Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake’s Team-Up, and 10 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Shygirl, Ava Max, Horse Lords 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.Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake, ‘Sin Fin’Ever the canny collaborator, Justin Timberlake joins Romeo Santos — formerly of the Dominican-rooted boy band Aventura, now a stadium act on his own — to pump up a typically imploring bachata. Both of them are sleek high tenors who can always sound like they’re eager for romance; both also know what it’s like to sing answered by ecstatic screams. “Sin Fin” (“Endless”) is a bilingual pop promise with a stalking undercurrent. Timberlake sings, “Can’t escape my love ’cause it’s yours/Even if you walk out the door it’ll chase you down.” It opens with cathedral-choir harmonies, then buttresses the bongos and syncopated guitar of bachata with pop’s synthesizers and hip-hop’s hype-man cheers. Melding bachata and power ballad, it still begs for love with high drama. JON PARELESAva Max, ‘Million Dollar Baby’Ava Max is partying like it’s 2000 and 2004 on the thumping “Million Dollar Baby,” a sleek, calisthenic pop song that name-checks Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner and interpolates “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes’ once-inescapable “Coyote Ugly” theme song. (Who said Y2K nostalgia was dead!) While Max still hasn’t quite carved out a distinct persona in the pop sphere, she’s proven herself to be a satisfying practitioner of aughts-pop pastiche — there’s even a stuttering echo of “Bad Romance” on the bridge. “She broke out of her chains,” Max sings of her titular, diamond-encrusted heroine, “Turned the fire into rain.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex Lahey, ‘Congratulations’On the booming power-pop track “Congratulations,” the Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lahey attempts to process the news that an ex is getting married: “Congratulations,” she sings, dripping with sarcasm, “so happy for your perfect life.” There’s pathos in her voice during the verses — “If I don’t care then why do I still think about you all the time?” — but the chorus is volcanic and cathartic, as Lahey’s colossal guitar tones swell like a sudden surge of inner strength. ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Nike’“Peri-peri, too hot to handle,” the London-based Shygirl boasts with cool confidence on “Nike,” the latest single from her forthcoming debut album, “Nymph.” While the previous songs she’s released from the record have been glitchy and ethereal — think hyperpop crossed with “Visions”-era Grimes — “Nike” is all woozy low-end and spotlit swagger. “He tell me, ‘Nike, just do it,” Shygirl intones on the track (which was produced by the British electronic artist Mura Masa), her delivery full of winking, sensual charisma. ZOLADZHorse Lords, ‘Mess Mend’The instrumental “Mess Mend,” by the Baltimore band Horse Lords, starts out skewed — with chords from a slightly detuned piano hitting unevenly on offbeats — and gets nuttier from there, with a tricky 7/4 meter, a guitar melody that suggests a non-Euclidean hoedown and a gradual devolution into a funky electronic drone, not to mention a final twist. It’s a brainy lark. PARELESVDA, ‘Môgô Kélé’VDA — short for Voix des Anges — is a vocal duo from Ivory Coast that has become a consistent hitmaker in the Ivorian pop style called zouglou, which floats suavely sustained vocals over brisk polyrhythms and glossy synthesizers: airborne tracks that often hold sociopolitical messages. Above the speedy six-beat rhythms of “Môgô Kélé” — a hyperactive mesh of drums, marimbas, flutes and call-and-response vocals — VOA sings about easing tensions that have risen lately between Mali and Ivory Coast, citing their longstanding historical ties. The video shows jailed soldiers; it also gives the VDA a backdrop of both countries’ flags and words like “la paix,” “fraternité” and “union,” while the music sparkles and bounds ahead. PARELESDanielle Ponder, ‘Only the Lonely’“Love is lost and I must walk away,” Danielle Ponder sings, with mournful resolution, in “Only the Lonely,” a ballad that fights back any regrets with the certainty that “You don’t love me, you just lonely.” As the track rises from hollow keyboard tones to grand orchestral melancholy, Ponder’s voice opens up to reveal its bluesy power, with ghosts of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. By the end she finds herself, once again, nearly alone. PARELESCarm featuring Edie Brickell, ‘More and More’CJ Camerieri, who records as Carm, plays brass instruments in yMusic, a contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he has also backed Bon Iver and Paul Simon. In his own music, he often multitracks his trumpet and French horn into a supportive brass choir, as he does in “More and More,” a collaboration with Edie Brickell as a topliner. She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations. PARELESWild Pink featuring Julien Baker, ‘Hold My Hand’John Ross, who leads Wild Pink, went through extensive cancer treatment between the band’s 2021 debut album and its coming one, “ILYSM.” He has explained that “Hold My Hand” came from a moment of “lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under.” As he whisper-sings to ask, “Will you be there when I come around,” joined by Julien Baker sounding delicate and fond, the band rolls through four rising chords again and again, promising nothing but reassurance. PARELESDawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, ‘Vantablack’The ever-evolving, impossible-to-pigeonhole Dawn Richard once again introduces a new side of herself on the first movement of “Pigments,” an upcoming collaborative album she made with the experimentalist Spencer Zahn. Each track on the album is named for a specific hue: “Coral,” “Sandstone,” “Indigo,” and “Vantablack” make up “Movement 1,” which the pair released in full this week. The culmination “Vantablack” is a tranquil, abstract, and utterly gorgeous contemporary classical soundscape populated by lilting clarinet, Zahn’s airy bass playing, and above it all Richard’s fluttering vocals, which profess a deep and radical comfort in her own skin. ZOLADZSteve Lehman and Sélébéyone, ‘Poesie I’In the hip-hop-jazz-avant-electroacoustic group Sélébéyone — which means “intersection” in the West African language Wolof — the saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Lehman collaborates with rappers from New York City (HPrizm from the Antipop Consortium) and Dakar (Gaston Bandimic), a saxophonist from Paris (Maciek Lasserre) and a drummer based in Brooklyn (Damion Reid). The group’s second album, “Xaybu: the Unseen,” pushes its previous ambitions further. “Poesie I” knocks its rhythms around with piano clusters, drumming that keeps moving the downbeat, hopscotching saxophone lines and a rap from HPrizm that keeps switching up its flow: “These words don’t fit so I’m forcing ‘em in/smashing the edges,” he declares. PARELES More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Marcus King, a Bluesy Rocker Who Stared Down His Own Crossroads

      by

      The 26-year-old singer and guitarist saw terrifying signs and symbols during the making of his new album, “Young Blood.” He steadied himself, and put it all in the music.Ours is an improbable world, in which Birkenstocks and tie-dye — once signifiers of hippie anti-style, as glamorous as trail mix — are now more chic than ever.But in the early 2000s, when the singer and guitarist Marcus King was attending middle school in Piedmont, S.C., this was not the case. In a recent interview, King recalled being made fun of by “teachers and students alike” for showing up to class dressed like a Deadhead.“I was like, ‘Man, I saved up a long time for these Birkenstocks!’” King said. “‘I’m going to wear them all year!’ So I always kind of stood out.”That same unapologetically out-of-step spirit animates King’s second solo album, “Young Blood,” a collection of brawny hard-rock songs in the audibly hirsute tradition of the James Gang, Grand Funk and early ZZ Top — uber-70s outfits whose names have not been trendy musical reference points since Homer Simpson was single and people under 60 used “boogie” as a verb.But in this respect, too, King — who is 26 but looks younger, with a baby face and a goofy, almost triangular smile — has the tastes of a time traveler. He grew up with his father, the blues musician Marvin King, whose record collection was full of music like this.“I was getting spoon-fed these riffs along with my Gerber applesauce, man,” King said in a video chat from Italy, where he’d stepped outside and found Hollywood-quality sunset light. “My dad would give me records to listen to while he was off at work. And I’d just listen to them and learn ’em.”His mother left the family when King was very young. They maintain a relationship, but King says her absence “created the first sense of loss and sorrow in my life”— a predisposition to the blues.In King’s earliest conscious memory, he’s around 4 years old, home alone, strumming his father’s Epiphone El Dorado, which he described as “one of the more off-limits guitars” in the house. Once King acquired his own guitar, it became his closest companion. From the beginning, he was remarkably good at it, too. He was only 11 when he made his professional recording debut, on Marvin King’s album “Huge in Europe” — that’s him on the cover, a pint-size prodigy in shades and a wide-brimmed Stevie Ray Vaughan hat.By the time he was a teenager, King said, “I didn’t want to just be the kiddo guitar player.” He started listening to more jazz, and paying closer attention to vocalists — from Aretha Franklin to David Ruffin to Janis Joplin — whose tone and phrasing he’d then try to emulate on his own instrument.As soon as he was old enough to secure a learner’s permit, he was booking shows at any venue within driving distance. These experiences relieved him of whatever teenage timidity he had left. “Being in the clubs and having to stand your ground is kind of a scary place,” he said. His extracurricular activities made him chronically late for school. “They were so terrible about it, man,” he said. “They tried to put me in juvenile hall for truancy, multiple times.”“My dad would give me records to listen to while he was off at work,” King said of his father, the blues musician Marvin King. “And I’d just listen to them and learn ’em.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesHe eventually dropped out, and then toured relentlessly, working his way up to sharing stages and festival bills with the jam-circuit elite. He made three well-received albums of soul-inflected Southern rock as leader of the Marcus King Band, and earned a Grammy nomination for his first solo album, “El Dorado,” released in 2020.Produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, “El Dorado” drew on vintage AM-radio pop, Nudie-suit country and even psychedelia, bringing out a surprising delicacy in King’s preternaturally weathered vocals. But when King and Auerbach began mapping out plans for King’s next album, they quickly decided to tack in the opposite direction, aiming for something more raw and immediate.It was a practical decision, at least at first. “He’s out on the road, on tour, and the venues keep getting bigger and bigger,” Auerbach said in an interview, “and he wanted some songs to help feed that energy he’s experiencing onstage.”But in April, the momentum shifted. “Everything kind of fell apart in my personal life,” King said, his eyes suddenly downcast, narrowing behind his round tinted sunglasses.The album would become a document of this harrowing period. “Every part of me believed this was going to be my last record,” King said, “’cause I just knew I was going to either drink or drug myself to death. I was