Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Björk Insists on Connection, and 11 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Blood Orange, Madison Cunningham, Yeat 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.Björk, ‘Atopos’Multiple Björks converge in “Atopos,” the first single from her album due Sept. 30, “Fossora”; “atopos” is Greek for “out of place” or “amiss.” There’s the brash, declarative Björk, calling for unity and belting, “Thank you for staying while we learn/To find our resonance where we do connect.” There’s the beat-heavy Björk, who collaborated with Kasimyn — an Indonesian disc jockey who is in the duo Gabber Modus Operandi — on a stark, elemental kick-drum syncopation that turns to fierce battering at the end. There’s the nature-loving Björk, who surrounds herself in the video with close-ups of fungi. And there’s the modern chamber-music Björk, who chooses a family of instruments — on this track, six clarinets from bass on up — and writes gnarled, harmonically ambiguous arrangements for them. The song is equally cerebral and visceral — and, in its own way, jolly. JON PARELESBlood Orange, ‘Jesus Freak Lighter’A skittish electronic beat collides with a low, morose guitar riff on Blood Orange’s “Jesus Freak Lighter” — which is to say it’s a little bit New Order, a little bit Joy Division. Though Dev Hynes remains Blood Orange’s creative nucleus, as usual he’s brought on some new collaborators to orbit him on “Four Songs,” a new EP coming out next week; Ian Isaiah, Eva Tolkin and Erika de Casier will all be featured. “Jesus Freak Lighter,” though, is all Hynes, fitting since it conjures a mood of digital-era solitude: “Got carried away,” he sings with a kind of muffled melancholy, “Living in my head, photo fantasy.” LINDSAY ZOLADZPhoenix featuring Ezra Koenig, ‘Tonight’Phoenix harkens back to 2009 on the sleek “Tonight,” not just in the way the group recaptures the sound of the excellent record it released that year, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” but in the cameo appearance from another late-aughts indie-pop luminary, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. “I talk to myself and it’s quite surprising,” Thomas Mars quips on the chorus; by the second iteration, Koenig adds some backing vocals to keep him company. ZOLADZDeerhoof, ‘My Lovely Cat’What if the spiky San Francisco art-rock band Deerhoof decided to write a Rolling Stones song? “My Lovely Cat” might be as close as they get, with a rowdy, distorted 4/4 guitar riff, a more-or-less march beat and a slide guitar that veers between teasing the rhythm guitar and shadowing the vocal. Satomi Matsuzaki sings, in Japanese, about bonding with her cat in the internet era: “Let’s monitor on pet-cam!/Shall I start Instagram or TikTok?” Of course Deerhoof skews things, with sudden silences, sneaky shifts of key and meter and a final minute of obsessive repetition. But there’s a Stones swagger lurking underneath. PARELESMadison Cunningham, ‘Our Rebellion’Opposites attract, and perplex, in “Our Rebellion” from “Revealer,” the new album by Madison Cunningham. As she tries to defuse a lovers’ quarrel by recognizing differences — “You speak in numbers/I sing in metaphor” — she insists “I’m not trying to simplify you.” That certainly applies to the music: a perpetual-motion weave of deftly picked guitar lines in a brisk 7/4 meter, stacking up and realigning, jabbing and easing off, sometimes running backward, as the crafty wrangling goes on. PARELESJordana, ‘Is It Worth It Now?’Perky synthesizer arpeggios, a confident guitar line and a broad-shouldered drumbeat promise something cheerful. But “Is It Worth It Now?” is actually a snap-out-of-it pep talk for someone deeply depressed: “Disinterest in the things that made you wanna live is sad enough itself, isn’t it?” She has advice — “Swim right into the center of all your doubt” — but the song ends with a question, not a cure. PARELESThe Waeve, ‘Can I Call You’Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall are former members of two very different, if quintessentially British, bands: Blur and the Pipettes. They recently joined forces to form a new duo, the Waeve, and announced that a debut album will be coming next year. The first single, “Can I Call You,” is full of unexpected and sonically adventurous twists and turns: Just when it seems that the song has settled into its groove as a plaintive, folky piano ballad sung by Dougall, a screaming guitar solo from Coxon propels it into a different, and much antsier, register. “I’m tired of being in love, I’m sick of being in pain,” they chant together in a punky cadence, shouting to be heard over a cacophony that now includes Coxon’s blaring saxophone. “Can’t you just kiss me, then kiss me again?” ZOLADZYeat, ‘Krank’One of several space jams from the new Yeat EP, “Lyfë,” “Krank” is woozy, circular, lewd, lightly dystopian, and 10 percent less inscrutable than the average Yeat song to date. It’s something like growth. JON CARAMANICABryson Tiller, ‘Outside’Bryson Tiller sings with gymnastic verve, never letting the potential power of a lingering note get in the way of a slickly assembled cluster of syllables. Here, he prances and slides atop a beat that borrows heavily from the Ying Yang Twins’ signature salacious hit, “Wait (The Whisper Song).” CARAMANICA​​Lewis Capaldi, ‘Forget Me’The yowling prince Lewis Capaldi has made hay from singing himself hoarse, his hits filled with raw eruptions of schlock so potent they transcend past corn into something far more cooked. Unlike his biggest hits, “Forget Me,” his first new song in about three years, has a slight tempo to it — you aren’t bathing in his pathos quite the same as you once were. The verses amble by amiably, and there’s just the faintest echo of “Man in the Mirror” as the song begins to build. But Capaldi unleashes the full catharsis at the chorus: “I’m not ready/to find out you know how to forget me/I’d rather hear how much you regret me.” The only catch is that the song feels as if it’s rushing him along, urging him not to wallow. And wallowing is where Capaldi thrives. CARAMANICAMarisa Anderson, ‘The Fire This Time’When the 21st-century folk-primitive guitarist Marisa Anderson — no stranger to electric instruments, home recording or multitracking — learned about George Floyd’s death in May 2020, she spent the day recording ‘The Fire This Time’ and quickly put it on Bandcamp for a month as a benefit single. She has re-edited it for her coming album, “Still, Here.” Anderson places steady, mournful fingerpicking behind searching, keening slide-guitar lines and, at the 30-second mark, a police siren that passed by her window as she was recording. It’s a musician working out emotions physically, instinctively, with her fingers on the strings. PARELESMakaya McCraven, ‘The Fours’Jazz, minimalism and a rich sense of unfolding mystery suffuse “The Fours” by Makaya McCraven, the drummer, composer and producer whose next album, “In These Times,” arrives Sept. 23. The track begins with muffled drums and a patient bass vamp, but other instruments keep arriving, slipping into the mix almost surreptitiously and then adding their own layers of counterpoint: cello, viola, piano, harp, saxophone, trumpet, flute, even some flamenco-like handclaps from McCraven. The players collude as sections — strings, horns — or peek out with their own bits of melody; loops mingle with live instruments. The track undulates and thickens, then dissolves before revealing too many secrets. PARELES More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      A Filmmaker Explores David Bowie’s Life and Gets Clarity on His Own

      by

      With the epic “Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen contended with a chameleonic star whose approach to living helped him refocus after a heart attack.When the documentary filmmaker Brett Morgen hit his eighth month of writer’s block on an epic project about David Bowie, he decided it was time to hit the road. With just a few hours’ notice, he left his home in Los Angeles one morning and grabbed the first flight to Albuquerque, where Bowie had filmed “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976). When Morgen arrived, he took a cab to the train station and hopped aboard an Amtrak, heading west.“Being in transit was an important theme in David’s life,” he said. “He talked a lot about riding the rails through the West. And a lot of songs that he wrote happened during some of his trips across America.”Morgen pulled out his notes; his phone, packed with all the albums; and his copy of “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. “I was thinking about ‘The Iliad,’” he said, “and I started to see David’s journey. Not all that dissimilar — but he was creating the storms for himself.” Suddenly, the script for his film, already three years in the making, began flowing.That trip was one of the many ways in which Bowie, the protean rock icon who died in 2016, influenced Morgen, an atmospheric documentarian known for showcasing big, world-changing personalities in “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”; “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” about the Hollywood producer Robert Evans (co-directed with Nanette Burstein); and “Jane,” about Jane Goodall.Morgen’s opus about Bowie, “Moonage Daydream,” which opens in theaters and IMAX on Sept. 16, is billed not as a traditional documentary but as an immersive experience. It’s equal parts psychedelic and philosophical — a corkscrew into Bowie’s carefully constructed personae, assembled entirely from archival footage and audio, some of it rare and never broadcast before. The effect is “a hallucinatory jukebox doc with killer subtext,” as one reviewer wrote, appreciatively, after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this spring.Though there have been other documentaries, and many books, this is the first project that had the full cooperation of Bowie’s estate, and total entrée to his voluminous archives. The songs have been stripped and rejuvenated for the soundtrack, and any narration there is comes from Bowie himself.“It was never designed to be a film about David Jones,” Morgen said, referring to the star’s given name, and added, “It’s a film about Bowie in quotations.”NeonBut that level of intimacy proved its own challenge as Morgen, the writer, director and producer, grappled with a mountain of material and wound up the sole editor after the production ran out of money. “I felt very confident that the through line of David’s artistic life was chaos and fragmentation,” Morgen said. He had heard those ideas come up again and again in Bowie’s interviews from 1971 on, and eventually decided to embrace them himself. Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime collaborator and producer, who served as a resource for the audio, came away impressed with the way the film kaleidoscoped the visuals, narration and music. “There is technical wizardry in all that,” he wrote in an email. “And when seen and heard, especially in an IMAX theater, you will get the most Bowie ever — sensory overload.”“David would be very impressed with this film,” he added.What Morgen didn’t realize was how much making the film would change him, especially after he had a debilitating heart attack, at 47. He flatlined and was in a coma for a week, he said in a phone interview. He emerged with a mind-set that shaped his approach to the story and refocused his own life, as a married father of three. Perversely, the driven Bowie helped Morgen, now 53, a fellow workaholic, find equilibrium.And he needed it, when he was editing, entirely solo, during the first peak of Covid (his health scare made him extra-cautious). “I was sitting alone in this building, making a film about an artist whose stock in trade is isolation, and how to channel it creatively,” he said. “So I felt that he was consistently describing the world that I was inhabiting.”Early on, he had visited Visconti in his New York studio. “We were in the room where he recorded David doing ‘Blackstar,’” the album Bowie released two days before his death, Morgen said. “It was quite intense.” Visconti played him “Cygnet Committee,” a prog-y folk-rock track off Bowie’s second album, stripping out vocals. The song, written when Bowie was around 22, ends with a repeated lyric: “I want to live.”“David was crying throughout the performance,” Morgen said.That sort of emotion — ravenous and vulnerable — set the tone for the film. “Moonage Daydream” was five years in the making. It took Morgen and his team over a year just to transfer hours of concert and performance footage, images of Bowie’s paintings and other content from the Bowie estate, along with additional footage acquired by Morgen’s archivist, and about two years to watch it all.But the movie is hardly completist. There are no interviews with anyone else, and no mention of, for example, Iggy Pop, whom Bowie holed up with in Berlin during one of his most creatively fertile periods, or Nile Rodgers, who helped him reinvent his career as a pop artist in the ’80s. The sexual voraciousness and drug addiction that usually feature heavily in Bowie’s story are referenced only with montages and jumpy interview clips. (“Do I need to spell it out? It seems kind of blatant to me,” Morgen said of one where Bowie appears sweating and grinning maniacally.) Though the movie dips into his childhood and family, it glosses over his personal life until his marriage to Iman, the model and entrepreneur.“It was never designed to be a film about David Jones,” Morgen said, using Bowie’s given name. Every time Bowie was onscreen, including interviews, was a performative moment, Morgen added, and that’s what he wanted to capture. “It’s a film about Bowie in quotations.”“Moonage Daydream” is more an immersive experience than a traditional documentary.NeonHe had first pitched Bowie directly on making a hybrid nonfiction film in 2007, when the artist was already wondering how to showcase his archives, but the timing and scope wasn’t right, Morgen said. He was exploring a similar nonfiction idea with the remaining Beatles when Bowie died, and a call with Bowie’s longtime business manager, Bill Zysblat, resurrected the film.Bowie’s estate gave him unfettered access but not much guidance, Morgen said. At one point, he wanted to discuss what direction to take. “Should we go more toward ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” the 2018 Queen biopic, “and create a kind of populist singalong?” he asked. “Or should we do it more in the spirit of Bowie, which may be a little more adventurous?” And they said, “Well, that’s your problem.” (He employed Paul Massey, who shared an Oscar for sound mixing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” — which Morgen said he watched 14 or 15 times — for “Moonage Daydream.”)The estate, which is overseen by Zysblat, and includes Bowie’s family — his widow, Iman; their daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones; and his son from his first marriage, the filmmaker Duncan Jones — declined to answer any questions, but they support the film. “Brett Morgen has created a stunning testament to David’s lasting influence on the world,” they said in a statement delivered through a representative. The estate has continued to earn money, selling Bowie’s songwriting catalog to Warner Music for an estimated $250 million this year, as his popularity (more than 1 billion streams on Spotify) and reputation as a cultural visionary — especially when it comes to technology and music — has only grown.For Morgen, one of the most illustrative points was the way Bowie behaved in many interviews, often with people who clearly did not get him; one, trying to suss out just how alien this gender-bending artist was, asked if he’d had a teddy bear as a child. And yet, “I never saw David talk down, be disrespectful, short, annoyed,” Morgen said.Maybe this was just politesse as a disarming tactic, but Morgen saw it as something deeper — an ability to seek connection and profundity in any situation. It was a message that he tried to convey in the film. Bowie was “trying to make each moment matter,” he said. “It’s a life-affirming sort of road map, on how to lead a satisfying and complete life.” More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Issy Wood Met Power Players in Art and Music. She Went Her Own Way.

