freak,” Kline sighs, while a mildly noodly guitar solo saves up its most raucous energy. That the brief song ends before that promised freakout is the point: Kline is more interested in capturing that hopeful, anticipatory feeling — usually a comforting fiction — that everything will be all right once the weekend comes. ZOLADZNisa, ‘Sever’“How many breaks will it take until we can’t fix it?” Nisa Lumaj sings in “Sever” from her new EP, “Exaggerate.” The modest, bedroom-pop-like production stays patient and contained until it isn’t. Nisa muses, at first just above a whisper, about a deteriorating relationship; her voice is cushioned by synthesizer chords while guitar lines poke at her like unwanted realizations. But when the distorted strumming starts, the explosive breakup is inevitable. PARELESDram, ‘Let Me See Your Phone’The digital era enabled countless new avenues for surveillance and jealousy, and the R&B songwriter Dram sings about one in “Let Me See Your Phone.” The track uses slow-rolling, vintage soul chords, and Dram switches between earnest soul tenor and falsetto as he details an accusation — “When I look in your eyes/they don’t shine as bright as they used to” — and demands a forensic investigation: “Type in your passcode so I can see inside your soul.” Cheaters, by now, should understand that they should keep certain communications offline. PARELESOren Ambarchi, ‘I’“I” is the first and most austere segment of the 35-minute composition (and album) “Shebang” by the guitarist, composer and digital manipulator Oren Ambarchi. Although he’s joined by other instruments in the rest of the piece, most of “Shebang I” is guitar alone: restless staccato picking that’s multitracked, looped and digitally edited, building hypnotic polyrhythms around an unchanging chordal root. In the last minute, cymbals and other sounds join him, only hinting at what the rest of the piece will become. PARELESBill Frisell, ‘Waltz for Hal Willner’The guitarist Bill Frisell’s tribute to a longtime friend, the high-concept producer Hal Willner, brings the lightest possible touch to an elegy; it’s from his new album, “Four.” The harmonies are a slow, transparent cascade of clusters from Gerald Clayton on piano, while the drummer Johnathan Blake scatters cymbal taps against the waltzing lilt. Frisell shares the melody with Clayton and Gregory Tardy on tenor saxophone; each of them departs from the tune in brief, conversational asides before returning to what sounds like a fond, shared reminiscence. PARELES More