already on that path.”King started sneaking post-set beers while playing in bars as a teenager; as an adult, he said, he turned to alcohol and drugs to help him play through the pain of a punishing tour schedule. “If you’re tired and you need to get up and go, there’s things that’ll get you up to go. And if you’re depressed as hell, there’s things that will make you not so depressed,” he said. “And if you’re hung over, you do all those things again, and it goes away.”This was particularly unwise given that King was also taking prescription medication. “A lot of people argue that pineapple don’t belong on pizza,” he said. “But I can tell you for a fact that antidepressants and alcohol don’t go together.”Things got dark. King — who’d grown up in the Pentecostal church, whose father believed in messages from God, and whose mother often talked about premonitions and spirits — began to see ominous signs and symbols everywhere. The music of the English rock band Free seemed to follow him around; when King looked up the band’s lead guitarist, Paul Kossoff, he discovered that he’d died — of a pulmonary embolism, after years of drug use — when he was 25.King was 25 when he read this; it didn’t feel like a coincidence. “When you start creating these signs in your mind,” he said, “they start to show up all over the place.”Meanwhile, his relationship with his girlfriend was circling the drain. It was in April that they booked a staycation in Nashville, hoping to rekindle things; it didn’t work. One night he wound up walking the streets after dark, and encountered what he described as an “entity without a face”— a man in a hooded sweatshirt with nothing but a void inside the hood.King said he lets the drama in his life build. “And then I write it in a record.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesKing says he wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time — but he was also sober that night. Whatever he’d actually seen, it felt like a message: “A heads-up that the end was coming soon for me, and to get all the work in that I could.”“Young Blood” was in progress, and its track listing tells a story from the abyss — “It’s Too Late,” “Lie Lie Lie,” “Pain,” “Dark Cloud,” “Blues Worse Than I Ever Had.” But the tone of the music itself is defiant, not desperate; King calls it a “real war-cry kind of thing,” an attempt to rise from the ashes.“I’ve been through a lot of those things that Marcus is going through,” Auerbach said. “I can relate, and I was just trying to be supportive the whole time. It was tough when he would come into a writing session and he would be late because things were bad at home. I felt bad for him. But in retrospect, it definitely set the fire of creativity when it came to making the record.”These days King believes that weird night in Nashville was a warning, as opposed to an omen: Get it together, or else. He’s engaged to someone new — the singer Briley Hussey, who he says “kind of pulled me out of that crevasse”— and while he still enjoys the occasional glass of wine, he uses “non-repressive techniques” to deal with whatever demons arise.One of those techniques is music. He was in Tuscany to put the finishing touches on another new record, working in a studio housed in a former 12th-century church at the suggestion of a producer he wouldn’t name.Another new album?“I’ve tried to keep a journal,” King said sheepishly. “And I just can’t keep up with the damn thing. So I just let it all build up. And then I write it in a record.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Katie Gregson-MacLeod Sang About a ‘Complex’ Love. TikTok Responded.

      by

      The 21-year-old Scottish folk singer-songwriter found a sudden hit by tapping into the platform’s appetite for melancholy with a striking, sorrowful chorus.If TikTok has made you cry sometime this month, it’s likely thanks to Katie Gregson-MacLeod.On Aug. 4, the 21-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter posted a minute-long chorus to an unreleased song she’d written called “Complex” — an elegiac capturing of the hollow, zombielike experience of loving someone far more than they can, or will, love you back. Her voice is lovely and affecting, somewhere between wistful and determined as she sings about a relationship that’s ongoing, but already over:I’m wearing his boxersI’m being a good wifeWe won’t be togetherBut maybe the next lifeGregson-MacLeod had just written the song, and had no plans to release it. But by the following morning, TikTok had supersized it, finding the eyes and ears of several young female singer-songwriters who have been successful on the app, including Gracie Abrams, Lennon Stella and Maisie Peters.Suddenly, Gregson-MacLeod was a meme, embodying the app’s potential as an amplifier of melancholy. In just a couple of days, “Complex” became a trigger for what felt like a global group hug.“When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” Gregson-MacLeod said of the full version of the song released to streaming services.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesTikTok is well-suited to this particular stripe of intimacy, because “people seem to love hearing going as in-depth of someone’s life as they can,” Gregson-MacLeod said last week in a video chat from her family’s home in Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s a very online thing, but it’s also the same essence of what people love about people like Elliott Smith and Joni Mitchell. There are so many serious songwriters on there, but the ones that I’ve noticed doing really well are super raw, emotional and very stripped back.”Vulnerability is contagious, and TikTok, which allows users to both imbibe and amplify at the same time, is an optimal accelerant. The success of “Complex” reflects the evolving priorities of TikTok, which in its first couple of years was best known as an accelerant for dance trends, novelty songs and meme-able comedy, but is