      by

      The painter and budding electronic-pop musician has a new show of figurative paintings in New York, and quietly released the LP “My Body Your Choice” last month.For the last three years, through art fairs, auctions, a global pandemic and an album release, the British painter and musician Issy Wood has been perfecting the craft of being pursued professionally.Singled out by collectors, curators and titans of culture from two disparate worlds as a next big thing, Wood, 29, took a strange ride on her own hype cycle, luxuriating momentarily in the fuss and then — for the most part — rejecting it, leaving some fancy bridges smoldering behind her.As an in-demand visual artist and a D.I.Y. singer uncomfortable with the very different demands of potential pop renown, Wood is now resurfacing with new boundaries after extended sagas — in business, creativity and friendship — with two would-be patrons: the mega-dealer Larry Gagosian, in art, and the music super-producer Mark Ronson, best known for his work with Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga.Instead of Gagosian, the blue-chip gallery empire that might have been Wood’s champion, her new show of unsettling figurative paintings, “Time Sensitive,” opened Friday at Michael Werner, the more traditional Upper East Side gallery. And rather than releasing her debut album with Ronson’s Zelig label, an imprint of Sony Music where she briefly had a record deal, the wobbly and acerbic “My Body Your Choice” was put out completely independently last month, following the dissolution of her contract.“If I wanted an older man to hold money over my head, I would’ve gotten back in touch with my dad,” Wood said dryly over seltzer and Capri cigarettes last week at the cavernous Soho apartment where the new gallery had put her up for the show.One part self-professed naïf and one part openly savvy maneuverer, she identified as both “tough” and “very sensitive,” displaying both modes as she recounted her recent ups and downs across industries.Of Gagosian, 77, Wood noted that “to a point, he would say, I love how spunky you are,” only for the switch to flip when she decided not to work with him. “Then there’s a line where it becomes, Why are you being so difficult?” (Through a representative, Gagosian declined to comment.)On “Parts,” an almost playful kiss-off from her new album, Wood touches on a similar dynamic with Ronson, though it applies to others, too: “You only want the part of me/that smiles and says, ‘Yeah, I agree,’” she sings, adding: “I’m more than just a fresh face/I’ve got problems that you can’t pronounce.”It is this rare combination of emotional vulnerability and strategic, biting intelligence that allows Wood to connect across multiple mediums, said Vanessa Carlos, a founder of the London gallery Carlos/Ishikawa, where Wood has shown work since art school.“Issy really, really resists being commodified and objectified,” Carlos said. “Sometimes she might be seduced by something shiny, but very quickly she can see through things. Her main compass has been integrity to herself and to her own work.”On “My Body Your Choice,” made entirely alone at her kitchen table, Wood said she blends “heartbreak songs about actual boyfriends, heartbreak songs about my dad no longer being in my life and heartbreak songs about working with a music label.”Like her figurative paintings, which have been described as “a dysmorphic take on objects we think we know the shape of,” her electronic pop sounds nearly familiar, but can crunch or undulate in unexpected ways.Wood’s “Sore awards 1.”Issy Wood, via Michael Werner Gallery, New York and Carlos/Ishikawa, LondonThe artist’s “Stock, live.”Issy Wood, via Michael Werner Gallery, New York and Carlos/Ishikawa, London“Embarrassingly, I’m making what I think is pop music, but people describe it as wonky,” Wood said. “But I was trying my best! Why is it wonky? That’s everything — it’s me trying to be normal and failing miserably.”Tying the two bodies of work together are the semipublic blogs that Wood has kept since she was 14. Evolving from the abstract Tumblr musings of a disaffected teenager to raw and searing diary entries in which she dissects her life and career, the writing has regularly been compiled and released in book form by Carlos/Ishikawa. (Sample quip: “Having an angry 76-year-old man tell you how you feel is the new ASMR.” Or, after a failed romance: “Men continue to be a waste of moisturiser.”)“It’s all one thing,” said the dealer Gordon VeneKlasen, an owner at Michael Werner Gallery, of Wood’s various projects, all of which touch on “power, sex, class, femininity, masculinity.” He added, “She has enough energy to make everything the primary parts of her work.”Born in Durham, N.C., to doctor parents and raised in South London, Wood spent most of her adolescence “in hospitals and psychiatric units for my eating disorder,” she said. “Art school was the only path available to me.”At the Royal Academy in 2016, Wood was plucked by Carlos, who was drawn as much to the artist’s Tumblr as to her paintings. But by Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018, Wood’s large scale oil renderings of car interiors, painted on velvet, had become sought after, ushering her into a class of young artists whose sales market and attention share would explode in tandem. This year, one of her paintings topped half a million dollars at auction, a windfall not for Wood or her galleries, but for those flipping the work on the secondary market.Wood has done her best to ignore the noise, but there has been plenty of it. Most days, after meditation and two morning smokes, she paints during regular office hours at her London studio, taking breaks to chat with Carlos at the gallery next door.“We’ll talk about the insanity around how desperate people seem to be for my work right now and some of the deranged and frankly abusive emails from collectors, from advisers who want their cut, from people who put my work in auction,” Wood said. “Rich people don’t like being told no — most of them are men and they especially don’t like being told no by women. It offends everything they’ve worked to attain.”Music, which was supposed to be a haven, happens at night. While Wood had messed around in a band as a teenager, she returned to songwriting in 2019 following a breakup. “Art had very much become my job,” she said. “Music became my hobby, and it was like a secret.” Then a friend offered at a party to send Ronson some of Wood’s early demos.“I knew him as the guy that put loads of horns on things,” Wood said.The producer soon visited her in London — “He said, this could really be big,” she recalled — and began loaning her equipment, which Wood took as a creative challenge. She didn’t know Ronson had a record label until he offered to sign her, and even then, failed to realize it meant a deal with Sony as a corporate partner, she said.“I thought it was going to be like joining a gallery: It’s just a handshake and then you’re on the thing,” Wood said. She retained a lawyer on his advice.Used to the 50-50 splits of the art world, Wood was aghast at the lopsided terms of a typical major-label recording contract. “I feel like I arrived to that record deal in the strongest way possible — a bit older, a bit wiser. I was 27 rather than the 17-year-old version of me, desperately mentally ill and confused in every way,” she said. “And I had a very lucrative career, which meant I didn’t need much from them.”Still, across the rocky release of two pandemic EPs with Zelig (which she took to calling Zony), Wood found the requirements of her new job to be both mentally taxing and borderline absurd. The label fretted about being sued over her videos and album artwork, she said, and set her up with a social media manager who tried to teach her about hashtags. (“I was born in 1993, I know exactly what a hashtag is.”)“Embarrassingly, I’m making what I think is pop music, but people describe it as wonky,” Wood said. Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesAlthough Ronson could be generous with his feedback on her music, she found him difficult to pin down when she had questions; because of Covid, she had never met anyone else involved in her music career, including the manager Ronson had helped her hire.Emotional and physical distance turned to hostility, and then the unceremonious end of the pairing. “He made sure that I always knew that he was doing me a favor,” Wood said. “That he’d won an Oscar for his songwriting and I very much hadn’t.” (Ronson, in a brief statement, said, “I have a different recollection of our professional history but I wish her the best and the continued use of my HBO Max login.”)The rupture with Gagosian after a prolonged cat-and-mouse game was of a “similar flavor,” she said. “After all I’ve done for you …” Wood parodied, beating her fist on the table.She recalled upsetting the dealer at their final business meeting when she questioned who would shepherd her career when he died. After Wood retreated to the bathroom to escape Gagosian’s frustrated disappointment, she said, he texted her that “the other galleries you are considering will go out of business long before my demise,” accidentally sending it three times, which cut the tension. Later, she wrote about the episode in detail.This week, at Michael Werner, things were more tranquil. As Wood and her new gallerist, VeneKlasen, attempted to arrange the paintings, Wood compared the sweetly awkward negotiation to having sex with someone for the first time: “What do you even like?”The art being considered included a textbook-size depiction of a birth control container and a zoomed crop from “Mad Men” the size of a small swimming pool. Wood’s main instinct was to subtract. But even as the party, the sales, the reviews and maybe even more music loomed, the focus, once again, was on the work. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      75 Pop and Jazz Albums, Shows and Festivals Coming This Fall

      by

      Major live events (Adele, Rosalía), buzzy debuts (Muni Long, Skullcrusher), energized returns (the Comet Is Coming, Kid Cudi) and a Taylor Swift LP are on the way.Live music made a roaring return this year, as artists who paused touring plans for the pandemic flooded back to the road. Arenas, jazz clubs, rock spots, cozy cabaret rooms: they’re booked solid this fall, giving musicians and fans a chance to reconnect. The release calendar is jam-packed, too, though many of pop’s biggest names haven’t announced autumn albums — yet. (One big exception? Taylor Swift.) But the schedule is stocked with LPs from emerging artists, established acts and a few pioneers who still have plenty to say. Dates are subject to change; check vaccine and mask requirements for individual performers and venues.ROSALÍA A few months ago, Lorde slipped a cover of Rosalía’s saucy “Hentai” into her set at Radio City Music Hall; this month, New Yorkers have a chance to hear it straight from the source, on the same stage. Currently on the road supporting her genre-busting album “Motomami,” the Spanish superstar hits Boston on Sept. 15, then cities including New York, Toronto and Chicago before heading to California. From a doggedly inventive artist who’s as meticulous about her visuals as her music, this stage show features sharp choreography, a seamless backdrop and even the singer giving herself an onstage haircut. (In North America through Oct. 22) — Olivia HornROXANA AMED For this Argentine-born, Miami-based vocalist, jazz is a loose and syncretic system, suitable for mingling traditions from across the Americas. The luxurious darkness of her alto might recall contemporaries like Cassandra Wilson or Claudia Acuña, but Amed is distinguished by her scholarly tack. “Unánime” (the title translates to “Anonymous”) is both a response and a kind of resistance to one question she’s often asked, about her relationship to the so-called Latin jazz tradition. The album includes covers of artists as varied as Egberto Gismonti and Miles Davis, as well as new originals, anchored by the piano playing of a now-80-year-old Chucho Valdés. (Sept. 16; Sony Latin) — Giovanni RussonelloBLACKPINK Perhaps the biggest girl group in K-pop, Blackpink is also the genre’s most playfully eclectic. “Pink Venom,” the first single from its second album, “Born Pink,” has traditional Korean instruments, old-school rap, boomy EDM beats and boasts about their stuff going “straight to your dome like whoa, whoa, whoa.” A world tour this fall includes a handful of American dates. (Sept. 16; YG Entertainment/Interscope) — Ben SisarioMICHELLE BRANCH With Y2K nostalgia thriving, Michelle Branch — whose pop-rock anthems “Everywhere” and “All You Wanted” made her a teen star in 2001 — released an updated version of her debut, “The Spirit Room,” last year. But, hardly content to be a throwback act, Branch has new music in the pipeline, too. Written and recorded with the Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, “The Trouble With Fever” balances alt-rock edge with decadent orchestral pop flourishes. (Sept. 16; Audio Eagle/Nonesuch/Warner Records) — HornNOAH CYRUS When she began her music career at age 16, Noah Cyrus — already caught in spillover from her sister Miley’s spotlight — hunted for her sound in full public view. Her early efforts, aligned with hip-hop and R&B, didn’t stick, and she has since retreated to her Nashville roots. On “The Hardest Part,” her debut album, she draws pedal steel, banjo, fiddle and harmonica from a robust country tool kit on songs that foreground her struggles with addiction and noxious romance. (Sept. 16; Records/Columbia) — HornDEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Twenty-five years into its career, the band brings its incisive, anguished writing to a particularly 2022 brand of existential angst on its 10th album, “Asphalt Meadows.” The songs spool and spiral, commenting on the slow-motion dread of a warming planet, the ache and