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Jeff Cook, a Founder of the Country Band Alabama, Dies at 73
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Joe Tarsia, an Architect of the Sound of Philadelphia, Dies at 88
His work as an engineer at Sigma Sound Studios left a sonic stamp on R&B hits by the O’Jays, the Delfonics, the Stylistics and many others.Joe Tarsia, the recording engineer and studio operator who was among the architects of the lush, fervent blend of soul, disco and funk known as the Sound of Philadelphia, died on Nov. 1 in Lancaster, Pa. He was 88.His death, at a retirement community, was confirmed by a friend, the video producer Steve Garrin, who did not cite a cause.At Sigma Sound Studios, the recording hub he established in 1968, Mr. Tarsia worked with the producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell on blockbuster hits by Philadelphia soul luminaries like the O’Jays and the Delfonics. Known for his precision at the mixing board and his imaginative use of echo and other ambient effects, Mr. Tarsia was the engineer on scores of gold and platinum recordings.“We were lucky to be recording at Sigma Sound with Joe Tarsia,” Mr. Gamble said in a 2008 interview with Crawdaddy magazine. “He was a great engineer and got a clean, clear sound from every instrument.“If you record the music right, it’s easier to mix, and, as an engineer he was the best,” Mr. Gamble added. “He knew what he wanted and kept us moving at the speed of thought.”In the early 1970s alone Mr. Tarsia captured the sound of dozens of acknowledged Philadelphia soul classics, including the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.”“TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” a proto-disco workout by MFSB, the Sigma Sound house band (the initials stood for Mother Father Sister Brother), became the theme song for the long-running television show “Soul Train.” “TSOP” was among Mr. Tarsia’s collaborations with Gamble and Huff that topped both the R&B and pop charts, as were the O’Jays’ “Love Train” and Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones.”Mr. Tarsia was known to refer to the sumptuous strings, syncopated rhythms and gospel-bred call and response of the Philadelphia sound as “Black music in a tuxedo” — an aesthetic he in no small way shaped through the richness and clarity he lent to so many recordings.“If I made a contribution, it was that Philadelphia had a unique sound,” Mr. Tarsia told The Philadelphia Inquirer in an interview commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sigma Sound in 2018. “You could tell a record that came from Philly if you heard it on the radio.”Several years before opening Sigma Sound, Mr. Tarsia established himself as an audio engineer at Cameo-Parkway, one of the leading independent record companies of the early 1960s.The Cameo and Parkway labels were important sources of music and talent for “American Bandstand,” Dick Clark’s nationally televised dance show. “Bandstand” was based in Philadelphia, and local artists like Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker, who recorded for Cameo-Parkway, received exposure they might not have gotten had the show been produced elsewhere.Mr. Tarsia, who became the chief engineer at Cameo-Parkway in 1962, attributed his early success there to Mr. Clark’s support.“He’s the reason I’m in the business,” he was quoted as saying of Mr. Clark in the book “Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios” (2003), by Jim Cogan and William Clark.“He was an approachable guy. If you went up to him and said, ‘I have a record,’ and he played it, it was worth a thousand promotion guys, because it was heard all over the country.”Mr. Tarsia in 1980. He was known to refer to the sumptuous strings, syncopated rhythms and gospel-bred call and response of the Philadelphia sound as “Black music in a tuxedo.” — an aesthetic he in no small way shaped.Arthur StoppeJoseph Dominick Tarsia was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 23, 1934. He was the younger of two sons of Joseph and Rose (Gallo) Tarsia. His father was a tailor, his mother a homemaker.After graduating from Edward W. Bok Technical High School in South Philadelphia, Mr. Tarsia took technical courses elsewhere before being hired at the electronics company Philco. He was later a service technician for local recording studios, work that led to his decision to pursue a career in music.