now just as often a home for sorrow. The shift reflects a partial maturation of the medium somewhere beyond pure escape.With her song gaining so much traction so quickly — the original post currently has 6.9 million views — Gregson-MacLeod did what any savvy young musician would do: She TikToked through it, posting duets with singers covering her, answering fan questions, making new memes, taking note of the interest from people she looked up to (“fletcher and olivia o’brien now know I have an anxious attachment style I was tryna play hard to get”). On Friday, Gregson-MacLeod formally released the full song — now titled “Complex (Demo)” — to streaming platforms, a few days after she signed a deal with the British arm of Columbia Records.The full song is, apart from one small tweak, identical to what she’d already written before her TikTok eruption. “When the chorus did so well, I swore to myself, I am not changing one word of the rest of the song,” she said. “It worked because it was just a moment, and it was a moment that was very real and raw. And then I was kind of like, if I changed too much or anything, then I’m going to be writing reactively and I’m going to be trying to think of what other people are going to want. And actually, it worked because it’s just what happened to me.”She didn’t elaborate on the specific scenario that prompted the song, but said, “For the most part, I write completely autobiographically, pretty much 100 percent.” She continued, “With this song, it was very much just like a very emotional moment, as you can probably tell. Literally just a moment where it all kind of poured out.”Until now, Gregson-MacLeod has been splitting her time between home and college, where she is studying history at the University of Edinburgh. She’s been releasing music on her own for a couple of years, including a frisky indie-pop EP last year, “Games I Play,” and a recent song, “Second Single Bed,” that’s almost as emotionally laserlike as “Complex.” In the last year, she’s found a welcoming home in the Edinburgh folk music scene that congregates around Captains Bar. She is a student of classic folk singers like Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and also younger ones like Laura Marling, Lucy Dacus and, naturally, Phoebe Bridgers: “She’s a bit of a god.”Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic. She has a natural way with humor in her posts — part sincere, part can-you-believe-we’re-all-doing-this. Before “Complex” took off, she was a barista at Perk Coffee & Doughnuts (“Inverness’s first doughnut shop,” she noted), and handled the shop’s social media posts. Perk was also where all the A&R representatives who traveled to Inverness to meet her this month ended up hanging out at different tables.“Complex” has allowed Gregson-MacLeod to take her place in an impressive lineage of female singer-songwriters who have used TikTok as an engine over the last two years: Lauren Spencer-Smith (“Fingers Crossed”), Sadie Jean (“WYD Now?”), Lizzy McAlpine (“You Ruined the 1975”), Jensen McRae, poppier singers like Gayle and Tate McRae. (The McRaes are not related.) And of course, the alpha of this phenomenon: Olivia Rodrigo, whose “Drivers License” began life as an acoustic snippet on TikTok before becoming the defining pop song of 2021.Gregson-MacLeod began posting to TikTok in 2020, a few months into the pandemic, and had been studying at college and working in a coffee shop when her song took off.Jaime Molina for The New York TimesOne of the particular quirks of putting vulnerable sentiment into a song is that, if it becomes popular, it no longer truly belongs to you. To have that happen so quickly with “Complex” has been lightly head spinning for Gregson-MacLeod, who is still getting acclimated to the way her song is being absorbed out in the wild.Mostly, she finds it humorous. When someone covers it with a slightly different sentiment in their caption, “I always comment ‘me for real,’” she said. Some people are using her melody and adding different lyrics. “The trend is now to rewrite it, which is, like, mildly insulting,” she said, laughing. “It’s like mainly lovely but you’re like, ‘Hey guys, can the trend be to appreciate what I wrote?’” She participated in a TikTok duet chain with Gayle and Catie Turner, shouting absurdist ad-libs over her tender tune.There have also been a few versions written from a male point of view. “Whenever I hear ‘She’s wearing my boxers,’ I’m like, ‘No,’” she joked. “Read the room, man.”Gregson-MacLeod put “(Demo)” in the title of the finished song because she wanted to be clear that this is just a way station. “I knew that this version had to be first, it had to be the raw emotional moment that it was in the video,” she said. “But it also leaves room for whatever I want to do in a few weeks, a few months or whatever, because I think it’s going to have a long life.” The sentiment belongs to everybody, but the song remains hers. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift Announces a New Album, ‘Midnights’

      by