anger of pandemic politics and the desperation of lockdown. “These nights, I don’t know how I survive,” Ben Gibbard repeats on the first track, howling over a distorted gnarl of guitar. It’s a tidy thesis statement for an expansive album: He doesn’t know how he makes it through, but he’s delighted that he does. (Sept. 16; Atlantic) — Dani BlumSKYLER GENTRY The performer and writer Ben Zook, host of the cheeky web series “Where the Bears Are,” brings “The Dirty Show With Skyler Gentry” to the West Bank Cafe’s Laurie Beechman Theater on Sept. 22-23. Expect an evening of raunch and revelations from “America’s favorite actor-singer-dancer-psychic,” as Zook is billing his alter ego. The venue’s lineup also features the drag darling and television personality Tammie Brown (Sept. 16-17), the elegant soprano stylings of Shana Farr (Oct. 7, 12 and 20, Nov. 12), the queenly revisionism of Distorted Diznee (Sept. 23, Oct. 21, Nov. 18, Dec. 9), the supple harmonies of Those Girls (Oct. 2, 15 and 29, Nov. 3), the caressing interpretations of Linda Viggiano (Oct. 13, Nov. 11) and the diva impressionist nonpareil Christine Pedi (Dec. 16-17). — Elysa GardnerLITTLE BIG TOWN The country group Little Big Town recruited over 30 songwriters for its latest album, “Mr. Sun,” a sweeping record that oscillates between whistling, warbling songs and despondent breakup anthems. These are glossy, pop-inspired tracks — “Why are songs never long enough to hold you?” the band coos over disco beats on “Heaven Had a Dance Floor” — but they also confront the turmoil brewing beneath the burbling bass lines. “I go to bed to sleep you off, and I wake up feeling better/Ain’t too proud to push it down, but I’m a terrible forgetter,” they howl on “Three Whiskeys and the Truth.” (Sept. 16; Capitol Records Nashville) — BlumMARCUS MUMFORD The Mumford & Sons frontman trades his galloping guitar and ragged harmonies for introspective anthems on his debut solo album, “(Self-Titled).” Childhood trauma, prolonged breakups, losing faith — Mumford doesn’t shy away from the heaviest topics here. (“Each word is a cut that I see coming/I clench my fists as I’m inflicting them,” he murmurs on “Prior Warning.”) He recruits Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo and Brandi Carlile to help bring some air into his intense self-examination, but even on these duets, Mumford and his gravelly voice remain the focus. (Sept. 16; Capitol) — BlumMarcus Mumford’s debut solo album doesn’t shy away from painful topics.Emma Mcintyre/Getty Images For KroqMURA MASA The English producer Mura Masa can contort any sound into a rave-ready thumper. On “Demon Time,” his pandemic dread-inspired album, he cobbles club hits out of dial-up tones, revving engines, screeching cars and sludgy synths. A cadre of hyper-online collaborators sing and rap over his bleeping, blurry beats, including Lil Uzi Vert, Shygirl and PinkPantheress. “Life in a box, start watching TV/Brain like mush always staring at screens,” the British rapper Slowthai snarls on “Up All Week,” over frenetic flashes of fizz. (Sept. 16; Anchor Point Records/Interscope) — BlumLeANN RIMES Twenty-five years after LeAnn Rimes released her first song — the yearning ’90s country classic “Blue,” which she delivered as a 13-year-old with the ache of someone three times her age — the singer-songwriter is ready to take some risks. On “God’s Work,” a nod to the Christian music she’s put out in the past and the album’s devotional undercurrent, she slides through swelling piano ballads and guitar-heavy reggae, crescendoing choruses and gentle, lilting hums. “If we ain’t seeing God in everyone,” she muses on the title track, “then we ain’t seeing God at all.” (Sept. 16; EverLe Records via Thirty Tigers/ The Orchard) — BlumREMEMBERING TOMASZ STANKO Until his death four years ago, the Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko was among the most respected improvisers and bandleaders in Europe, unmistakable for his terse economy and saturnine tone. He grew up in Soviet-era Rzeszów, where he first heard jazz via Voice of America broadcasts in the postwar years. In his mid-60s he realized a lifelong dream and moved to New York. Now, in what would have been his 80th year, Stanko will be celebrated in a special tribute concert in Brooklyn, featuring admirers and collaborators from Europe and the United States: the trumpeters Ambrose Akinmusire and Wadada Leo Smith; the guitarist Jakob Bro; the saxophonists Ravi Coltrane, Joe Lovano and Chris Potter; and others. (Sept. 18; Roulette) — RussonelloCÉCILE McLORIN SALVANT Since winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, Cécile McLorin Salvant has earned consistent praise (and three Grammys) for her witty, rangy singing, as well suited to Rodgers and Hart and Kurt Weill as to blues classics and Kate Bush. Her song cycle “Ogresse” blends folk, jazz, country and baroque influences, and she’ll appear Sept. 20-25 at the Blue Note, where other artists this season include the silky-voiced rising jazz star Samara Joy (Sept. 12, Sept. 26), the Harlem Gospel Choir (Sept. 18, Oct. 16, Nov. 13), the prolific trumpeter and vocalist Keyon Harrold (Oct. 16-19) and the soulful, genre-blending group Tank and the Bangas + Friends (Nov. 11-13). — GardnerCécile McLorin Salvant will bring the full range of her vocal talents to the Blue Note this month.Pawel Supernak/EPA, via ShutterstockALEX G For more than a decade, this unlikely star of Philadelphia’s D.I.Y. scene has been cranking out defiantly odd homespun recordings, keeping his head down and choosing close friends and family as collaborators even after accruing mainstream clout (see: his contributions to Frank Ocean’s “Blonde”). “God Save the Animals,” his ninth album, smashes together elements of folk, rock and noise music and subjects them to funhouse-mirror distortion, with results that are alternately eerie and endearing, and, as usual, resistant to interpretation. (Sept. 23; Domino) — HornCHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS PRESENTS REDCAR Since assuming the Christine and the Queens moniker in 2010, this French singer has become known for body-friendly funk-pop with nuanced ideas about gender norms and performance. With a new alias, Redcar, reflecting an evolving identity (“My journey with gender has always been tumultuous,” the artist told The New York Times earlier this year), he is back with his first album in four years, “Redcar les Adorables Étoiles (Prologue).” Sung almost entirely in French, the album feels beamed from the ’80s, with chunky, ultra-synthetic arrangements counterbalancing the singer’s lithe, expressive voice. (Sept. 23; Because Music) — HornKELSEA BALLERINI On “Subject to Change,” Kelsea Ballerini animates her perky country-pop with succinct, specific details — the partner who leaves a light on for her when she comes home after a night drinking with friends, the blasé thrill of a hand on the small of her back. Her new album is filled with strum-along tracks about growing up (her verdict: “It kinda hurts like hell/it’s chaotic, ironic”) and delving deeper into new relationships and long-term friendships (“I’ve known you since Brad and Angelina”). Even while extolling how hard it is to leave adolescence behind, she makes maturity sound easy. (Sept. 23; Black River Entertainment) — BlumKelsea Ballerini’s new album, “Subject to Change,” revels in the details.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressTHE COMET IS COMING Of the saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’s many projects, the Comet Is Coming is the most closely linked to London’s electronic music mainstream. Mixing jazz methodology with loops, spiraling effects and Hutchings’s retrofits of Caribbean rhythm, this trio seems intent on humanizing the EDM beat while actually upping its power, not diluting it. Hutchings, the keyboardist Dan Leavers and the drummer Max Hallett (in the band they go by King Shabaka, Danalogue and Betamax) recorded their fourth album, “Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam,” in a series of jam sessions. The LP finds each player showing newfound restraint, leaving more room for the listener than on any of the trio’s earlier releases. (Sept. 23; Impulse!) — RussonelloDR. JOHN The New Orleans piano man who embodied the musical mélange of his hometown had the kind of drawly, lived-in voice that only improved with age. So “Things Happen That Way” — Dr. John’s final album, recorded the year he died, 2019 — captures him in peak form. The album honors the singer’s country influences via covers of classics by Hank Williams (a swaggering “Ramblin’ Man”) and Willie Nelson (a wry “Funny How Time Slips Away”), who also duets with the good doctor on a funky “Gimme That Old Time Religion.” A few originals — a reprise of “I Walk on Guilded Splinters,” from Dr. John’s voodoo-inspired 1968 debut, and new tracks including “Holy Water,” inspired by his early ’60s drug arrest — frame him as a key link in the American lineage he so revered. (Sept. 23; Rounder) — Hank ShteamerMUNI LONG “Public Displays of Affection: The Album,” a new collection from the R&B singer-songwriter Muni Long, isn’t exactly a debut. But it might register as one, since the artist’s prior two full-lengths came out under the name Priscilla Renea, before she assumed her current alias (a playful rendering of “money long”) and scored a Top 20 hit with the sultry “Hrs and Hrs.” Joining material from two earlier EPs are new tracks that betray her years of experience in the pop songwriting trenches. “Butterfly Effect” unleashes her formidable vocal range on a fantasy of undoing a painful romance; “Conversation” returns to the luxurious feel of “Hrs and Hrs,” paying tribute to the simple joys of talking it out. (Sept. 23; Supergiant/Def Jam) — ShteamerMAKAYA McCRAVEN The drummer Makaya McCraven has been blurring the line between bandleader and beatsmith for the better part of a decade now. And over time, his blend of live performance and hip-hop production technique has become both more organic and more grandiose: The making of his newest album, “In These Times,” was shaped by a string of shows he played with large ensembles, transposing his production approach to a live band that featured harp, vibraphone and a frontline of horns. Though the arrangements skew polyrhythmic and layered, and McCraven did his fair share of cutting and editing, the communal flow of the full group reigns. (Sept. 23; International Anthem/Nonesuch/XL) — RussonelloFor Makaya McCraven’s “In These Times,” he adapted his cut-and-edit approach to a large live band.Marcin Obara/EPA, via ShutterstockANGELICA SÁNCHEZ This pianist and composer has yet to receive her full due, but at 50 she continues to churn out fabulous acoustic free jazz recordings at an unfettered clip. On her latest acoustic-trio album, “Sparkle Beings,” recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s former studios in New Jersey, she partners with an expert rhythm section: the bassist Michael Formanek and the immortal drummer Billy Hart, a longtime inspiration and new collaborator for Sánchez. The trio lays into some ear-grabbing originals, plus works by Cecil Taylor, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington (the album closes with a somersaulting take on “The Sleeping Lady and the Giant That Watches Over Her,” from his “Latin American Suite”) and the Mexican composer Mario Ruíz Armengol. (Sept. 23; Sunnyside) — RussonelloVIEUX FARKA TOURÉ and KHRUANGBIN The whole world now celebrates desert blues — the hypnotic Saharan style currently performed by Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar — thanks largely to one musician: the Malian guitarist-singer Ali Farka Touré. His son and musical successor honors him on “Ali,” an inspired team-up with Khruangbin, a Houston trio that has garnered its own passionate following thanks to its exquisitely chill, globally seasoned grooves. On “Diarabi,” from Ali’s 1994 album with Ry Cooder, Vieux’s plaintive vocals and guitar hover over the band’s plush yet unshakable pulse. On “Mahine Me,” played acoustically on Ali’s 1992 LP “The Source,” the zydeco accordionist Ruben Moreno sits in for a buoyant interpretation of a Songhai proverb. These covers point back to their source while casting their own spell. (Sept. 23; Dead Oceans) — ShteamerGLOBAL CITIZEN FESTIVAL During the past decade, Global Citizen has raised more than $40 billion to combat extreme poverty, with an annual all-star event on Central Park’s Great Lawn as its flagship event. Fans can enter a ticket drawing by signing petitions, calling leaders or sharing informational videos, and this year, their incentives include a 10th-anniversary lineup featuring the pop empress Mariah Carey, the thrash titans Metallica, the Spanish pop revolutionary Rosalía, the country trailblazer Mickey Guyton, the glammed-up Italian rockers Maneskin and the resurgent hitmakers the Jonas Brothers. A companion fest, held simultaneously in Accra, Ghana, plays up the event’s international reach, pairing American stars like SZA, Usher and H.E.R. with Afrobeats luminaries including Tems and Sarkodie. (Sept. 24; Central Park) — ShteamerTAYLOR HAWKINS TRIBUTE CONCERT Taylor Hawkins wasn’t just the Foo Fighters’ drummer; he was also a full-time poster boy for the band’s arena-conquering rock ’n’ roll quest. So it’s fitting that the Foos will give Hawkins — who died in March at age 50 — a hero’s send-off at this Los Angeles blowout, which follows a similar event in London. The guest list traces the full arc of his career, touching on his early idols (Queen’s Roger Taylor, the Police’s Stewart Copeland), his first high-profile boss (Alanis Morissette), his drummer peers (Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk) and various pop-star pals (Pink, Miley Cyrus). Expect a heartfelt memorial that doubles as a loud, sweaty scream-along. (Sept. 27; Kia Forum) — ShteamerZACHARY CLAUSE For those not ready to leave summer behind, the