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      Madonna and Beeple Collaborate on NFT Project

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      The pop singer spent the last year working with the digital artist on a video series about motherhood. Proceeds will benefit three nonprofits.Has Madonna embraced the blockchain?The pop superstar’s interest in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, caught some fans off guard in March, when she paid 180 ether, a digital currency worth $560,000 at the time, for an NFT of a tattooed ape from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of digital art.On Monday, the singer released her own NFT series, titled “Mother of Creation” — three digitally rendered videos that recast her as a nude woman giving birth to flora, fauna and technology. The artworks are the result of a yearlong collaboration with Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple.“This is such an absolute, insane honor,” said Winkelmann, who is known for selling an NFT in 2021 for $69 million at Christie’s. “I don’t do many collaborations. This is probably the only one I will do for a very long time.”From Wednesday through Friday, Madonna and Beeple’s NFTs will be auctioned for charity through the online marketplace SuperRare.“It’s counterintuitive to who I am,” Madonna said in a phone interview, explaining that her initial struggle with the concept of digital assets made her want to explore what she saw as the elements of faith and community that drive the NFT market.From there, Beeple and Madonna developed three videos in which audiences have a full-frontal view of Madonna’s avatar giving birth to different organisms from a hospital bed, a rusted vehicle, and a forest floor. The singer has paired each video with poetry — some her own and some by the mystic poet Rumi.“I never want to be provocative just for the sake of provocation,” said Madonna, insisting that the butterflies and centipedes she gives birth to in the video mean something. “They stand for hope. They stand for technology.”Proceeds from the NFTs will benefit three nonprofits supporting women and children: the Voices of Children Foundation, which cares for those affected by the war in Ukraine; the City of Joy Foundation, which helps survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Black Mama’s Bail Out, which provides bail for incarcerated caregivers.The charity auction comes at a time when the NFT market’s future remains uncertain.John Crain, a founder and chief executive of SuperRare, said that his company did $10 million in sales last month compared to a $35 million high set in October. He sees the discrepancy not as a sign of the NFT market’s demise but of its maturation.“It’s been a frothy year, but marketplaces are inherently volatile,” Crain said. “There are fluctuations, but I wouldn’t call it a bear market.” More

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      Ric Parnell, Real Drummer in a Famous Fake Band, Dies at 70

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      The central characters in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” were comic actors, but Mr. Parnell was an actual professional musician.Ric Parnell, a real drummer best known for playing in a fake band, the one chronicled in Rob Reiner’s fabled 1984 mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on May 1 in Missoula, Mont., where he had lived for some two decades. He was 70.His partner, McKenzie Sweeney, confirmed the death. She said a blood clot in his lungs led to organ failure.Mr. Parnell had been in several bands, including the British prog-rock outfit Atomic Rooster, when he auditioned for “This Is Spinal Tap,” a deadpan sendup of rock clichés, and got the role of the drummer, Mick Shrimpton. The central band members, though, weren’t primarily musicians, though they had musical ability; they were comic actors — Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Mr. Reiner played the role of Marty DiBergi, a documentarian recording what turns out to be a disastrous tour by Spinal Tap, a heavy metal band that is past its prime and poorly managed.Mr. McKean said Mr. Parnell fit in seamlessly.“He looked perfect, all hair and cheekbones, but he also got the joke and knew to play the reality without comment,” he said by email. “And he was a great drummer in the tradition of his hero, John Bonham” — the drummer for Led Zeppelin.“Onstage,” Mr. McKean added, “he was the best kind of monster; offstage, a very nice, very funny guy.”Mr. Parnell had only a few lines in the movie, but he was pivotal to one of its funniest gags: Drummers for the band had a habit of dying in bizarre and unpleasant ways. In one scene, he lounges in a bathtub while Marty DiBergi asks him if he’s bothered by that history.