      The LP, described by Swift as “the story of 13 sleepless nights,” is due Oct. 21. It will be her 10th studio album, and her fifth release in just over two years.We already knew that Taylor Swift was a restless creative force. Now we know that she is also an insomniac one.Late Sunday, Swift announced her 10th studio album, “Midnights,” to be released on Oct. 21, which she described on social media as “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.”“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” she added. “The floors we pace and the demons we face.” An image posted to Instagram, sure to be pored over for clues, shows Swift posed at a table in dim light, resting her head in one hand and holding out the receiver of a landline phone in the other.“Midnights,” which Swift began selling through pre-orders on her website — available on “moonstone blue marble” vinyl and CD, as well as on cassette and download — will be the singer’s fifth album in just over two years. In 2020 she released a pair of LPs recorded in quarantine, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” (“Folklore,” which arrived in July 2020, won the Grammy for album of the year.) And in 2021 came “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” and “Red (Taylor’s Version),” the first of her planned series of rerecorded simulacra of her old albums — a move, prompted by the sale of Swift’s old record label without her participation, that gave her new control over her recordings.The cover of Swift’s “Midnights.”Fans have been buzzing about a possible new version of “1989,” her pop breakthrough from 2014, especially since a new version of “Bad Blood,” from that album, was used in the soundtrack to “DC League of Super-Pets,” a new animated comedy film.“Midnights” will come too late to qualify for the next Grammy Awards; the eligibility window for the 65th annual ceremony closes on Sept. 30. But, particularly with its robust offerings on physical media, the album has a strong possibility of becoming one of the year’s biggest commercial successes, rivaling releases like Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” (which had the biggest opening of the year, thanks in part to vinyl sales), Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” and Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack.Swift’s competition this year has also been notably soft. Despite the arrival of new albums by high-profile artists — Drake, Lizzo, Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion, even BTS — few have had huge debut weeks or much staying power on the charts; one of the few new releases that has held fast in the Top 5 lately is Beyoncé’s “Renaissance,” which also had the biggest opening for a woman this year. The last artist to sell a million copies in a week was Swift, with “Reputation” in 2017.Swift teased the announcement of “Midnights” late Sunday in an acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, where “All Too Well: The Short Film” — from her “Red” rerecording project — won three awards, including video of the year. About an hour later, her website began taking orders. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Britney Spears and Elton John’s Mash-up, and 8 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Margo Price, Julia Jacklin and Michael Kiwanuka.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.Elton John & Britney Spears, ‘Hold Me Closer’By presenting Britney Spears’s first new music since the end of her conservatorship, Elton John adds newsiness to his already canny late-career playbook. As he did last year with Dua Lipa in “Cold Heart,” he has reclaimed hooks from his old songs over a plush disco track, then enlisted a headlining duet partner. “Hold Me Closer” — with choruses from “Tiny Dancer” and verses from “The One” — is produced by Andrew Watt with an echoey, nostalgic haze, floating into earshot and eventually dissolving like a mirage. In between, Spears and John mostly sing in unison, but she grabs just enough melismatic flourishes — and a distinctive “baby” — to make her presence known. JON PARELESRema & Selena Gomez, ‘Calm Down’Exposure to new audiences, or colonialism? Let’s hope the lawyers worked it out. “Calm Down,” by the Nigerian singer Rema, has been an international hit — more than 100 million plays on Spotify — since February. It’s carried by a cunningly syncopated track that uses acoustic guitar and a synthesizer blip alongside Afrobeats drum programming. Now, Selena Gomez has wisely latched on to it, and she coos boasts — “My hips make you cry when I’m moving around you” — to Rema’s own seductions. The rhythm leads; the voices affirm. PARELESMargo Price, ‘Been to the Mountain’Margo Price contains multitudes on her rollicking new single “Been to the Mountain”: “I’ve been a dancer, a saint, an assassin,” she sings with a hard-living swagger atop a chugging guitar riff. Perhaps representing a new sonic chapter for the Nashville singer-songwriter, “Mountain” hews closer to straight-ahead rock than her usual alt-country sound — there’s even a punky freakout in the middle of the song that allows her to show off the more guttural side of her voice. The striking, desert-hued music video finds Price exploring and embodying the many different aspects of her identity during a particularly potent ayahuasca trip. Embracing psychedelia may have allowed Kacey Musgraves to get spacier than ever, but here, Price sees it as an invitation to unleash her wildest side yet. LINDSAY ZOLADZJulia Jacklin, ‘Be Careful With Yourself’The Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin implores a loved one to take care on the sweetly cautious “Be Careful With Yourself,” the latest single from her third album, “Pre Pleasure,” which comes out Friday. In her conversational delivery, Jacklin offers a font of healthy and practical advice: Quit smoking, drive the speed limit and put away some money in case of an emergency because, as she admits, “I’m making plans for my future and I plan on you being in it.” It’s a tender sentiment, but the song crackles with an undercurrent of jangly, distorted guitar and palpable anxiety, as Jacklin frets that a love so pure is doomed to be lost. ZOLADZThe National featuring Bon Iver, ‘Weird Goodbyes’The National and Bon Iver — a.k.a. Justin Vernon — have long been close. Aaron Dessner has worked with both as songwriter, musician and producer. Their overlap is in stately songs with hymnlike chords, and that’s what “Weird Goodbyes” is: Matt Berninger of the National and Vernon sharing harmonies in lyrics about self-doubt. It’s glum and thoughtful and neatly crafted for both; it’s not particularly new, but it is substantial. PARELESMichael Kiwanuka, ‘Beautiful Life’A love song could hardly sound more desperate than “Beautiful Life,” a song Michael Kiwanuka first released