“I was always moonlighting at something,” he was quoted as saying in “Temples of Sound.” “I was fixing TV sets, and one day this guy says, ‘Can you fix a tape recorder?’ and I said, ‘Sure!’ It turned out that tape recorder was in a recording studio, and I never left.”Mr. Tarsia had been at Cameo-Parkway for just a few years when “American Bandstand” moved to Los Angeles in early 1964, effectively ending the company’s tenure as a pipeline for the show’s music.The Beatles’ first tour of the United States that year only compounded matters, as Cameo-Parkway’s teenage-oriented pop gave way to British invasion rock ’n’ roll and eventually the psychedelia of the counterculture.Meanwhile, Mr. Tarsia met and befriended Mr. Gamble, who as an aspiring songwriter would drop by Cameo-Parkway to shop his songs. He was eventually the engineer for several early recordings produced by the Gamble-Huff team, most notably “Expressway to Your Heart, a Top 10 R&B and pop hit for the blue-eyed soul group the Soul Survivors in 1967.Later that year, convinced that his future lay with the soul music of emerging vocal groups like the Intruders and the Delfonics, Mr. Tarsia borrowed against his home and used his savings to lease studio space in Philadelphia’s Center City. Naming it after the Greek letter he saw on a place mat in a Greek restaurant, he opened Sigma Sound the next August. Success quickly followed with hits produced by Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff like Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive.”Established artists like Wilson Pickett and Dusty Springfield soon began traveling to Mr. Tarsia’s studios to record. In 1971, CBS Records offered Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff, by then regular clients at Sigma Sound, a major distribution deal. That led to the founding of Philadelphia International Records, which became home to many of the acts associated with the Sound of Philadelphia.By the mid-1970s the likes of Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and the Jacksons were booking sessions at Sigma Sound as well. Seizing the moment, Mr. Tarsia opened Sigma Sound of New York, a trio of studios that, in the late ’70s and ’80s, hosted sessions by Madonna, Whitney Houston, Steely Dan and others.In 1990, Mr. Tarsia’s son, Michael, who died last year, became the president of Sigma Sound. Mr. Tarsia eased into retirement, increasingly spending his time lecturing and supporting educational programs like Grammy in the Schools. In 2003, 15 years after Sigma Sound of New York was closed, he and his son sold their original Philadelphia studios.Mr. Tarsia was a founder of the Society of Professional Audio Recording Services and a trustee of the Recording Academy. He was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2016.He is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Cecelia (Giarrizzo) Tarsia; a daughter, Lorraine Rawle; and three grandchildren.Mr. Tarsia was proud of the stamp he put on music in the 1960s and ’70s.“In those days, before the computer,” ” he recalled to The Philadelphia Inquirer, “records had personalities. There was the Motown sound. The Memphis sound. The Muscle Shoals sound. And there was the Sigma sound.” More
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Taylor Swift’s Second-Week Sales Are Still Among the Year’s Biggest
The singer’s blockbuster new album, “Midnights,” holds strong atop the Billboard 200 chart, and her single “Anti-Hero” is No. 1 on the Hot 100.Following the expectation-shattering blockbuster debut of her new album, “Midnights,” Taylor Swift has coasted to a second week atop the charts, earning the equivalent of another 342,000 album sales, according to the tracking service Luminate.Although “Midnights” experienced a 78 percent drop in its second week of release — down from 1,578,000 in sales the week prior — Swift’s follow-up performance was still good enough for the third-largest total of the year so far, topping even the debut of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.” (Other than “Midnights” last week, only Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” sold more.)Swift managed to move more than one million copies of “Midnights” in its first week largely on the strength of physical merchandise, including vinyl, CDs and even cassettes. But the album lingers at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week thanks to its consistency on streaming services, where it totaled 294 million plays (down from 