“It did kind of freak me out a bit, but it can’t always happen,” Mick says, and Marty agrees, telling him, “The law of averages says you will survive.”The law of averages, alas, was wrong — near the end of the film, Mick spontaneously combusts onstage. When the film developed such a cult following that the fake band went on tour in the early 1990s, playing actual shows, that necessitated a tweaking of Mr. Parnell’s persona — he was now Rick Shrimpton, the twin brother of the deceased Mick.Life almost imitated art in mid-1992, when Mr. Parnell fell down some stairs while hurrying to a sound check as the band was rehearsing in Los Angeles. He injured an ankle.“Despite the odds of meeting with death by remaining with Spinal Tap,” a publicist for the band said at the time, “he’s looking forward to continuing the tour.”That “Return of Spinal Tap” tour eventually took the group to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a pinch-me moment for the British-born Mr. Parnell as he waited to go on alongside Mr. Shearer.“I remember during ‘The Return of Spinal Tap’ standing backstage with Harry and hearing the Albert Hall crowd just chanting, ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!,’” Mr. Parnell told The Missoula Independent in 2006. “I turned to Harry and I said, ‘Come on, now. We’re a joke! Don’t they know that?’ It was just amazing how quite massive it all became.”The members of Spinal Tap, from left: Christopher Guest, Mr. Parnell, David Kaff, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty ImagesAbout two decades ago, Mr. Parnell settled into a much quieter sort of life in Missoula, where for a time he had a radio show called “Spontaneous Combustion” on KDTR-FM, on which he told stories and indulged his eclectic musical tastes. For one show he played only artists who were alumni of Antelope Valley High School in California, among them Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.“I get to play what I want, do whatever I want — all as long as I don’t swear,” he told The Independent. “That’s the only hard part.”Richard John Parnell was born on Aug. 13, 1951, in London to Jack and Monique (Bonneau) Parnell. His father was a composer, conductor and drummer, and he said that drumming came naturally from a young age.“I got it from my dad,” he told The Missoulian in 2007. “I could sit down at the drum kit and play a beat straight away.”Lessons, he said, were not his thing; he learned by playing in groups.“Over the years, I’ve built up a technique,” he told the newspaper. “I get drummers saying, ‘How did you do that?’ I say, ‘I have no idea. I’m just hitting.’ I wouldn’t know a paradiddle from a flam-doodlehead.”His father, who worked as musical director or in other capacities on numerous television shows, sometimes added to his education by taking him to the set. He recalled sitting at the feet of Jimi Hendrix when he performed on the singer Dusty Springfield’s British TV series in 1968.Mr. Parnell’s own career was starting about the same time. He recalled touring with Engelbert Humperdinck as a teenager. He joined Atomic Rooster in 1970, and then came a stint with an Italian group, Ibis. In 1977 he moved to the United States with a band called Nova, which settled in Boulder, Colo.He played numerous studio sessions over the years and can be heard on records by Beck, Toni Basil and others. For a time he toured with the R&B saxophonist Joe Houston. They would stop every year for a few shows in Missoula before heading into Canada to tour there. But, as Mr. Parnell often told the story, one year the group didn’t have the right paperwork to cross the border and had to extend its stay in Missoula.“I basically got stuck here and then didn’t want to leave,” he told The Independent. “I’d always liked this place — it’s like Boulder in the 1970s, when I first came to the states. I became a Missoulian instantly.”Mr. Parnell was married and divorced four times. In addition to Ms. Sweeney, he is survived by two brothers, Will and Marc, and two stepsisters, Emma Parnell and Sarah Currie.Over the last two decades he could often be found playing with one group or another at local spots in Missoula. In 2004, a writer for The Missoulian asked if he, as an accomplished musician, ever got tired of being recognized only for his joke band.“No, not really,” he said. “Really it’s quite nice to be a part of such a legendary thing.” More

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      The Deeper Meaning of Elvis in Australia

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      I went to the Parkes Elvis Festival thinking I’d learn something about what America used to be. I left thinking more about Australia.The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email.The first time I learned to love Elvis Presley, I was in my early 20s, and visiting Graceland during a cross-country trip with a few friends. I remember watching videos of his concerts in a dark theater there and being amazed at his energy and talent. Next, there was Baghdad Elvis.When I covered the war in Iraq in 2007, a photographer we worked with happened to have mastered a near-perfect rendition of “Suspicious Minds.” At one point, in our heavily fortified compound on the Tigris River, he showed up wearing a bespoke white