in 2021 for the Covid documentary “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis.” With mournful vocals over descending chords, eventually joined by full orchestra and choir Kiwanuka sings about how love “rescued me from a nightmare.” Now he has re-upped the song with a grim video by Phillip Youmans that envisions a game of Russian roulette and makes life seem even more precious. PARELESNoah Cyrus and Benjamin Gibbard, ‘Every Beginning Ends’Here’s an unexpected collaboration that works: Noah Cyrus with, of all people, Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. “Every Beginning Ends” is a bleak folk-rock waltz about lovers growing estranged: “I can’t remember the last time you touched me,” he sings, in his plaintive high tenor, and she answers, “I can’t recall you making the move.” It’s matter-of-factly heartsick. PARELESNosaj Thing featuring Julianna Barwick, ‘Blue Hour’Nosaj Thing — the electronic musician Jason Chung — conjures nothing less than rapture with the multilayered “Blue Hour.” Julianna Barwick sings forgiveness and “flying into bliss” in a track that swathes a brisk, double-time beat in edgeless, reverberating synthesizer chords, her voice answered by the raw tone of a viola, balancing the ethereal and the earthy. PARELESBitchin Bajas, ‘Amorpha’Bitchin Bajas is the jokey name of a serious instrumental trio from Chicago that explores the possibilities of repetition where minimalism, psychedelia, jazz, dub and electronica overlap. “Amorpha” starts with plinking mallet percussion patterns that recall Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” but the 10-minute piece soon takes its own dizzying path, with undulating synthesizers, flickers of hyperspeed and slyly shifting meters behind its steady pulse. PARELES More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Jerry Allison, Who Played Drums With Buddy Holly, Dies at 82

      by

      An original Cricket, he was also a co-writer of two signature Holly songs, “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.”Jerry Allison, who played drums with Buddy Holly and was a co-writer of two of his signature late-1950s songs, “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue,” died on Monday at his home near Nashville. He was 82.Peter Bradley Jr., board director of the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, confirmed the death.Mr. Allison was still a teenager in Lubbock, Texas, when he began playing with Mr. Holly, who was three years older and had already made a tentative start on a music career, releasing a few records in Nashville that did not do well. Back in Lubbock, he, Mr. Allison, Niki Sullivan on guitar (soon replaced by Sonny Curtis, Tommy Allsup and others) and Joe B. Mauldin on bass began honing a sound that drew on Elvis Presley and on country and, especially, Black music.“We’d have to listen to a radio station out of Shreveport, La., to hear the real blues — rhythm and blues — we wanted to hear,” Mr. Allison told The Globe-Gazette of Mason City, Iowa, in 1989. “Groups like Etta James and the Peaches, and the Midnighters and the Clovers. That wasn’t common music around Lubbock, but that was the kind of music we were trying to write.”At first, things were slow.“We’d be playing at things like supermarket openings,” Mr. Allison told The Lansing State Journal of Michigan in 1979. “Sometimes we’d get as much as $10 apiece.”Then, in May 1956, he and Mr. Holly went to see a new John Wayne movie, “The Searchers,” in which one of Mr. Wayne’s most memorable lines was “That’ll be the day.”Days later, according to an account written for the Library of Congress, Mr. Holly suggested that he and Mr. Allison write a song together, and Mr. Allison, imitating the Wayne line, said, “That’ll be the day.”“Right away, Buddy starts fiddling around with it,” Mr. Allison told the Lansing newspaper. “In about a half-hour, we had it.”Mr. Holly cut a country version of the song in Nashville that was unloved (a producer there is said to have called it “the worst song I’ve ever heard”), but in 1957 he and the Crickets, as his Lubbock group was called, recorded a rock ’n’ roll version that became a national hit and remained in Billboard’s Top 30 for three months. Mr. Holly, Mr. Allison and the producer who recorded that version, Norman Petty, got the songwriting credit, and in 2005 the record was selected for the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.Another touchstone song of early rock ’n’ roll appeared later in 1957, this time released under Mr. Holly’s name: “Peggy Sue.” Mr. Holly and the band were in Mr. Petty’s studio trying to record a song called “Cindy Lou,” but Mr. Allison, hoping to solidify his relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Peggy Sue Gerron, suggested a name change.In her autobiography, “Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?” (2008), she described hearing the song for the first time when the Crickets played a show in Sacramento, Calif., where she was going to school. It was a complete surprise to her, and it ignited the crowd.“My heart pounded, and my cheeks were on fire,” she wrote. “With people all around me bouncing, swaying and singing my name over and over, I sank down in my seat, covered my face with my hands, and cried out to myself, ‘What have y’all done to me?’”Apparently she got over her shock; she and Mr. Allison later married. The marriage eventually ended in divorce, but “Peggy Sue” lives on as a rock ’n’ roll classic.Mr. Holly’s career was a short one; he died in a plane crash in 1959 — “the day the music died,” as Don McLean later sang in “American Pie.” Mr. Allison, though, kept performing and recording with an ever-changing lineup of Crickets for decades.