549 million).Combining digital plays, downloads and purchases of the complete album, the second-week sales of “Midnight” were the largest for any album in its second week since Adele’s “25” in 2015, Billboard said.Swift also maintains a healthy standing on the singles chart, the Hot 100, where she had previously occupied all of the Top 10 — a first in the chart’s history. This week, the single “Anti-Hero” holds at No. 1, with Swift songs also landing at No. 6, 7 and 9.Rihanna’s new single, “Lift Me Up,” a ballad from the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack, debuts at No. 2.Rounding out the Top 5 on the album chart are Lil Baby’s “It’s Only Me” at No. 2, Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” at No. 3, the special edition reissue of the Beatles’ “Revolver” at No. 4 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” at No. 5.In its 95 weeks on the chart, Wallen’s album has only fallen from the Top 10 once. More
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Who Are All Those Celebrities at the Weird Al Pool Party? A Guide
We break down that star-studded scene from “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” the sorta kinda true portrait of the pop star’s life, now on the Roku Channel.Here’s how Weird Al Yankovic, the accordian-playing king of parody, would like you to think “Another One Rides the Bus” was written: At a pool party, the radio personality Wolfman Jack challenged him to devise a sendup of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” on the spot.In a scene from “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” the true-except-when-it’s-not biopic now streaming on the Roku Channel, the title character (played by Daniel Radcliffe in a big curly wig) proceeds to knock out Jack’s challenge swiftly, then grabs his accordion to serenade 1970s and ’80s counterculture names like Andy Warhol (Conan O’Brien) and Divine (Nina West) with a fully formed rendition of the tune. (Probably the real story of the comedian carrying around a big, blue loose-leaf notebook to write down ideas, followed by hourslong trips to the library to research topics like ducks, wasn’t quite as exciting.)How did all those starry cameos came together? Yankovic revealed at a New York Comic Con panel in October that he extended invitations to celebrities on his “holiday card mailing list.”“I went through my address book, emailed a bunch of my friends, and said, ‘Hey, we’re shooting this crazy pool party in the Valley. Do you want to come out and spend half a day doing it?’” he said. “Thankfully a bunch of people showed up and we were able to pull it off!”You probably spotted Jack Black’s Wolfman Jack at the front of the crowd — he’s hard to miss in a neon-pink-and-cheetah-print scarf and lusciously thick beard — and Salvador Dalí (that mustache!), but did you catch Pee-wee Herman and Tiny Tim?Here’s a guide to nine of the famous faces at the fictional party, held by Yankovic’s real mentor, the radio host Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson).Wolfman JackPlayed by Jack BlackThe Weird World of Weird AlThe musician has cracked the Top 40 for decades with his song parodies. With the sham biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” he makes a joke of his own life.Review: “Like Yankovic’s music, ‘Weird’ is a note-for-note parody of a genre,” our critic writes of the movie. “Here, the target is the prestige biography.”Face to Face: The actor Daniel Radcliffe, an enthusiastic Yankovic fan, plays Weird Al in the film, while Yankovic himself is a co-writer. When the two met, they found themselves on the same wavelength.Getting Weird: The director Eric Appel discussed a scene in the movie featuring a college-age Yankovic as he comes up with his first parody.A Weirdly Enduring Appeal: National economies collapse, species go extinct, political movements rise and fizzle. But somehow, Weird Al keeps rocking.The rock ’n’ roll DJ was known for his gravelly radio voice and wolf howls. He was part of a group of disc jockeys in the early 1960s who pioneered the genre known as border radio, because it was broadcast from just over the border in Mexico. (He died in 1995.)This isn’t the first time Jack Black has shown up flamboyantly attired in close proximity to Yankovic. The actor previously appeared in the 2014 music video for Weird Al’s “Tacky,” a parody of Pharrell Williams’s smash “Happy” (in a tie-dye pants-and-sequin-fanny-pack ensemble that makes his