cunning charmer Zachary Clause returns to Pangea on Sept. 29-30 with “On a Beach,” drawing inspiration from Hollywood and Fire Island, Rodgers and Hart and post-punk pop. The East Village nightspot will also offer new shows by the seasoned provocateur Penny Arcade and her longtime creative partner Steve Zehentner (Sept. 17) and house favorite Tammy Faye Starlite (Nov. 3 and 10), who’ll apply her beneficent irreverence to the Rolling Stones catalog. The coolly eclectic vocalist Zora Rasmussen is in residency the third Thursday of each month through December, and the long-treasured actor, director and theater guru Austin Pendleton will continue his collaboration with the singer, actor and musician Barbara Bleier in a tribute to Richard Rodgers, set for Oct. 4, 11 and 25. — GardnerTITUS ANDRONICUS “The Will to Live,” the seventh LP by the classicist New Jersey punk act Titus Andronicus, doesn’t aim quite as high as its Civil War-inspired “The Monitor” or its rock opera “The Most Lamentable Tragedy.” But it still finds the bandleader Patrick Stickles howling out big questions following the 2021 death of Matt (Money) Miller, his cousin and the band’s founding keyboardist. On “I Can Not Be Satisfied,” he belts that he isn’t afraid to die, “I’m much more frightened to survive,” on a chorus that sounds like the E Street Band tearing through a dive-bar encore. Fittingly, the actual Springsteen sideman Jake Clemons adds ambling piano to the down-and-out closer “69 Stones.” (Sept. 30; Merge) — ShteamerBJÖRK “Fossora,” the Icelandic musician’s first album in five years, is a pandemic-era project as only Björk could conceive it: a paean to the Earth and her late mother, filled with fantastical imagery of fungi and what she described as lots of “heavy bottom-end.” (Sept. 30; One Little Independent) — SisarioKID CUDI The man who famously branded himself “the lonely stoner” released a third installment of his “Man on the Moon” series in 2020, in which he continued to interrogate his angst and trace the sources of his trauma. Cudi returns for a new project in September, “Entergalactic” (arriving with an animated Netflix show that expands on its themes), which explores another very personal topic: love. (Sept 30; Republic) — BlumASHLEY McBRYDE This country singer-songwriter wields her intricate, intimate storytelling like a conductor on “Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville,” offering a guided tour of a fictional town where the strip club hosts a gospel night and even the funeral home comes with a catchy jingle. She passes the mic to country contemporaries like Aaron Raitiere, Pillbox Patti and the Brothers Osborne for songs that sketch out the landscape of Lindeville and its many characters — the woman in a turtleneck racing around in a red Corvette, the widow chalking the local ball field. It’s a fluorescent carnival of pedal steel and thumping guitar that proves McBryde can be a skilled curator, as well as a performer. (Sept. 30; Warner Music Nashville) — BlumAshley McBryde’s new album explores a fictional town in all of its hyperlocal glory.Katie Kauss/Getty ImagesWILCO In honor of the 20th anniversary of the lush, sprawling album often considered the best in Wilco’s catalog, the band is releasing seven new editions of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” with a remastered version included in each set. The Super Deluxe iteration includes live concert recordings, radio performances, drafts and demos that trace the band tinkering with shards of the tracks, and 82 previously unreleased songs. The set also includes parts of a 2001 full-band interview with the Chicago radio station WXRT, one week after Sept. 11. (Sept. 30; Nonesuch) — BlumALYSHA UMPHRESS The powerhouse whose bluesy but ebullient belting was showcased in the 2015 Broadway revival of “On the Town” will present her first solo show in New York City since 2008 — titled “Alysha Umphress and Things … Like This” — at Joe’s Pub on Oct. 1-3. The Joe’s Pub Vanguard Residency will feature artists who studied with or were influenced by the beloved voice teacher Barbara Maier Gustern, who died in March, among them the downtown luminaries Penny Arcade (Nov. 29-Dec. 1) and Murray Hill (Dec. 13-17). Earlier, Machine Dazzle will celebrate the album release of “Treasure,” a “future psyche-sex-adelic synth rock experience” inspired by Dazzle’s mother and their relationship, on Oct. 21. — GardnerALVVAYS After a half-decade and a lineup shuffle, the dream-pop band fronted by Molly Rankin is back with “Blue Rev,” its third album. Across 14 songs, Rankin’s sharp character sketches are set against colorful scribbles of guitar and synths, padded with layers of fuzz. Working with Shawn Everett, an engineer and producer known for unorthodox techniques, Alvvays recorded much of the album in one sprint, managing to preserve the zingy immediacy of a live performance. (Oct. 7; Polyvinyl) — HornBROKEN BELLS Brian Burton, the A-list producer known as Danger Mouse, and the Shins leader James Mercer are a well-matched pair: pop auteurs who have carved out space in the mainstream while keeping their eccentricities intact. Their 2010 self-titled debut bathed Mercer’s trademark twisty hooks in Burton’s stylish psych-pop textures; “After the Disco” from 2014 added a dose of playful retro funk. “Into the Blue” is their moodiest trip yet, with the duo sending classic soul balladry (“Love on the Run”) and sumptuously spooky art pop (“We’re Not in Orbit Yet”) through a surreal prism. The album has its kitschier moments (the glam-rock-tinged “Saturdays”) but the overall mood suggests an alternate-dimension “AM Gold” compilation: soothing and unsettling by turns. (Oct. 7; AWAL) — ShteamerCHLOE MORIONDO Paramore, All Time Low and Girlpool were among the acts that Chloe Moriondo name-checked on “Favorite Band,” a 2021 song situating her own punkish brand of indie-pop within a broader lineage. “Suckerpunch,” her new album, smacks away indie signifiers: Out with the guitars and the earnestness, in with bravado, beat drops and Auto-Tune. The opener, “Popstar,” an apparent sequel to “Favorite Band,” outlines her ambitions, citing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera as inspiration. Kesha in her dollar-sign era is another evident touchstone. (Oct. 7; Public Consumption/Fueled by Ramen) — HornCHARLIE PUTH What if … Charlie Puth finally finished the album? Over the past year, the pop star has been relentlessly teasing new music on TikTok, taking viewers through his song-making process from conception — like when he captured Foley-style audio of a studio light switch in the video that soft-launched the single “Light Switch” — to completion. On “Charlie,” Puth’s third album, a year’s worth of dribbles are assembled into a coherent whole: a tangy, lightly gimmicky record that sees Puth through the many phases of heartbreak. (Oct. 7; Atlantic) — HornWILL SHEFF The longtime leader of the elegant indie-folk band Okkervil River has described his solo debut as a clean break with the past. Inspired in part by the 2020 death of the band’s former drummer, Travis Nelsen, “Nothing Special” finds Will Sheff letting go of previously held ideas of romanticized self-destruction. The results reveal a new serenity but don’t fall back on easy truths. “Holy Man” plays like soft-rock Leonard Cohen, weighing temptation and redemption with equal skepticism, and “Estrangement Zone” finds a narrator “ready to withdraw” but worried about slipping into oblivion. The context may be new, but Sheff still showcases his gift for writing songs that harness both the glow of poetry and the gravity of hymns. (Oct. 7; ATO) — ShteamerSUN RA ARKESTRA The world is just beginning to catch up with Sun Ra, whose radical practice as a composer, pianist, bandleader, poet and philosopher presaged much of the work being done by artists and humanities scholars today, particularly (but not only) in the realm of Afrofuturism. Ra’s band, the Arkestra, remains active and thriving almost 30 years after his death, converting this renewed attention into fresh sound. “Living Sky” is an all-instrumental album recorded during the pandemic, featuring takes on a few classic Ra compositions as well as three originals by Marshall Allen, the 98-year-old alto saxophone iconoclast who now leads the band. (Oct. 7; Omni Sound) — RussonelloMarshall Allen leads the Sun Ra Arkestra through a new instrumental album recorded during the pandemic.Nate Palmer for The New York TimesMICHAEL FEINSTEIN Following a seven-year association with 54 Below, the singer, pianist, historian and American songbook advocate is attaching his brand to the Uptown institution where Bobby Short once held court. Feinstein’s first-ever engagement at Café Carlyle, set for Oct. 11-22, will include songs from “Gershwin Country,” his album featuring duets with Dolly Parton, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill and Liza Minnelli. Others due at the Carlyle include the Broadway and “Madam Secretary” alum Erich Bergen (Sept. 13-17), the actress and singer Betty Buckley (Sept. 27-Oct. 1), the pianist and vocalist Peter Cincotti (Sept. 20-24), the singer and actress Rita Wilson (Oct. 25-Nov. 5) and the beloved cabaret couple John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey (Nov. 8-19). — GardnerHABIBI FESTIVAL Organized by the music arm of the Public Theater, this five-day event highlights performers who preserve and reinterpret the regional musical traditions of Southwest Asia and North Africa. In its second year, Habibi Festival’s lineup includes Bnat El Houariyat, an all-female percussion and dance group from Morocco; Bedouin Burger, a Syrian and Lebanese duo who explore Arabic melodic modes in their electronic compositions; and Hat, a Moroccan D.J. who travels the world to capture recordings of folk musicians, then remixes them live. The French-Tunisian composer Yacine Boulares, one of the festival’s curators, will also present the U.S. debut of his take on “Night in Tunisia,” imbuing the jazz standard with North African rhythms. (Oct. 11-15; Joe’s Pub) — HornBACKSTREET BOYS It’s a bridge every by-the-book pop act must cross eventually: the Christmas album. And the Backstreet Boys sound like they’re all in on their first holiday-themed effort, “A Very Backstreet Christmas,” whether they’re embracing vintage doo-wop on “White Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland” or going full carol on “Silent Night.” The standout numbers skew more modern: “Together,” one of three originals, a lite-R&B promise of holiday-season romance, and, best of all, a tastefully tempo-boosted reading of the gold standard of all boy-band Christmas efforts, Wham!’s “Last Christmas.” (Oct. 14; BMG) — ShteamerBILL CALLAHAN It’s tempting to view Bill Callahan’s three-decade evolution — from the lo-fi outsider art of his early ’90s recordings as Smog to his current mature-troubadour mode — as a gradual mellowing. But his songs’ ability to stop you in your tracks has only grown. “We warmed our hands in the corpse of a wild horse,” he sings over rolling fingerpicked guitar on “Everyway,” from “YTI⅃AƎЯ,” his upcoming eighth album under his own name. Then he works his way to a classic Callahan punchline: “At least we’re all in this horse together.” Elsewhere, he muses on childhood innocence while name-checking the Harlem Globetrotters great Meadowlark Lemon on the loose roots-rocker “Natural Information” and processes death with disarming tenderness on the ghostly folk song “Lily.” (Oct. 14; Drag City) — ShteamerBRIAN ENO There’s a new Brian Eno album on the way, but which Eno will show up? The master soundscapist who arguably invented ambient music, or the skewed pop auteur the world met on ’70s cult classics like “Here Come the Warm Jets”? On the upcoming “Foreverandevernomore,” it’s a little of both. The album is Eno’s first vocal-centric LP since 2005, but the tracks themselves — like “Garden of Stars,” where he chants about the mysteries of the cosmos against a backdrop of distorted synth buzz, or “We Let It In,” where he and his daughter Darla croon serenely from within a womblike tone bath — are as unapologetically abstract as anything in his catalog. (Oct. 14; Verve/UMC) — ShteamerMIKO MARKS This singer-songwriter’s “Feel Like Going Home” — her second album in two years, following a lengthy recording hiatus — arrives at a time when she and fellow artists of color are forcefully pushing back against racism in Nashville, past and present. The album finds Miko Marks broadening her sound to make room for her full range of influences, from Muscle Shoals-style Southern soul (“One More Night”) to sizzling blues (“River”) and soothing gospel (“Lay Your Burdens Down”). (Oct. 14; Redtone) — ShteamerSUE MATSUKI An author and a performers’ advice columnist as well as a long-admired entertainer, Matsuki was the first winner of the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s Julie Wilson Award in 2004. Now she’ll present “But Beautiful … a Tribute to Julie Wilson” in two parts during separate shows on Oct. 14 at the Green Room 42. Homages are also planned for Barbra Streisand (Jenna Pastuszek’s “Me, Myself & Barbra,” returning Dec. 17) and Britney Spears (Sean Stephens’s “One More Time,” Oct. 12), as the revue “At This Performance …” continues to showcase Broadway and Off Broadway understudies, standbys and alternates (Sept. 12, Nov. 21 and Dec. 12). “5 Questions With James and JAM” will deliver James Jackson Jr. and John-Andrew Morrison from the cast of the Tony-winning musical “A Strange Loop” on Sept. 19; “Leola’s Lady Land Lounge” will team Will Nolan’s Kelly Clarkson-loving drag persona with special guests on Oct. 6 and Dec. 5; and the new musicals “Fountain of You” and “Atlantis” will be performed in concert Sept. 26 and Oct. 2. — GardnerMIGHTMARE The new solo project from Sarah Shook, who fronts the country-punk outfit Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, was an insular-by-necessity product