“I don’t mind being called an oldie,” he told The Tulsa World of Oklahoma in 1996, “because we are.”The Crickets in 1958. From left, Mr. Allison, Mr. Holly and Mr. Mauldin.Everett CollectionJerry Ivan Allison was born on Aug. 31, 1939, in Hillsboro, Texas. He started playing drums at an early age.In a 2005 interview with The Sunday News of Lancaster, Pa., he said the name the Crickets came about because Mr. Holly liked an R&B group called the Spiders. At his house one day, he said, he and Mr. Holly started thumbing through an encyclopedia’s section on insects.They rejected “Beetles,” he said, because beetles were something people stepped on. Mr. Allison said he suggested “Crickets” because they “make a happy sound.”Mr. Allison eventually settled on a farm near Nashville. His survivors include his wife, Joanie Allison. His ex-wife, Peggy Sue Gerron Rackham, died in 2018.Buddy Holly and the Crickets had a lasting influence on rock ’n’ roll. The band helped establish the classic rock four-piece: two guitarists, drummer, bassist. And it helped inspire another four-piece that did pretty well.“Paul McCartney did tell me that if there hadn’t been the Crickets, there never would have been the Beatles,” Mr. Allison told The Associated Press in 2013. Mr. McCartney sang backup, played some piano and produced the title track of the Crickets’ 1988 album, “T Shirt.”Mr. Allison also thought the group, which generally kept its songs pretty simple, encouraged youngsters to take up the instruments of rock.“When we went out on tour, we sounded just like our records,” he told the Lansing newspaper. “And whenever kids were starting a group, our songs were some that they knew they could do.” More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Rage Against the Machine, Roaring On

      by

      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFor most of the past two months, the 1990s agit-rap-rock band Rage Against the Machine has been playing its first shows in more than a decade. It has been a roaring return, but one that was slightly derailed by an injury that the frontman Zack de la Rocha sustained during the show’s second stop, in Chicago, forcing him to perform seated for the remainder of the tour.It did not blunt the impact of the music, though. The group’s messaging feels particularly well-suited to the political moment, and the physical rush of its performance feels like a corrective to much of contemporary rock.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Rage Against the Machine’s comeback tour, the ways its message has evolved in a shifting political climate, and whether legacy bands need to update their act for a revival — or if it’s better to leave it intact.Guests:Andy Greene, senior writer at Rolling StoneJoseph Patel, former music journalist and a producer of “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to Madison Square Garden

      by

      The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.Over the weekend, Harry Styles began a 15-night stand at Madison Square Garden, an impressive feat befitting one of the most popular musicians in the world. (He’ll begin a similar stretch in October at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. — his tour supporting his latest album, “Harry’s House,” consists of a series of residencies.) But Styles, who came to fame as part of the British boy band One Direction, is still relatively early in his solo career, and is still establishing his sonic ideas. Two New York Times critics attended the first two nights of his Love on Tour run in New York to see how he wielded his gravitational pull.JON CARAMANICA I always liked One Direction, more or less. Or maybe I liked what the group represented: a rejection of the hyperprocessed boy band, and by extension an acknowledgment that doing the least can still earn you the most. They weren’t trying to delude audiences about their artistry — their casualness was foundational to their appeal. But that approach wears thin in a solo act, and time and again during the Harry Styles show at the Garden on Saturday night, I found myself vexed. Off-the-charts charisma, collective exuberance, decently competent band, and yet at the center of it all, Styles was inscrutable. Musically, at least. I’ve rarely if ever seen someone more confident in their ownership of the stage, but everything underneath felt slight. All razzle, no dazzle. What am I missing? (I’m not missing anything.)The set included songs from Styles’s repertoire that lean toward mid-1970s rock.The New York TimesLINDSAY ZOLADZ Hmm, Jon, maybe a boa? Despite all of the construction around Madison Square Garden, I had no difficulty finding the venue’s entrance: I just followed the trail of rainbow feathers shed from the signature Styles neckwear that at least half of the audience seemed to be sporting. My thoughts today (and over the next several weeks of Styles’s 15-date residency) are with the Garden’s cleanup crew.I’ve long considered One Direction to be the quintessential boy band of the fan-service era — expertly primed to respond to the demands of their devoted, social-media savvy stan army — and after catching Styles’s show on Sunday night, I’m ready to declare him the defining solo artist of that era, too. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a pop star wave so much from the stage in my entire life? Roughly a third of his performance seemed to comprise waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience, whose volume approximated a jet taking off. Most of the time I could not hear Styles’s voice well enough to determine if he was hitting all the notes, though the crowd’s reaction was energetic enough that they did not seem to care. This show felt, as so much of Styles’s music does, first and foremost for the fans, which — I agree — can sometimes make the man at the center of it all feel like a bit of an enigma.The Dreamy World of Harry StylesThe British pop star and former member of the boy-band One Direction has grown into a magnetic and provocative performer.A 15-Night Stand: The first two nights of Harry Styles’ run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.New Album: The