Wolfman Jack garb look tame).John DeaconPlayed by David DastmalchianIt’s OK, we didn’t recognize his name, either. But his work speaks for itself: Deacon was the original bassist for Queen, seeing the British rock band through No. 1 singles like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust” before leaving in 1997, six years after the death of the group’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury. Now retired, the 71-year-old, who has often been described as the quiet member of the band, has lived a low-key life out of the public eye, raising six children in the London home he bought with his first Queen paycheck.Andy WarholPlayed by Conan O’BrienIt wouldn’t be a party without the king of Pop Art, whose works featuring presidents, movie stars, soup cans and other cultural icons are themselves iconic. He died in 1987.It’s no surprise that Conan O’Brien, who portrays Warhol in a black turtleneck and white wig, is on Yankovic’s holiday card list — the two have been friends for years. Yankovic appeared during O’Brien’s weeklong Comic Con celebration in 2016 and was a guest on his “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast in 2021.)Salvador DalíPlayed by Emo PhillipsThe pioneering Spanish surrealist who explored subconscious imagery was the creator of the much-parodied 1931 painting “The Persistence of Memory” (think melting watches and swarming ants). By the time he died in 1989, he had become known as “an inveterate irritant, a tease who never gave up teasing and a prankster who made headlines for decades,” as his New York Times obituary characterized him.The standup Emo Phillips has been opening for Yankovic on his tour this year.DivinePlayed by Nina WestThe drag queen Divine became a cult favorite as the longtime muse of John Waters, who cast the star in “Pink Flamingos,” “Hairspray” and other films. Divine appears in “Weird” in — what else? — the red dress made famous in “Pink Flamingos.” (Divine died in 1988 at 42.)For Nina West, a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” queen, Divine is her first film role, and it’s a fitting choice: She grew up a Weird Al fan and has become known for performing as Edna Turnblad, the “Hairspray” character Divine originated in Waters’s 1988 film.Pee-wee HermanPlayed by Jorma TacconeThe ’80s-greats party wouldn’t be complete without Pee-wee Herman, lounging poolside in his too-small suit. He’s the comedic alter ego of the actor and comedian Paul Reubens, who started out with the Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings in the 1970s and made a career out of playing the man-child character, most notably in the hit 1985 comedy “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” More recently, Reubens, now 70, starred in “The Pee-wee Herman Show” on Broadway in 2010, as well as in the 2016 Netflix film “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” which he co-wrote.Alice CooperPlayed by Akiva SchafferEven though he’s at the back of the gaggle, we’d know those dripping, sad-panda eyes a mile away. Cooper, the godfather of shock rock who at 74 is still touring and regularly donning a full face of goth makeup, is known for his raspy voice and illusion-filled stage shows packed with pyrotechnics, fake blood, baby dolls, guillotines and reptiles.Cooper and Yankvoic have met in real life — they wound up singing a rendition of the Beatles’s “Come Together” with Steven Tyler in 2012 when the trio found themselves together in Hawaii on New Year’s Eve. (While Yankovic and Tyler held their own, Cooper had to read the lyrics off a cheat sheet.)Tiny TimPlayed by Demetri MartinYankovic has long been among the biggest fans of Tiny Tim, the falsetto-voice ukulele whiz whose “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” became a novelty hit in 1968. Yankovic even read aloud Tiny Tim’s letters and diary entries for a 2021 documentary about his life, “Tiny Tim: King for a Day.” (The musician died in 1996 at 64.)GallagherPlayed by Paul F. TompkinsIf there were a Guinness world record for the most times a human has smashed a watermelon, the comedian Gallagher — and his oversize Sledge-O-Matic mallet — would certainly be the person to beat. The standup, known for his prop comedy, has starred in more than a dozen specials, occasionally mixing up the melon-murdering by subbing apples or oranges but always promising a smashing ending. More
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Aaron Carter, Singer, Dies at 34