of the pandemic, written, recorded and produced by Shook during its first year. On “Cruel Liars,” Shook dials back the twang and down-home shuffle of Disarmers records while retaining their rough hew and stark, straightforward lyricism. Compact and nervy, the album centers the fallout of a bad breakup, but creeps toward optimism: “Ain’t gonna be no memory gonna haunt me down tonight,” Shook sings on its unexpectedly sweet final track. (Oct. 14; Kill Rock Stars) — HornRED HOT CHILI PEPPERS The return of one member to a legacy rock act shouldn’t mean that much these days. But the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2019 reinstatement of John Frusciante — the soulful and prodigiously skilled guitarist who had done two prior stints in the band since joining in 1988 — has been received like the righting of a cosmic imbalance. “Return of the Dream Canteen,” the band’s second new double LP of the year, helps explain why, distilling the quartet’s signature sound down to its essence: “Tippa My Tongue” checks every Chili Peppers box (Flea’s serpentine slap bass, Frusciante’s jewel-like chords, Anthony Kiedis’s audaciously corny rap couplets) without sounding tired, and tracks from the Eddie Van Halen-inspired “Eddie” to the glimmering, reggae-esque “Handful” summon that sun-baked pathos that’s always elevated the band’s Frusciante-era material. (Oct. 14; Warner Records) — ShteamerAnthony Kiedis, Flea and the rest of Red Hot Chili Peppers are releasing their second double album of 2022 in October.Rob Grabowski/Invision, via Associated PressSKULLCRUSHER The musician Helen Ballentine drummed up some early pandemic buzz with her debut EP, a set of folksy, confessional tunes that suited the hushed interiority of the moment. (Tellingly, she named a song after Nick Drake on a subsequent release.) With her first album, “Quiet the Room,” Ballentine, who performs as Skullcrusher, has grown more adventurous: Her delicate melodies bloom into dense sound collages, built up with layers of drones, field recordings and echoes that smudge out her vocals. The songs are spooky and stirring, like old photos whose context is long forgotten. (Oct. 14; Secretly Canadian) — HornTOVE LO “Dirt Femme,” Tove Lo’s fifth album, and the first for her own label, hones in on the twin forces that have animated her music since her breakout hit “Habits (Stay High)”: her deconstruction of femininity, especially as a queer woman, and her fascination with her own death drive. She rejects constraints of traditional gender roles (“Suburbia”), prods at the limits of body positivity (“Grapefruit”) and laments her draw to a conventional romance narrative. She finds clarity in club music, joining with the dance producers SG Lewis and Channel Tres to craft sticky, coruscating tracks. “It’s tough out in the real world,” she wails on “True Romance”; this LP offers a welcome distraction. (Oct. 14; Pretty Swede Records/Mtheory) — BlumWILD PINK “A Billion Little Lights,” Wild Pink’s acclaimed album from last year, wasn’t the frontier myth-themed double LP that the group’s frontman, John Ross, once planned — but its soft-edged rock did conjure a sense of road-meets-horizon vastness. The New York band’s follow-up, “ILYSM,” builds on that instinct with long songs full of unexpected detours. Though partly inspired by Ross’s battle with cancer while writing it, the record is more imagistic than diaristic, and more contemplative than despairing. Its most prominent theme is companionship, with the tenderness of the title track (shorthand for “I love you so much”) matched only by closer “ICLYM” (“I couldn’t love you more”). (Oct. 14; Royal Mountain) — HornIHEARTRADIO FIESTA LATINA The annual festival returns to Miami’s FTX Arena in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. The one-night event brings established Latin rap and pop stars like Enrique Iglesias, Farruko and Nicky Jam alongside rising hitmakers like the glossy pop singer Becky G and the rapper Myke Towers. Iglesias will also receive this year’s iHeartRadio Corazón Latino Award, for his charitable endeavors as well as his musical legacy. (Oct. 15) — BlumBRIC JAZZFEST A multiday festival that gets more adventurous each year, BRIC JazzFest gives some of New York’s brightest rising talent the rare chance to perform on a major festival stage without leaving home. This year’s three-day marathon, held as usual at BRIC’s Downtown Brooklyn headquarters, will include sets from the vibraphonist Joel Ross and his nine-piece band, Parables; the vocalist Lizz Wright; the pianist Julius Rodriguez; and the trombonist Kalia Vandever, among dozens more. (Oct. 20-22; BRIC House) — RussonelloARCHERS OF LOAF Archers of Loaf perfected a certain strain of roaring, smartass indie rock on their 1993 debut, “Icky Mettle.” They broke up before the decade was done but, like so many of their peers, revved back up in the 2010s. On “Reason in Decline,” their first album in 24 years, the singer-guitarist Eric Bachmann reclaims the band’s lovably ornery spirit, working in the hard truths of middle age. “Tangled in the wasted time,” he sings on “Saturation and Light.” “Every little minute you stay in it/You blame yourself and it cuts you like a knife.” Whether he’s taking aim at the “masters of distraction” dominating the discourse on “Misinformation Age” or a troubled old friend on “Human,” his band provides a reliably stubborn kick. (Oct. 21; Merge) — ShteamerARCTIC MONKEYS This beloved British rock band has shape-shifted over its nearly two-decade career, pivoting from raucous anthems about caroming drunk through city streets to steamier, sleeker songs about anxious desire. For its seventh album, “The Car,” the band zags once more, teaming up again with its long-term producer James Ford for 10 mostly ballad-tempo songs, all written by the band’s lead singer, Alex Turner, that include classic-rock nods like string sections, carefully crooned vocals, funky guitars and plenty of dark observations. (Oct. 21; Domino) — BlumBABYFACE Kenneth (Babyface) Edmonds knows a thing or two about the female voice, having written songs for standouts including Aretha Franklin and Ariana Grande. His new album, “Girls Night Out,” harks back to the “Waiting to Exhale” soundtrack from 1995, where he assembled an all-star cast that featured the Queen of Soul alongside Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan, TLC and more. This time around, he shows how sharp he still is as a producer, talent spotter and sometime vocalist, teaming up with an impressive selection of R&B up-and-comers, including the “Boo’d Up” singer Ella Mai on “Keeps on Falling,” a dance-floor-ready ode to enduring love; and Ari Lennox on “Liquor,” which equates romantic intoxication with the other kind. (Oct. 21; Capitol) — ShteamerBabyface’s “Girls Night Out” features collaborations with up-and-coming women artists.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesCARLY RAE JEPSEN A dependable source of heart-eyed synth-pop, this Canadian singer rode the wave of poptimism all the way from her “Call Me Maybe” breakout to her current status as cult hero. The breezy first single from her new album, “The Loneliest Time,” showed her mellower side, but effervescence is still Jepsen’s default mode: Look out for the stratospheric chorus of “Surrender My Heart” and the escapist disco fantasia of “Shooting Star.” (Oct. 21; 604/Schoolboy/Interscope) — HornDRY CLEANING “My shoe organizing thing arrived/Thank God,” Florence Shaw deadpans over a swirling art-pop vamp on “Anna Calls From the Arctic,” the opening track of “Stumpwork,” the second LP from the young London quartet Dry Cleaning. The moment sums up the odd sense of composure that’s helped make Shaw one of the most compelling presences in the current British post-punk revival. But the band is a true collective: On the title track, Shaw’s bandmates wrap her words in gauzy textures that betray a hint of menace, heightening the weirdness of lines like, “I thought I saw a young couple clinging to a round baby/But it was a bundle of trash and food.” (Oct. 21; 4AD) — ShteamerTAYLOR SWIFT The pop superstar’s fifth album in just over two years will arrive this fall: “Midnights,” which she described on social media as “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” She added: “This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face.” “Midnights” will come too late to qualify for the next Grammys, but the album has a strong possibility of becoming one of the year’s biggest commercial successes, rivaling LPs like Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House.” (Oct. 21; Republic) — SisarioAngela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTEGAN AND SARA The Canadian twins have turned their open-book ethos into a robust brand, unpacking their origins as songwriters and queer women in a 2019 memoir, soon to become a TV series starring the TikTok creators Railey and Seazynn Gilliland. But as heard on the upcoming “Crybaby,” Tegan and Sara’s most revealing platform remains their songs. Twenty-plus years and 10 albums into their career, the sisters are experts at polishing their tracks to a sheen without sanding down the sharp emotional edges. Songs like “I Can’t Grow Up” and “____ Up What Matters” explore toxic relationship dynamics to the tune of peppy, hook-heavy pop. (Oct. 21; Mom + Pop) — ShteamerTHE MABEL MERCER FOUNDATION’S NEW YORK CABARET CONVENTION The organization’s 33rd fête rolls into Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall on Oct. 26 with “Look to the Rainbow: The Songs of Yip Harburg,” hosted by Andrea Marcovicci and Jeff Harnar and featuring cabaret and theater fixtures such as Karen Akers, Christine Andreas, Tovah Feldshuh, Maude Maggart and Those Girls. On Oct. 27, Natalie Douglas hosts Darius de Haas, Eric Yves Garcia, Marilyn Maye, Gabrielle Stravelli, Billy Stritch and others in “Unforgettable: A Tribute to Nat King Cole,” and KT Sullivan wraps things up Oct. 28 with “Through the Years: Celebrating Timeless American Standards,” set to include performances by Celia Berk, Klea Blackhurst, Shana Farr, David LaMarr, Karen Mason, Sidney Myer and Mark Nadler. — GardnerOUMOU SANGARÉ Now that Tuareg desert blues is known around the world, Wassoulou — a style that favors female bandleaders and rides an equally infectious current of rhythm — is due for its own moment in the global sun. Oumou Sangaré, a Grammy-winning vocalist, songwriter and activist, is a household name in Mali and one of Wassoulou’s greatest ambassadors abroad. Singing in Bambara, she renders social critiques and affirmations of women’s power in a gravelly alto; on her latest release, “Timbuktu,” she shows off a wide range — singing over driving, front-loaded rhythms on some tracks, and offering wistful Malian ballads (think Toumani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré) on others. She will make her Apollo debut at this concert, presented as part of the World Music Institute’s Women’s Voices series. (Oct. 29; Apollo Theater) — RussonelloTRIPPIE REDD This 23-year-old descended from the SoundCloud school of hip-hop: brash beats, soupy melodies, sludgy emo-rap. His new release, “A Love Letter to You 5,” continues a series — his last installment topped the charts when it came out in 2019 — and taps current heavyweights like Offset and Moneybagg Yo. The new album finds Trippie Redd crooning about being in love over twinkling guitars and skittering drums, swooping his vowels as he sings to a nameless “youuuu.” (October; 1400 Entertainment/10K Projects) — BlumTrippie Redd’s October release, “A Love Letter to You 5,” features Offset and Moneybagg Yo.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressBOB DYLAN “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” Bob Dylan’s first book of new writing since “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004), promises lessons on the craft of songwriting — pro tips on “the trap of easy rhymes” and “how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song,” according to his publisher — through 66 essays on a tantalizing track list including Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up,” the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin’,” Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and three songs associated with Elvis Presley (“Blue Moon,” “Viva Las Vegas” and “Money Honey”). (Nov. 1; Simon & Schuster) — SisarioDANIEL AVERY The British dance music producer Daniel Avery opts for a darker, denser sound on “Ultra Truth,” distorting swaths of static and tinny, tingling beats into neatly packaged tracks. A song with fellow techno producers Kelly Lee Owens and Haai (Teneil Throssell) is titled “Chaos Energy,” but “Ultra Truth” is all about pristine precision, slick cuts and jittery percussion. The album unveils like an elegy to the internal monologue, the constant noise building inside your brain. (Nov. 4; Mute/Phantasy) — BlumCAVETOWN The bedroom pop singer-songwriter Robin Skinner has gained a fervent online following with delicate tracks about teen life featuring titles like “I Miss My Mum” and “I’ll Make Cereal.” On his new release, “Worm Food,” he blends the curdled angst and peppy hooks of ’90s pop-punk (one track longs for 1994, a year Skinner was not yet alive) with subdued synth pop. He writes about the specific aches of a new relationship: “Laundry day, going to shrink your shirt/makes a perfect fit for me,” he coos over lilting strings on “Laundry Day.” On another, he compares himself to a “ball of wasabi” — “there to keep things interesting, but nobody wants me.” It’s a charming portrait of anxious love. (Nov. 4; Cave Music Limited) — BlumBILLY JOEL Before Billy Joel conquered Madison Square Garden with an ongoing monthly residency and played the last-ever concerts at Shea Stadium, he headlined another of New York’s secular temples, the original Yankee Stadium, for two nights in June 1990. A remixed, re-edited and newly expanded version of “Live at Yankee