jumpsuit, circa 1973, leading us all in a night of raucous karaoke — loud enough to drown out the sound of bullets in the distance.And then there was Parkes, the small town in rural New South Wales, which hosts the largest annual Elvis festival in the Southern Hemisphere (and possibly the world). I’d been hearing about it ever since I came to Australia but this year, I decided to go, and to bring my 11-year-old daughter with me.I was looking for more than just spectacle, though there was plenty of that. I was looking for heart. Why do 25,000 people come out to celebrate a dead American rocker in the middle of a continent where Elvis never played a concert?I thought maybe there was something to say about the America he seemed to represent, a country that had been more optimistic, carefree, effusive, and excessive than the more earnest and angry United States we’ve seen over the past few years. Perhaps Elvis nostalgia was also America nostalgia?But what I found — as you can see in my article, with amazing photos from Abigail Varney —was simpler and more local, if no less profound. America was really not the point. Small town Australia and participatory “have a go” Australia was what animated the event.According to Elvis tribute artists — and Elvis’s former tour manager, who made the trek from back home in the U.S. — Australians of all social classes, political persuasions and ages were more likely to dress up, sing, march in the parade, or play rugby, all while dressed up as Elvis, all while encouraging each other to get involved and have some fun.The Australian festival was unique because the lines between serious and silly were blurred. While Americans listened and admired Elvis, Australians made him their own.I’ve written a lot about that Australian penchant for pulling people into an activity — it’s a big part of the idea-driven memoir I published here, called “Into the Rip,” which will be out in the U.S. in the next few months with a different title. But in Parkes there was an extra layer of verve that only the combination of Elvis and small town Australia could possibly provide. My daughter loved it. So did I.Now here are our stories of the week.Australia and New ZealandA dutiful blue catfish dad, mouthbrooding eggs that he probably fertilized.Janine AbeciaMeet Mouth Almighty, a Different Kind of Fish Dad. A study of Australian fish that care for offspring through mouthbrooding shows that things underwater are not always as monogamous as they seem.Australian Gets 12 Years for Anti-Gay Killing of an American in 1988. Scott Johnson, a U.S. graduate student, was pushed off a cliff, in a case that was first ruled a suicide but that his brother refused to let go of.Helicopter Catches Booster Rocket Falling From Space. After sending a payload of 34 small satellites into orbit, the space company Rocket Lab used a helicopter to catch the 39-foot-long used-up booster stage of the rocket before it splashed into the Pacific Ocean.How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing. Elvis never played a concert “down under,” but that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of Australians from making him their own at an annual festival.Around the TimesInside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’. A New York Times analysis of 1,150 episodes reveals how Tucker Carlson pushes extremist ideas and conspiracy theories into millions of households, five nights a week.As Victory Day Looms in Russia, Guesswork Grows Over Putin’s Ukraine Goals. The Russian holiday celebrating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany is viewed by Ukraine and NATO as a stage for the Russian president to proclaim a turn in the war.Abortion Pills Stand to Become the Next Battleground in a Post-Roe America. Medication abortion allows patients to terminate early pregnancies at home. Some states are moving to limit it, while others are working to expand access.Much Gilt, Little Guilt. The Met Gala 2022 celebrated themes of opulence, excess and fame.Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group. More

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      How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing

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      PARKES, Australia — The Elvis Presley from Japan bowed with quiet respect. Then he tore into a rendition of “Burning Love” that sounded straight out of Memphis, and that definitely stretched the crotch of his blue jumpsuit to the limit.Backstage, a few more “Elvi” — the plural of Elvis, at least at the largest Elvis festival in the Southern Hemisphere — were going over final song choices, sweating their options for a crowd that blurred the line between fans and impersonators. Thousands of Elvi were out there in the middle of Australia, aged 5 to 85, with more pompadours and leisure suits than anyone could count.