Mr. Carter, who released his first album at age 9 and “Aaron’s Party” at age 12, was the younger brother of Nick Carter, a member of the Backstreet Boys.Aaron Carter, the singer and actor who briefly became a teenage sensation in the early 2000s and who was known for the hit song “I Want Candy,” was found dead on Saturday at his home in Southern California. He was 34.Taylor Helgeson, a representative for Big Umbrella, an entertainment management company, confirmed Mr. Carter’s death but declined to comment on the cause.The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call at Mr. Carter’s home in Lancaster, Calif., on Saturday and found a person dead at the residence, according to Deputy Alejandra Parra, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department. Officials said they could not yet confirm that it was Mr. Carter.Mr. Carter, who released his first album at age 9 and the popular album “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)” at age 12, became a fixture of teenage programming and magazines and made appearances on shows like “Lizzie McGuire.”“Aaron’s Party” peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 list, selling some three million copies. He released five studio albums and was a contestant on the show “Dancing With the Stars.”His career later stalled, and in recent years he has been embroiled in legal trouble and has shared his struggles with addiction. In 2018, he released his first album in some 15 years, “Love,” to lukewarm reviews.Aaron Carter performing at the South Street Seaport in New York City in 2003.Stuart Ramson/Getty ImagesMr. Carter, who was described in The New York Times as a “tween heartthrob,” began performing at age 7, singing lead for the band Dead End for two years, according to an online biography.At 9, he was opening for the Backstreet Boys in Berlin for his first solo appearance. (His older brother, Nick Carter, was a member of the band.)The performance led to a record contract and then the release of his first single, “Crush on You.” He also opened for Britney Spears.Mr. Carter was also an actor, guest-starring in shows like “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “7th Heaven.” He also performed on Broadway, appearing in “Seussical,” the Dr. Seuss-themed musical, and “The Fantasticks,” the world’s longest-running musical.On his sophomore album, Mr. Carter also released the song “That’s How I Beat Shaq,” with a music video featuring the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, who has said that Mr. Carter once beat him in a game of HORSE and later asked if he could make a song about it.In 2019, Mr. Carter’s brother, Nick, and sister, Angel, said they had filed for a restraining order against him. In a statement at the time, Nick Carter said his brother had confessed to having violent thoughts about his wife and that family members “were left with no choice but to take away every measure possible to protect ourselves and our family.” Aaron Carter at the time denied the allegations. The news of the restraining order came one day after he canceled his 2019 tour, according to E! News, saying he needed to put his “health first.”Mr. Carter has been open over the years about his mental health struggles. He told People magazine in 2018 that he felt he had “hit a rock bottom personally and emotionally,” and that he had sought treatment at a wellness facility.Mr. Carter, who appeared on the Nov. 2 episode of the “No Jumper” podcast, said he was focusing on selling real estate and that he had been “Cali sober” for five years, though he said that he occasionally smoked marijuana and had been prescribed anti-anxiety medication. (“Cali sober,” short for “California sober,” is loosely taken to mean avoiding addictive substances with the exception of marijuana and alcohol.)Adam Grandmaison, the host of the podcast on YouTube, said that a close friend of Mr. Carter’s told him about his death.“I just interviewed him a couple weeks ago and it was pretty clear he wasn’t in a great place,” Mr. Gandmaison wrote on Twitter. “He was a good guy despite all the demons he was battling. I’m sad to see him go.”Throughout the interview, Mr. Carter said he considered himself a rapper, a singer, a producer, an artist and an actor, and that he was especially proud of his most recent album. He also said he hoped to make a new one soon.“I cover all bases,” he said. “It means so much more to me than the stuff I did growing up because I wrote and produced it all.”Mr. Carter said he was “never going to give up” on making music and that despite the turbulence, he had enjoyed his career. He also vowed to regain custody of his son, who Page Six reported was temporarily placed in the care of Mr. Carter’s fiancée’s mother amid domestic violence and drug use concerns.“I’m about to be 35 years old,” Mr. Carter said. “I’m a grown man and it’s time to start behaving that way and doing the right thing and focusing on myself, my career, my kid and my family.” More