Stadium,” the concert film documenting those mega-gigs, will soon see release on Blu-ray, with the audio version coming out digitally, and on CD and LP sets. The hit-parade set list (including “My Life,” “Uptown Girl,” “New York State of Mind,” “Piano Man” and the then-recent No. 1 “We Didn’t Start the Fire”) doesn’t differ much from the one you’ll hear Joel play at the Garden today, more than 30 years later — the mark of a true pop institution. (Nov. 4; Columbia/Legacy) — ShteamerPHOENIX The French band whose bubbly 2009 indie-pop crossover hit “Lisztomania” got even a collegiate A.O.C. dancing with abandon is back with “Alpha Zulu,” its first LP in five years. In part a meditation on loss — including that of its producer Philippe Zdar, who died in an accident in 2019 at age 52 — the album, marking Phoenix’s 25th anniversary as a group, includes an appearance by Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. (Nov. 4; Glassnote/Loyaute Music) — SisarioJULIE BENKO & JASON YEAGER If you followed the backstage drama at Broadway’s “Funny Girl,” you know that Julie Benko is the bright-eyed, dulcet-voiced soprano who went from standby to star after Beanie Feldstein’s departure. On Nov. 7, Benko and her husband, the jazz pianist Jason Yeager, will perform selections from their new album, “Hand in Hand,” which mixes show tunes and standards with Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” and Yeager originals at 54 Below. Other artists slated to visit “Broadway’s living room” include the unsinkable nonagenarian Marilyn Maye (Oct. 12-15, Oct. 18-22), the stage and screen veteran Leslie Uggams (Nov. 10-12) and the latest jewel in the club’s “Diamond Series,” Vanessa Williams (Dec. 13-18), followed by the enduring gem Patti LuPone (Dec. 20-30). Fans of a certain Sara Bareilles musical can look forward to “Sugar, Butter, Reunion: Celebrating the Jennas of ‘Waitress’” on Oct. 9, and the new musical “Sean’s Story,” an Ars Nova commission by Khiyon Hursey, will be showcased in concert Oct. 11. — GardnerPATRICIA BRENNAN The jazz world can get stuck in a battle between the head and the heart, but rarely do you find an improviser like Patricia Brennan, the Veracruz, Mexico-born vibraphonist, marimba player and effects maven, who skirts that dichotomy almost completely. Her music seems to exist in a realm outside the body, but stays loaded with feeling. “More Touch” is the follow-up to Brennan’s spellbinding debut, the solo LP “Maquishti,” and it introduces a new quartet of advanced rhythmic thinkers: the drummer Marcus Gilmore, the percussionist Mauricio Herrera and the bassist Kim Cass. They venture between dreamy swing, bobbing bolero, the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Brennan’s hometown, and free time. (Nov. 11; Pyroclastic) — RussonelloADELE Apart from a few TV tapings and private events, Adele hasn’t appeared on a U.S. stage since 2016. And the postponement of her Las Vegas residency the day before its original January kickoff date raises the stakes even more for this rescheduled “Weekends With Adele” run at Caesars Palace’s 4,100-seat Colosseum. Expect megawatt tear-jerkers like “Hello” and “Someone Like You” to share set-list space with new fan favorites from her 2021 chart-topper “30,” including “Easy on Me,” a tender post-mortem of her former marriage; “Oh My God,” where she confronts the vertigo of new love; and the real-talk anthem “I Drink Wine.” (Nov. 18 through March 23; Caesars Palace; Las Vegas) — ShteamerMICHAEL JACKSON In an era when Beatles recording sessions yield a seven-hour documentary and a Bob Dylan boxed set might contain an entire album’s worth of “Like a Rolling Stone” outtakes, a two-disc reissue commemorating the 40th anniversary of “Thriller” — the best-selling album of all time, by a significant margin — seems almost stingy. But the idea that there might still be more to learn about this Quincy Jones-helmed triumph is still an enticing prospect. The Jackson estate is keeping a tight lid on the contents of the “Thriller 40” bonus material, but previously unreleased demos are promised. Given that only a handful of demos and outtakes surfaced on a 2001 “Thriller” reissue, a major excavation could be in store. (Nov. 18; Sony) — ShteamerCHARLES LLOYD The guitar has been an essential foil for Charles Lloyd since his upbringing in the blues and soul hotbed of Memphis. Moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, a big early break came as musical director for Chico Hamilton’s band, where he forged a close bond with the Hungarian guitar virtuoso Gabor Szabo. In recent years, Lloyd, an 84-year-old tenor saxophonist, flutist and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, has been leading the Marvels, a country-jazz quintet featuring Bill Frisell’s guitar and Greg Leisz’s pedal steel. And by autumn’s end, he will have released three new albums this year, each with a different guitar trio and each casting its own light on his Lester Young-goes-to-Joshua Tree saxophone sound. Of the three, the last one, “Sacred Thread,” featuring the guitarist Julian Lage and the tabla icon Zakir Hussain, packs the wiliest punch. (Nov. 18; Blue Note) — RussonelloWENDY MOTEN The 21st-century virus of celebrity-judged TV talent contests has produced heartening stories, few more so than Wendy Moten’s; the 50-something Memphis native sang backup for Julio Iglesias and assorted country stars before “The Voice” brought her supple, limpid voice to wider attention. In a show returning to the Birdland Theater on Nov. 18-20, Moten highlights the pre-World War II classics of Richard Whiting (“He’s Funny That Way,” “Too Marvelous for Words”), mixing in a little Paul Simon and Janis Ian. Upstairs at Birdland Jazz Club, scheduled acts include the Broadway star-turned-cabaret stalwart Karen Akers (Sept. 12), the piquant stage and screen mainstay Julie Halston (Oct. 17) and the upscale nightlife fixtures Steve Ross (Oct. 24) and Jeff Harnar (Nov. 7), with the variety shows “Jim Caruso’s Cast Party” and “The Lineup With Susie Mosher” continuing at the jazz club on Mondays and the theater on Tuesdays. — GardnerThe singer Wendy Moten returns to Birdland Theater with a show that crosses genres and eras.Terry Wyatt/Getty ImagesWEYES BLOOD The singer-songwriter Natalie Mering, who performs as Weyes Blood, braids together emotional and existential upheaval, capturing the weightiness of contemporary life in sweeping, baroque-pop poetry. The crisis-rich three years since her last release have offered Mering plenty to write about; her upcoming fifth album, “And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow,” layers references to climate change, pandemic and impending civilizational collapse into songs about estrangement and longing. “Living in the wake of overwhelming changes/We’ve all become strangers, even to ourselves,” she sings on the opening track, looking around and within. (November; Sub Pop) — HornJINKX MONSOON & BENDELACREME In 2018, these popular “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumni joined forces to ring in the most wonderful time of the year. “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” now marks the duo’s fourth seasonal tour, for which variety-show maestro BenDeLaCreme and the cabaret and theater veteran Monsoon — the “sugary” queen and the “spicy” one, according to their official site — have co-written a new assortment of music, comedy and spectacle. The party arrives at Town Hall on Dec. 2-3. — GardnerA JOHN WATERS CHRISTMAS It’s been 18 years since the filmmaker, performer, author, fine artist and pope of trash (as he was christened by William S. Burroughs) curated a holiday album including cult classics such as “Fat Daddy” and “Santa Claus Is a Black Man,” but the spirit hasn’t left John Waters, who returns to City Winery on Dec. 18 with his latest irreverent Yuletide offering. Other seasonal celebrations scheduled at the Winery include Betty’s “December Delight” (Dec. 11) with special guests including Gloria Steinem, and “Suzanne Vega: Home for the Holidays” (Dec. 22-23, Dec. 26-27). — Gardner More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The 1975’s Matty Healy Is Still Trying to Be Funny, Sincerely

      by

      The last time the British pop-rock band the 1975 put out an album, it was 2020 and things were messy. Already known for its genre-melting sprawl and the unrestrained chatter of its charismatic frontman Matty Healy, the band released its fourth album — an 80-minute, 22-track saga called “Notes on a Conditional Form” — into a roiling global pandemic, attempting to land all of its tricks at once.Amid the anxiety of Covid and various other apocalypses, the album set its grand tone with an opening song based around a monologue by the teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg. But soon after its release, Healy was “soft-canceled” — his term — after linking the murder of George Floyd to one of the 1975’s topical songs in a tossed-off Twitter post. As the band and the world were teetering on the edge, Healy was also busy falling in love.Most of that is now behind them. The new 1975 album, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language,” out on Oct. 14, is the group’s most focused to date at just 11 tracks, with most of them sticking to timeless themes and a live-band sound that gestures back to the shimmering 1980s. Pop music’s reigning artisanal super-producer Jack Antonoff joined Healy and his bandmate and songwriting partner George Daniel to produce the album. (The 1975 also includes the guitarist Adam Hann and the bassist Ross MacDonald.)Yet even as Healy, now 33, has tried to rein in his most chaotic impulses, he is still the guy writing lines like: “Am I ironically woke?/The butt of my joke?/Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke/calling his ego imagination?” Then he dares his audience to flinch by making that song, “Part of the Band,” the album’s opening single.“I empathize with people that are living now,” Healy said.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesIn a recent video interview, between the ritual relighting of a sturdy joint, Healy discussed paring back, not selling out and the advantages that come with being in a band with your childhood friends for the past 20 years. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Did you set out to write your most cohesive album after “Notes,” which was maybe your most unwieldy?The one thing we knew we didn’t want to do was a continuation of whatever we’d just done. But there were so many ideas in that record, what are you going to do? It became about rules, and it took about a year to figure out what the rules were. It went through one period of only using one drum machine — a very minimal, kind of electronic but tiny thing. And then we started hanging out with Jack Antonoff because of conversations with beabadoobee [who is signed to the 1975’s label, Dirty Hit].What ended up being the main rule?It was “Play it and record it.” Real instruments. You can always find something in a computer that can do the job. Let’s just not do that. Everyone can do all of that and no one cares anymore. Fifteen years ago when you heard XXYYXX, you thought, “What are these sounds? He made them on a computer?” Now you know that any kid can make a bedroom thing that sounds crazy. What you can’t do is have been in a band for 20 years and be great players and go into a room and have that freedom.Why was Jack right for this project?He didn’t get paid [laughs]. Well, he did but not like, paid. To be honest with you, dude, when I’m making a record, it’s very personal. I don’t give a [expletive] about what people on Twitter have to say about Jack Antonoff. Because go and have a half-hour conversation about music with that person, then go have a half-hour conversation about music with Jack Antonoff and see which one leaves you feeling more inspired.“We have the cringe rule in the band,” Healy said. “Like, if anything makes any of us cringe, we don’t have to explain why, we just call ‘cringe.’” Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesI’ve never done anything for clout in my life. It costs a lot of money to be the 1975 and not take all of the offers that we’ve had. We’re not interested in that, we’re just interested in doing what’s best for us. Jack, at that time, was the best thing for the 1975. He gets a reputation for being busy, but what he actually is, is just good. If you met the guy and worked with him, you’d realize why people want to work with him.Since you and Jack both trade in references, what were the touchstones for “Being Funny”?Retrospectively, we’ll tend to go, “Oh, you know what we’re doing there? We’re doing ‘Dream, Baby, Dream,’” or whatever we were going for. When I was trying to perform “Part of the Band” and we had this stabbing string thing, it was quite angular. I couldn’t figure out how to sit on top of it. And then we were like, “‘Street Hassle’ — that’s what it is! Got it.” And I went for that. You know how like “Graceland” is really loose, but really tight? I think those parts of “Still Crazy,” “Graceland” and the Paul Simon influence always comes out in my stuff.And you have to acknowledge my obsession with “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem as a song throughout my whole career. The reference is the first thing you hear on the album. Of all the solidarities, generational is probably the weakest, but there’s something about men my age and that song — I think it’s the most requested funeral song. It’s a set of rules and a genre in itself.You’ve written a lot of lyrics over the years with proper nouns, current references and pop-culture allusions. Do you think about how those will age?I really, really do. What you’re talking about is like when Katy Perry says “epic fail” on “Friday Night.” It hits you and takes you out of the world. Sometimes I am scared of doing that. Funny is what I care about. I’m at my best when I’m at my funniest and most observational comedy is topical. But anything forced, it stings or reads as insincere.We have the cringe rule in the band. Like, if anything makes any of us cringe, we don’t have to explain why, we just call “cringe.” And then we can call a debate on that if we want to.You must have a high bar, as a band, for cringe.It’s true. We’re not embarrassed about much. One could criticize me for loads of things, but you can’t criticize me for being insincere. Annoying, whatever. But I’m not insincere. The cringe means insincere. Their attitude is, if you’re going to go there, go there. The only time you’re going to slip up is if you pull the punch a little bit.Other than “I” and “you,” the most common word on this album might be “love.” Did you make an album about falling in love?I think I’ve realized what I do: I write about how we communicate interpersonally in the modern age — mediated by the internet. Love, loss, addiction. That’s what I always do. Every other record has been a bit like, “Love! And me! And this! And that!” I think “Being Funny” is the first time where I’m a bit like, “OK, right, love. Let’s do love.”Healy, now 33, has tried to rein in his most chaotic impulses — to a point.