“God, it’s so many people,” said Charles Stone, Elvis’s tour manager from 1971 until his death in 1977, surveying the scene with a gold chain peeking outside his T-shirt. “Look at this.”Parkes, a small town five hours’ drive from Sydney, now shines once a year with Elvis sequins and rhinestones. Around 25,000 people usually join the festival, which started out with a couple of restaurant owners trying to bring a little less conversation and a little more action into Parkes.That was back in 1993. Nearly 30 years later, the festival has become a national treasure that exemplifies how Australians tend to do a lot of things: all together, with self-deprecating humor and copious amounts of alcohol.An Elvis tribute contest during the festival.A street in Parkes blocked off during the Elvis festival to accommodate an array of vintage cars.A couple swing dancing in their matching Elvis-themed outfit at the Parkes Leagues Club restaurant.This year’s event — after Covid forced a cancellation in 2021 — felt somehow more Elvis-like than ever. A certain heaviness mixed with the thrill of rock ’n’ roll. From tiny pubs with first-time singers to golf courses and rugby pitches where games were played in matching Elvis gear — and, of course, to the main stages, where the world’s top tribute artists could be found — there was a craving for post-lockdown, post-pandemic release.What is life even for, many of them yelled over the music, if not for a dress-up-and-let-go, yank-each-other-up-on-stage-and-SING sense of abandon?“It lets us forget everything,” said Gina Vicar, 61, a small-business owner from Melbourne who had come to the festival with a dozen friends. “With all that we’ve gone through, and what the world is going through now, it’s great to see all this joy.”When we met, she had just shouted encouragement to an Elvis (real name, Deon Symo) who had announced that he was only 21 and from Adelaide, a city often joked about and rarely celebrated.He was wearing a white jumpsuit as he stood in front of a red curtain held up with rubber bands in a pub with sticky floors — and the crowd treated him like a Las Vegas superstar. Two women a decade or two his senior danced in front, mouthing the words to every song.A couple from Queensland, Australia, wearing “Blue Hawaii” themed t-shirts.Toki Toyokazu, a crowd favorite from Sendai, Japan, performing on the festival’s main stage.The annual match between the Elvis-inspired “Blue Suede Shoes” and the “Ready Teddys.”“He’s got a great voice,” Ms. Vicar said. “He just needs the confidence.”All over Parkes, from Wednesday to Sunday, Elvi won over the Elvis faithful.Toki Toyokazu, the singer from Sendai, Japan, was a crowd favorite; he won the festival’s formal competition in 2020, and his return seemed to signal a post-Covid milestone.Another performer, “Bollywood Elvis,” wearing a gold jumpsuit featuring faux gems the size of Waffle House biscuits, also seemed to pop up whenever energy flagged. His real name was Alfred Vaz. He moved to Australia from Bombay in 1981, when he was a manager for Air India, and he said he had been coming to Parkes since the festival began. This year, he brought his nephew, Callum Vincent, 24, a music teacher from Perth, who smiled as he took it all in.“There’s only one Elvis,” Mr. Vaz, 65, said on Saturday morning as the festival’s parade began. “There are a lot of pretenders and a lot of contenders, but there’s only one Elvis.””There are a lot of pretenders and a lot of contenders, but there’s only one Elvis.”Except in Parkes, a former mining town in a country where Elvis never actually played a concert.A few minutes earlier, the mayor and the area’s local member of Parliament had driven by, sitting on the back of a convertible wearing ’70s jumpsuits along with wigs and sunglasses. Ms. Vicar and her friends walked in the parade alongside, well, the full range of Elvi. More

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      Black Star’s First Album in 24 Years Arrives, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Sharon Van Etten, Carly Rae Jepsen, 070 Shake 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.Black Star, ‘O.G.’Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) have reunited as Black Star — 24 years after their first and only previous full album together — with “No Fear of Time,” abetted by an ideal choice of producer: the crate-digging, funk-loving Madlib. Most of the new album is exclusive to the subscription podcast app Luminary, but the opening track, “O.G.” — “On God” — is on YouTube. Over an insistent bass line and swelling organ chords, the rapping is equal parts boasting and worship, insisting “the time is relative, ’cause the truth is everlasting.” Both rappers juggle mortality and persistence, rightfully flaunting their own “Encyclopaedia Britannica flow,” mixing Brooklyn pride and reggae references (and samples from “The Ruler” by Gregory Isaacs), sounding self-congratulatory but still determined to instruct. JON PARELESDoja Cat, ‘Vegas’The most soulful voice in “Vegas” — by far — is the sample from Big Mama Thornton, rasping “You ain’t nothin’ but a” from “Hound Dog,” the song that Elvis Presley would latch onto. “Hound Dog” was about a materialist