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Selena Gomez’s Boldly Revealing Ballad, and 9 More New Songs
Hear tracks by Yves Tumor, Yo La Tengo, Sipho 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.Selena Gomez, ‘My Mind & Me’Selena Gomez has spoken openly of her mental-health struggles — bipolar disorder, depression, psychosis — in recent years. Her new song, “My Mind & Me,” arrives as the title track of a documentary that reveals some of her low points. The music moves from fragility to determination, from lone, echoey piano notes to a supportive march and a mission statement, as she sings, “All of the crashing and burning and breaking I know now/If somebody sees me like this then they won’t feel alone.” It’s self-exposure in service of empathy, and it tapers back to the hesitant solitude of those piano notes. But the video squanders some of its good will by ending with a product endorsement. JON PARELESLucius, ‘Muse’“Muse,” a one-off single from the indie-pop group Lucius, pairs a cool, clarion arrangement with Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig’s impassioned vocals — a tension of opposites that gives the song its spark. “I’m calling out your name, a desert that needs the rain,” they sing together on the chorus, a kind of prayer for divine inspiration and, as they put it, “the wild and holy window to the truth.” LINDSAY ZOLADZTiësto featuring Tate McRae, ‘10:35’On the sleek “10:35,” the rising Canadian pop star Tate McRae teams up with longtime EDM mainstay Tiësto (the D.J. whose remix of Calum Scott’s “Dancing on My Own” cover has turned into the Philadelphia Phillies’ victory anthem). McRae’s crystalline vocals are a fitting match for Tiësto’s gleaming, synthesized production, and the song is propelled by an effective push and pull between the anxieties of daily life and the blissful comforts of love. “The TV make you think the whole world’s about to end,” McRae sighs, before a lover’s embrace causes time to stop: “All I know, it’s 10:35 and I can feel your arms around me.” ZOLADZIbrahim Maalouf featuring De La Soul: ‘Quiet Culture’Ibrahim Maalouf, a Lebanese-French trumpeter, composer and producer, surrounds himself with guests — the Cuban musician Cimafunk, the New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas, the jazz singer Gregory Porter — on his new album, “Capacity to Love.” De La Soul makes its latest reappearance on “Quiet Culture,” counseling perseverance and relief from noise: “The quieter we become, the more that we can hear.” Maalouf’s track eases between a jazz ballad and unhurried funk, framing and counterpointing the rhymes with his Arab-inflected melodies. PARELESYves Tumor, ‘God Is a Circle’“Sometimes it feels like there’s places in my mind that I can’t go,” Sean Bowie, who records as the gothic glam-rocker Yves Tumor, begins on the haunting single “God Is a Circle.” Rhythmic, shallow breathing provides the percussive backbone of the track and adds a visceral chill to its nightmarish atmospherics. The song suddenly turns revealing, though, when it dredges up memories of a repressive past: “My mama said that God sees everything/My daddy always taught me to say ‘thank you,’ ‘yes ma’am,’ ’no, sir,’ ‘yes, please.’” The whole thing sounds like an exorcism, or maybe the antic, demonic moment just before one is deemed necessary. ZOLADZAlgiers featuring Zack de la Rocha, ‘Irreversible Damage’Irreversible Damage” is an exercise in seething, sputtering tension from the Atlanta-based rock-hip-hop-electro group Algiers. With a nagging electric guitar loop, a pullulating electronic bass, ominous synthesizer chords and programmed drums that keep disrupting their own beat, the song is an onslaught of abstract lyrics — “No rehab for my jihad/A rapture in a grief storm,” Zack de la Rocha (from Rage Against the Machine) raps — hurtling toward some dire but unknown outcome. When the words are done, the song shifts into a six-beat furor