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThe hangover that I have from all of the postmodernism of my previous work and the past 50 years of culture is the irony as a shield. I can’t be bothered doing that right now and I can’t be bothered listening to people do it. I’m just looking for the truth. All those tropes of being nihilistic and sexy and drug-addled and all those kinds of things, that’s very cool and maybe appropriate in your 20s, but it’s going to make way for a more personally and socially forgiving set of values.You’re one of the best contemporary writers — especially outside of rap — on the process of consumption, whether it’s drugs or culture or goods. Where are you with your sobriety journey as a lyrical subject?I find sobriety, like drugs — if it’s your personality, it’s very boring. I’ve struggled with sobriety as a persona. They call this “California sober,” right? I smoke weed and I don’t do anything else. I’ve managed to get to a place where I know nobody around me is particularly worried about me running off and scoring. So I think it’s becoming a smaller part of my writing as it becomes a smaller part of my life.Are you ever consciously trying to write like a rapper?I’m like Mr. Cultural Reference, but I’ve got so many that it’s very difficult to see what my actual DNA is. I’m not very inspired by writers. I never really think about that. I think about comedy a lot — jokes, how they work, how much fat they have on them. But when I first heard the Streets I was like, OK. He kind of said, if you are searching for an identity that is kind of an identity in itself. The way that I rhyme — the Streets is the biggest influence and then maybe Paul Simon.So still rhythmic and wordy.“Sincerity Is Scary,” “So Far (It’s Alright),” “The Birthday Party” — I always call them long-form songs. Long-form songs to me means where I’ve got a long rhythmical phrase where I can get a lot out. I find these songs, the ones that actually seem cleverer, a lot easier to write. People have spoken about me rapping and I’ve never really thought about it as rap. But I think it’s because the Streets gave me license to think about rhyming rhythmically with an English accent as being quite an English thing.What are your commercial ambitions these days? Do you think it would be fun for the 1975 to have a No. 1 hit or a TikTok moment?It’s difficult to be big and say — genuinely — that I have zero commercial ambition. There’s definitely a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kind of thing, which is where, listen, we’ve never known what to do and we’ve never tried to do anything. So the second we stop doing that, we’ll probably [expletive] up. I tend to say no to stuff for money.I don’t know how you can write this up without it being rude or inappropriate, but I just got offered a four-month tour next year of stadiums with the biggest singer-songwriter in the world that would’ve made me money that I’ve never even seen or heard of in my life.“I think I’ve realized what I do: I write about how we communicate interpersonally in the modern age — mediated by the internet. Love, loss, addiction. That’s what I always do.”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesEd Sheeran?Yeah. And I got offered to be main support and do whatever I want. Think about the money you think I’m getting offered — it’s not just offered, it’s what he can afford because of what he makes for shows — and then just triple it. It’s insane. The thing that’s stopped me just doing that is because — I don’t care. It’s not worth it. Not because I don’t like Ed Sheeran. I think he’s, in a lot of ways, a genius. And he does what he does better than anybody else. But opening up for somebody and not just being real, that’s the kind of stuff I think about.The album is also sprinkled with lyrics about your so-called cancellations. How do you look back on that part of 2020, both for yourself and in general?To be honest, the one thing that annoyed me a little bit when I finished the record, after I’d done the last song, “When We Are Together,” that had this “canceled” line in it, I realized, “There’s too many ‘canceled’ lines. That’s going to be a thing that people think I’m really bothered about.”I was soft-canceled, you know? Also canceling isn’t a thing. If you do something criminal and loads of people find out about it, that’s not being canceled. That’s just what happens now if you’re a criminal. Saying something and people trying to censor you, whatever.The deletion of my Twitter was not because I was scared. I was mainly like, I’m just about to start writing about this culture war, and I feel like I’m being made a pawn in it. All it’s going to do is debase my ability to make points with context. And the context that I have and that I own is my music.The refrain of the first song on the album is, “I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re 17.” What are you sorry for?I mean, you know what I mean. I empathize with people that are living now. I used to make the joke that on the first two records the 1975 was like the apocalyptic sense of being a teenager in a major key. I was talking about, like John Hughes’s apocalyptic sense of being a teenager where the future seemed so enormous that you couldn’t deal with it. And then we just essentially took away the future of the 17-year-old brain.I just feel sorry for kids that are drowning in whatever: self-hatred, the burdens of social media, even wokeness. All of these things that are just vessels for people to feel better about how [expletive] their life is. I am genuinely sorry if you are having to think about this [expletive] that I’m thinking about at 17 years old. That’s not cool. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      When Weird Al Yankovic Met Daniel Radcliffe, Things Got … Well, You Know

      by

      For their decidedly nonfactual rock biopic, the pop-music parodist and the “Harry Potter” star found themselves on the same wavelength.The real Weird Al Yankovic, left, and his movie double, Daniel Radcliffe. “I hope this confuses a lot of people,” the musician said of their biopic.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesListen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Generally speaking, Weird Al Yankovic and Daniel Radcliffe are never going to be mistaken for each other. Yankovic is the lanky, longhaired Southern California dude who became an accordion whiz and a master parodist of pop music. Radcliffe is the more compact, London-born wunderkind of the “Harry Potter” movies who has since graduated into an eclectic acting career.Still, this past winter, during the making of the new movie “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” their mutual presence on the set occasionally led to confusion. When crew members called for “Weird Al,” they wanted the actor playing him, which meant Radcliffe. Eventually, for maximum clarity, they began referring to the authentic Yankovic as “Real Al,” though some further disorientation was inevitable.As Yankovic explained in a recent conversation with Radcliffe, “Every time I would walk by the ‘Weird Al’ sign on your trailer, I’d be like” — he paused and acted out an exaggerated double take — “Oh, no, that’s not me.”This is the effect that the makers of “Weird” are hoping it will have on audiences when Roku releases the biopic on Nov. 4. It is a wildly satirical, highly nonfactual telling of Yankovic’s ascent from a geeky young accordionist to the beloved performer of hit songs like “My Bologna,” “Another One Rides the Bus” and “Eat It,” embellished with stories of sex, drugs and jungle combat that never really happened to him.“I hope this confuses a lot of people,” Yankovic said of “Weird,” which he wrote with the film’s director, Eric Appel. “We want to lead them down a path and think, Is this a real biopic? Is this the real story? The movie starts out pretty normal. Then it progressively goes way off the rails.”Central to fulfilling that premise is the casting of Radcliffe, an enthusiastic Yankovic fan who looks little like the musician and had no desire to impersonate him.Radcliffe was a longtime fan of comedy musicians like Tom Lehrer and Weird Al. In his first meeting with Yankovic, he remembers thinking, “If this happens, my girlfriend is going to be so thrilled.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFor all the attention he brings to it, Radcliffe said, he appreciated “Weird” precisely because it allowed him to follow his post-“Potter” path into more unexpected roles. Playing Yankovic, at least as he’s depicted in the movie, was the exact assignment Radcliffe was looking for — even if the title put some constraints on how he could describe the film.Radcliffe started to say, “There was nothing weird — see, it makes the word ‘weird’ hard to use in other contexts — there was nothing unusual about it.” He added that even before he had read the script, and was simply asked about playing Yankovic, “I was very, very into the idea.”Over a breakfast interview last month at a downtown Manhattan restaurant, Yankovic, 62, and Radcliffe, 33, exhibited an adorkable affection for each other. There were a lot of “you go ahead,” “no, you continue” exchanges. It was as if neither man knew who was the celebrity and who was the admirer.They said there was a similar energy in their first video chat in the winter of 2020, when Yankovic was pitching Radcliffe on the idea of starring in the movie. “I have a real problem in meetings sometimes when I like something and I want to do it,” Radcliffe said. “I just gush in various ways. I get very, very repetitive.”“Weird” was very much a passion project for Yankovic, who has released 14 studio albums since 1983 but starred in just one movie, the 1989 cult comedy “UHF.”In 2010, Appel wrote and directed a tongue-in-cheek trailer for a nonexistent movie, also called “Weird.” Starring Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) as a hard-partying version of Yankovic, the video was released on Funny or Die and became a viral success.Over the years, Yankovic showed the fake trailer at his concerts, where some fans believed it was advertising a real film.“People would be like, ‘You should make a whole movie,’” Yankovic said. “I was like, ‘Nah, it’s a trailer. It’s what it’s supposed to be — it’s a gag.’”But more recently, following the success of other rock biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocketman,” Yankovic began to take seriously the idea of a feature-length version of “Weird.”The real Weird Al in concert in Chicago in 1985, above, and Radcliffe as the accordion slinger in the movie, right. The musician taught the actor enough of the instrument to fake it onscreen.Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesAaron Epstein/RokuHe was also annoyed at what he felt were unnecessary changes to the factual stories of the rock stars depicted in these other movies. He pointed to a scene in “Rocketman” when Elton John impulsively chooses his new surname after he spots a portrait of the Beatles and zeros in on John Lennon.“Everybody who’s an Elton John fan knows it was inspired by Long John Baldry,” Yankovic said, raising his voice just slightly. “I guess they thought nobody knows who Long John Baldry is.”An initial effort to pitch “Weird” around Hollywood was unsuccessful, and studios seemed to expect a movie that more directly lampooned existing biopics, in the same way Yankovic’s songs parodied other hit singles. “People thought it was going to be more spoofier — more ‘Naked Gun,’ more ‘Scary Movie’ — than it is,” Appel said.So he and Yankovic sat together in a coffee shop, watching the trailers for other biopics and looking for common storytelling tropes. Together they wrote a script in which, Yankovic said, “facts are changed arbitrarily, just to change them.”No matter what “Weird” may depict, Yankovic did not compose his song “My Bologna” in a spontaneous moment of out-of-body inspiration. Also, he said, “I did record it in a bathroom but not in a bus station. Why did we change it? Just ’cause that’s what biopics do.”Their movie still needed a leading man, and they thought of Radcliffe, who they knew appreciated comedy musicians like Tom Lehrer.Radcliffe, it turned out, liked Yankovic’s music also — and so, too, did his longtime girlfriend, the actress Erin Darke, who had been a fan for years and often played Yankovic’s albums on road trips.(Throughout their first video call about “Weird,” Radcliffe said in an excited whisper, “I was going, If this happens, my girlfriend is going to be so thrilled.”)More crucially, Radcliffe said he felt “Weird” offered the artistic liberty he has sought on films like the biographical drama “Kill Your Darlings,” which cast him as the poet Allen Ginsberg, or “Swiss Army Man,” a dark comedy in which he played a highly versatile corpse.