record-breaking album “Harry’s House” is a testament to the singer’s sense of generosity and devotion to the female subject.Styler Fashion: Stylers, as the pop star’s fans are called, love to dress in homage to their idol. Here are some of the best looks seen at a concert.Opening Up: For his solo debut, Styles agreed to a Times interview. He was slippery in conversation, deflecting questions with politeness.CARAMANICA Let’s try to distill the Harry Styles musical proposition. He has nowhere near the determined agita of, say, Shawn Mendes; nowhere near the vocal litheness of Justin Bieber. (Also:#FreeZayn) And it goes without saying that despite the rampant Eltonisms on display throughout Styles’s solo catalog, and the (sub?)conscious echoes of John’s sartorial glamour in Styles’s Gucci gear, he has nowhere near John’s verve or panache. It is all quite a brittle foundation upon which to build this fame skyscraper.But yes, the waving. Also the utterly-at-ease shimmying. And that thing he did mid-show where he took a fan’s cellphone and tried calling her ex on it. (Josh, if you’re reading this, you got washed, buddy — everyone at Madison Square Garden hates you.) See also: him singing “Happy Birthday” to his friend Florence. Florence Welch, of the Machine? No. Florence Pugh, his co-star in the upcoming film “Don’t Worry Darling”? Also no. Florence, daughter of Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group? Yes.This is the essence of his appeal — his is not a top-down sort of fame. He’s the approachable but protective friend, the one who leads with good judgment and progressive wholesomeness. (At previous shows, he’s helped people come out, or to confess their love.) That’s part of why, even though public discussion of Styles often centers on his dating life or the ways he flirts with gender fluidity, his actual show is conventional and chaste. The most risqué bit was when he explained how the in-the-round performance would work. Sometimes, “we’ll be ass to face,” he said. “I’ll be sure to distribute face and ass equally throughout the show — there’s plenty to go around.” It was cheeky. Even “Watermelon Sugar,” his lightly erotic hit, was dry.The New York TimesZOLADZ Styles did not call any exes at our show, but he did a funny bit where he attempted to count all of the “golf dads” in the audience — 34, apparently. He also broke some solemn “bad news” about something that had happened just before the show: “I’ve blown my tongue on some soup.” So yes, effortlessly charismatic banter, and he works every corner of the stage. The set and wardrobe were a bit more minimal than I anticipated; I expected at least one costume change. But I would describe the look he was going for, in a red-and-white-striped jumpsuit, as “sexy candy cane.” The fashion, the fans, the force of personality — it feels like we’re talking about everything but the music here, which is perhaps telling. How did the songs strike you, Jon, and did you get anything out of them that you don’t get on his records?CARAMANICA Basically, we’re of opposite opinions on Styles’s albums — I’m more partial to the most recent one, “Harry’s House,” and I know you lean more toward the previous one, “Fine Line.” When the songs were … funkier — and I use that designation extremely loosely — his performance felt more full. I’m thinking “Satellite,” and also “Cinema,” both from the new album — the rhythm section is in the lead, but doesn’t overpower him. I also liked what he did with “Adore You,” melting the chorus into more of a restrained tease. But when he went unadorned, like on “Matilda,” the air in the room felt heavier. And “Sign of the Times,” the first Styles solo hit, was ponderous, a karaoke take on mid-1970s power-mope.Styles’s performance was heavy on waving, pointing and blowing kisses to various sections of the audience.The New York TimesZOLADZ I sometimes detect a divide between the music Styles wants to make — the big, bold, if somewhat generic-sounding ’70s-style rock of his first album — and the more pop-oriented fare that better suits his personality. Not surprisingly, the songs that worked best for me live were the ones that manage to satisfy both of those impulses, like the groovy, Tame Impala-esque “Daylight” or the still-ubiquitous hit “As It Was.” I wish he’d ended the set on that note, but regrettably he had one more song to play after that, the stomping, Led-Zeppelin-cosplay rocker “Kiwi,” an unfortunate live staple that I consider one of his weakest songs. But, as ever, he seemed to relish playing the role of bombastic rock star, even if the material itself didn’t always electrify.I found it refreshing, though, that Styles is not shying away from his former group on this tour: The first song on his preperformance playlist is One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” — much to the shrieking delight of the thousands of fans who sang along to every word — and during his set he actually played a louder and more rock-oriented version of One Direction’s 2011 hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” which happens to be from an album that his former bandmate Louis Tomlinson recently called a disparaging word we can’t print here. How did you feel about Styles’s raucous 1D cover, Jon?CARAMANICA That was one of the musical high points, if not the peak. It was as if a rowdy bar band momentarily inhabited Styles’s very deliberately understated crew. On Saturday, too, people absolutely lost it when the opening bars of “Best Song Ever” hit right after the conclusion of Blood Orange’s temperate and tasteful opening set. It was the purest release of pent-up demand that I’ve witnessed in quite some time. And that’s how the rest of the night went, too — demand leading supply. Fervor without feeling (and certainly without friction). An arena-size canvas merely doodled on with pencil.And for the record, a friend lent me her pink-and-white boa for a few songs — it didn’t help. More