that feels both tribal and apocalyptic. PARELESYo La Tengo, ‘Fallout’In February, the New Jersey indie-rock legends Yo La Tengo will release their 16th album, “This Stupid World,” a place from which the calming, immersive first single “Fallout” offers a brief escape. “I wanna fall out of time,” Ira Kaplan sings on the chorus. “Reach back, unwind.” The band self-produced “This Stupid World” and recorded much of it while jamming together live; as a result, “Fallout” sounds as sumptuously shaggy and comfortingly loose as a favorite autumn sweater. This is the sort of timeless Yo La Tengo song that could have reasonably appeared on any of their albums across the last three decades, but something about its combination of prickly frustration and hard-won serenity feels especially appropriate right now. ZOLADZSipho, ‘Arms’The English songwriter and producer Sipho Ndhlovu revels in drama and desperation, with a voice that regularly leaps between grainy declamation and a tearful falsetto. “Arms” is one long crescendo of regrets overwhelmed by desire. He admits to being “led astray” and implores, “Can’t we share the blame?,” but by the end he’s unconditionally enthralled, brought to his knees by lust. Nearly the entire song uses just two chords but brings in massive reinforcements: strings, drums, voices, electronics and an arena-rock lead guitar, all pushing him closer to the brink. PARELESquinnie, ‘Itch’The 21-year-old songwriter Quinn Barnitt, who records as quinnie, has picked up the mixture of tentativeness and bold declaration, bedroom-pop intimacy and multitrack craftsmanship, that has paid off for Clairo and Olivia Rodrigo. In “Itch,” she juggles desire and fidelity, wondering, “What if I never scratched another itch for the rest of my life?/Would I die satisfied, knowing it can always get better than this?” The production often harks back to Simon and Garfunkel’s pristine guitars and the Beatles’ string ensembles, but her frank self-questioning is new. PARELESOld Fire featuring Bill Callahan, ‘Corpus’John Mark Lapham, a composer from Texas who records as Old Fire, called his 2016 album “Songs From the Haunted South,” a succinct self-description for his suspended-time blends of electronics and roots-rock instruments; his new album is “Voids.” On “Corpus.” he has the songwriter Bill Callahan, whose own extensive catalog is generally much folkier, intoning a few enigmatic lines — “I’ve got a child in Corpus/Hey Mac, can you bring that boat back” — in his somber baritone. Instruments and electronic tones gather around him like darkening storm clouds, and there’s no deliverance. PARELES More
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‘Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me’ Review: An Honest Portrait of Stardom
Sincere and soul-baring, the documentary, directed by Alek Keshishian, captures Gomez’s challenges with mental illness, lupus and fame.“My Mind & Me,” a new documentary about Selena Gomez, doesn’t feel like a publicity device. Sincere and soul-baring, the film captures Gomez’s challenges with mental illness, lupus and fame. Watching it is like eavesdropping on a 95-minute therapy session with the artist.It opens with Gomez out of sorts. “I have to stop living like this,” she says, as we jump from 2019 back to 2016. Backstage at one of her concerts, she cries, yearning to shed her child-star image and stand on her own as a solo artist. She fears she’s a disappointment.The documentary doesn’t show her forgetting her past as much as confronting it. A road trip to Grand Prairie, Texas, where she reunites with old neighbors and visits her childhood home, is a turning point for Gomez. In contrast is a scene where she’s answering interviewers whose flippant questions leave her feeling, she says, like “a product.” She craves genuine connection, something fame hasn’t yet afforded her.As a subject, Gomez is in the trustworthy hands of the veteran director Alek Keshishian. In 1991, he worked the same kind of magic on Madonna for “Truth or Dare.” Capturing an artist’s fearlessness, as he does in both films, isn’t just up to him, of course; like Madonna, Gomez is boldly unguarded. But “My Mind & Me” also looks outward, framing struggle as the human condition. An honest portrait study of stardom and mental illness, the film offers a hopeful catharsis: How, when we reveal our hardest truths, we can heal together.Selena Gomez: My Mind and MeRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More