“Whenever I get a chance to throw myself into something, I will,” Radcliffe said.Even before Radcliffe had seen a script, “I was very, very into the idea” of playing Yankovic, he said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesCompared to a scene in “Weird” when the fictionalized Yankovic is on a psychedelic drug trip and hatches from a giant egg, Radcliffe said, “maybe only Paul Dano riding me like a Jet Ski in ‘Swiss Army Man’ comes close to the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.”He added, “There was definitely a freedom in the version of Al that is in the script. And it is so insane.” Turning to Yankovic, he said, “You didn’t murder many, many people.”“Not a lot,” Yankovic replied. “Very few.”With Radcliffe on board, Roku picked up the movie. But the company agreed to only 18 days of filming, which made for an incredibly tight schedule on a project in which he had to perform several musical numbers (lip-syncing Yankovic’s original vocals), as well as execute a couple of action sequences.“On ‘Potter,’ one of those scenes could take 16 days,” Radcliffe said.So he used his preproduction time to learn his lines and choreography and get into top physical shape. (“I did end up realizing I am shirtless in the Weird Al movie more than anything else I have done,” he said. “Most of it was scripted, but I hadn’t really taken it in.”)And once cameras started rolling, everyone held on tight. “The Covid of it all was terrifying, especially for me and Eric,” Radcliffe said. “There is no Plan B. We just have to not get sick.”Even before filming started, the comedian Patton Oswalt, who had been cast in a key role as Dr. Demento, the radio host who gave Yankovic some of his earliest airtime, broke his foot. Though there was some talk of whether Oswalt could play the part on crutches, Rainn Wilson (“The Office”) took over on short notice.The production was also buoyed by a committed performance from Evan Rachel Wood (“Westworld”), who plays Madonna — though in this story, the Material Girl is a sly, selfish seductress who is clearly only using Yankovic in hopes that he will parody one of her songs.“I’m amazed the lawyers let us get away with this movie, frankly,” Yankovic said. “But they’re like, Oh, yeah, all public figures — go for it.” (A representative for Madonna did not respond to a request for comment.)As in other rock biopics, Yankovic said, “facts are changed arbitrarily, just to change them” in “Weird.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAppel said Yankovic and Radcliffe were especially important for setting a professional tone while everyone worked at breakneck speed. And during postproduction, Appel continued to communicate closely with Yankovic while the musician has been on a North American concert tour.“When we were mixing the movie, he was on Zoom with us, all day long, from a different city every day,” Appel said. “He’d text me between songs: ‘I think the backing vocals on this song need to get bumped up a tiny bit.’ Then I’d start to respond and he’d say, ‘Oop, gotta go onstage.’”“Weird” is arriving at an awkward moment for the streaming industry, which is in a period of reassessment and retrenchment after years of expansion, and for Roku, whose stock took a beating after the company missed earnings goals this summer.While this might seem to put increased pressure on the movie to deliver an audience, the filmmakers could only shrug their shoulders and say they were just grateful to have made it at all.“This is a new thing for them,” Yankovic said of Roku. “Hopefully this will do well for them.” Radcliffe said he had encountered more curiosity about “Weird” than he did for the Harry Potter reunion special he appeared in for HBO Max this past January. “I still can’t believe people weren’t jumping at the chance to make your movie,” Radcliffe said to Yankovic. “They’ll regret it now.”The Weird Al of “Weird” and Real Al would now go their separate ways: Radcliffe was preparing for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” at New York Theater Workshop, and Yankovic was due in Toronto that evening to continue his concert tour. (“We’re in the homestretch now — just three more months,” he said wryly.)But they would always be united by their time together on “Weird” and the unique opportunity that Radcliffe had to learn the accordion from Yankovic — at least enough to make him look like a competent musician in a movie.“When you’re playing Al, to not give it a good, honest attempt seems a wasted opportunity,” Radcliffe said.Yankovic replied, “Every time I see somebody play the accordion on TV or film, it’s always a disappointment.” (As an exception, he singled out Mary Steenburgen, who he said “can actually play.”) “Dan put in the effort,” he said. “I don’t know if he could do a solo performance.”Radcliffe quickly responded, “No way, I could not. But I can do the left hand on ‘My Bologna’ pretty effectively. I learned the bits I needed for the songs, on one hand or the other.” He laughed and added, “Doing them both at the same time is a nonstarter.”Audio produced by More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson Debut as Plains

      by

      Both singer-songwriters came of age in the South and started out in indie-rock. Their joint project explores a spectrum of country influences and lets them reckon with their pasts.Jess Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Plains, a project born in the pandemic during long phone calls between the two musicians.Barrett Emke for The New York TimesThough they first met only five years ago, the musicians Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson have long walked parallel paths.Both grew up in Southern states where country music was omnipresent (Crutchfield, who records as Waxahatchee, in Alabama; Williamson in Texas). Coming of age in the late ’90s, they were shaped by mainstream country radio’s strong but ultimately fleeting embrace of powerhouse female artists: Williamson pored over the lyric booklets to the Chicks records; Crutchfield hummed along to Shania Twain, Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood songs in the back of her parents’ car.As many teenagers do, they later rebelled by getting into punk and indie-rock. But as they grew older and matured as artists, both found themselves reconnecting with their country roots and trying to make sense of their contradictory feelings about their Southern heritage, finding kindred spirits in elders like the individualistic outlaw songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams.Crutchfield and Williamson finally crossed paths in 2017 — introduced by Crutchfield’s boyfriend, the musician Kevin Morby, at a restaurant in Austin — and became fast friends. “I just immediately was like, ‘This person is for me,’” Crutchfield said on a video call from an instrument-strewn room in her home in Kansas City, Kan.On the call from Marfa, Texas, in a floral-printed dress and a silver crescent-moon necklace, Williamson remembered another prolonged stretch of bonding time in Los Angeles just before the pandemic: “We’d be at parties and it would just be me and Katie in the corner talking,” she said.In spring 2020, both released piercingly introspective, career-best albums — Waxahatchee’s cleareyed “St. Cloud,” and Williamson’s enchanting “Sorceress” — but were unsure when they’d be able to tour. They shared their frustrations and creative aspirations over long telephone calls during walks in the early months of the pandemic, and one day Crutchfield blurted out, “This is making me want to start a band.” Simple as that, Plains was born.For Williamson, Plains’ debut album “I Walked With You a Ways,” out Oct. 14, was something of an aesthetic continuation of her previous solo release. “‘Sorceress’ was the most I’d ever leaned into country sounds, and I felt like I had unfinished business,” she said, describing the project as a way to “channel these influences that we love,” like Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris’s records as Trio.In spring 2020, both musicians released piercingly introspective albums — Williamson’s enchanting “Sorceress” and Waxahatchee’s cleareyed “St. Cloud.”Barrett Emke for The New York TimesCrutchfield envisioned Plains, though, as something of a palate cleanser after a rewarding but emotionally intense album cycle. “‘St. Cloud’ was a really big record for me in so many ways,” she said. “I got sober right before I made it, and I had to work backwards to recognize myself again and learn how to write songs and make records again.” She said she wasn’t quite ready to make another Waxahatchee record, “but I had all of this energy to do something, so I feel like this project was such a godsend.”A self-described “harmony head,” Crutchfield is no stranger to collaboration: All her life she’s sung and made music with her twin sister Allison, most notably with the precocious, now-defunct pop-punk group P.S. Eliot. Williamson, on the other hand, had mostly worked as a solo artist, so the Plains experience meant opening herself up to new techniques: Crutchfield wanted to achieve a loose, spontaneous feel by tracking their vocals in as few takes as possible, for example.Crutchfield and Williamson each brought songs they’d written individually — relying on the other for some “in-the-room punch-ups” — and they found their styles to be quite complementary. “A lot of Jess’s songs were these old-school country waltzes, which I love,” Crutchfield said, “and it was a nice juxtaposition to the songs I was bringing in, which were a little more ’90s pop-country or Southern-rock feeling.”Williamson’s vivid songwriting and keening voice shine on “Abilene,” a heartbreaking, poetic ballad that harkens back to Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. Crutchfield’s soulful “Hurricane” filters the take-me-as-I-am swagger of the Chicks through the sharp self-examination of her own songwriting, as she croons in her dusty drawl, “I come in like a cannonball/I’ve been that way my whole life.” When their voices entwine in harmony, though, as they do on the sprightly opener “Summer Sun,” all of these disparate, cross-generational influences unite to form a timeless sound.They hope their upcoming tour together will be as light and carefree as the project itself. “When you’re touring on your own record, your solo project, your life story, there’s so much pressure,” Williamson said. “This project just feels really fun and celebratory. It feels universal, in a way.”“A lot of Jess’s songs were these old-school country waltzes, which I love,” Crutchfield said, “and it was a nice juxtaposition to the songs I was bringing in, which were a little more ’90s pop-country or Southern-rock feeling.”Barrett Emke for The New York TimesFor both artists, the sound of Plains represents a kind of homecoming, since the evolution of their singing voices has reflected their own personal reckonings with their pasts.“If you only knew how hard I was trying to suppress that Southern accent for so long,” Crutchfield said. “It’s sad, I listen to the affectation on some of my earlier records and I’m like, I’m really trying hard to cover that up.”The palpable sense of self-acceptance and hard-won confidence that attracted listeners to “St. Cloud,” though, courses through “I Walked With You a Ways” as well. Crutchfield can hear that maturity in her own voice. “People grow as singers over time,” Crutchfield added. “You develop your voice and chip away at what it’s really supposed to see. As far as I’ve seen, I feel that we all get better as we age. So I think that just trying to relax a bit has helped me a lot.” She let out a deep sigh. “It almost feels like I’ve taken my bra off.”Williamson was delighted with the metaphor: “I like that image, Katie,” she said. Then, as tightly in unison as they are on their record, they laughed. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      DJ Khaled’s Latest All-Star Album, ‘God Did,’ Is His Fourth No. 1

      by

      The LP, featuring Drake, Kanye West and others, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States last week. The K-pop group Twice wasn’t far behind, with 100,000 at No. 3.Each new LP by DJ Khaled, hip-hop’s indomitable guru of positivity, is an all-star summit, chocked with A-list guest stars. “God Did,” his 13th studio album, which opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s latest chart, is no different. Its 18 tracks feature Drake, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, Roddy Ricch, Eminem, Future, Kanye West, SZA, 21 Savage and three Lils — Wayne, Durk and Baby — as well as a posthumous appearance by Juice WRLD.“God Did,” DJ Khaled’s fourth album to top the chart, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States in its first week out, including 130 million streams and 9,500 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Among the configurations of “God Did” in physical form is a $40 boxed set that comes with a Funko Pop figurine of the artist.Also this week, the K-pop girl group Twice opens at No. 3 with a seven-track mini-album, “Between 1&2,” with 100,000 sales that relied heavily on collectible CD packages (17 in all). Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” falls to No. 2 after its ninth time in the peak spot; the biggest album of the year so far, “Un Verano” has been bouncing between the top two slots on the chart for 17 weeks now.Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” which opened at No. 1 back in May, rises 20 spots to No. 4 after coming out on vinyl; of its 55,000 equivalent sales last week, 36,000 were on the LP format. At No. 5, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” notches its 85th week in the Top 10, tying the run set by Peter, Paul and Mary’s self-titled debut album from 1962, with iconic folk songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” More