masquerading as a sweetheart, and the rapping and multitracked vocal harmonies of Doja Cat’s “Vegas” — from the soundtrack to Baz Lurhmann’s “Elvis” — update it to the life of a 21st-century star: “Sittin’ courtside with your arm around me.” The underlying three chords are a classic blues structure; Doja Cat borrows their archetypal power. PARELESCarly Rae Jepsen, ‘Western Wind’Carly Rae Jepsen’s bright, bold pop takes an impressionistic turn on her new single “Western Wind,” thanks in part to production from Rostam Batmanglij. A hypnotic beat and Jepsen’s entranced, closed-eyes vocals make the whole thing sound like a pastoral reverie — an intriguing new direction for her. “First bloom, you know it’s spring/Reminding me love that it’s all connected,” Jepsen sings dreamily. The solar power is strong with this one. LINDSAY ZOLADZHolly Humberstone, ‘Sleep Tight’Holly Humberstone, 22, is the current opening act on Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour, and the two share a penchant for emotionally resonant songwriting and music that sounds like whatever was on the radio shortly before they were born. “Sleep Tight,” which Humberstone co-wrote with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy and her longtime collaborator Rob Milton, is a tale of mixed emotions and that gray area between pals and lovers, set to rushing acoustic guitar chords that conjure ’90s pop-rock. “Oh my God, I’ve done it again, I almost killed our friendship,” Humberstone sings. Her delivery is at once as casually conversational as a text message and as shyly secret as an internal monologue. ZOLADZLady Gaga, ‘Hold My Hand’Lady Gaga is possibly the only contemporary pop star who could convincingly cover Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” and Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone,” so it’s fitting that her theme from the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick” channels a little bit of both. “Hold My Hand” is as bombastic and romantic as any of her torch songs from the soundtrack for “A Star Is Born,” but it’s also punched up with soaring electric guitar and gigantic ’80s drums that sound like they were recorded in an airplane hangar. “So cry tonight, but don’t you let go of my hand,” she belts as if her life depended on it, pulling off gloriously earnest pastiche like only Gaga can. ZOLADZ070 Shake, ‘Web’Danielle Balbuena, the singer and rapper who records as 070 Shake, overdubs her voice into a cascading chorale in “Web,” a cryptic call for personal contact and honesty. “This thing isn’t working/Let’s be here in person,” she chants. “I want to get through to you.” Maybe the song is a reaction to too many Zoom meetings; it’s a gorgeous response. PARELESSharon Van Etten, ‘Come Back’Confessions of need and uncertainty lead to monumental choruses in the songs on Sharon Van Etten’s new album, “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong,” which ponder how to reconcile the life of a performing artist with motherhood, relationships and self-realization. A humble acoustic guitar strum starts “Come Back,” as a tremulous-voiced Van Etten muses about “Subtle moments of past/What a wondering time.” But the chorus arrives in a giant wall of sound — drums, keyboards, guitars, vocal harmonies in cavernous reverb — as Van Etten longs for a return to being “wild and unsure/And naked and pure.” PARELESKathleen Hanna, Erica Dawn Lyle and Vice Cooler, ‘Mirrorball’With Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill exhorting, “Put your finger in the socket!,” “Mirrorball” is the first blast of post-punk mayhem from “Land Trust,” a benefit album for North East Farmers of Color, which is acquiring land for Indigenous and minority farmers. During the pandemic, Bikini Kill’s current guitarist, Erica Dawn Lyle, and drum tech, Vice Cooler, collaborated with multiple generations of feminist rockers; along with Hanna, the pioneering riot grrrl, the album — due June 3 — draws on members of the Raincoats, the Breeders, Deerhoof, Slant 6, Palberta and the Linda Lindas. While “Mirrorball” flings sarcastic late-capitalism advice like “Stay true to your personal brand,” stomping drums and cranked-up guitars brook no nonsense. PARELESLeyla McCalla, ‘Le Bal Est Fini’The songwriter Leyla McCalla played banjo, guitar and cello in the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters; her parents were Haitian immigrants, and she spent time with her grandmother in Haiti. Her new album, “Breaking the Thermometer,” started as a music-theater work commissioned by Duke University, which acquired the archives of Radio Haiti and has placed them online. The album mingles Haitian songs and McCalla’s own songs with snippets of broadcasts and interviews, examining Haiti’s history of exploitation, revolution, dictatorship and turmoil. “Le Bal Est Fini” (“The Party Is Over”) is based on an editorial by a Radio Haiti journalist in 1980, the year the government shut the station down. The music is upbeat, with syncopated undercurrents of rara carnival rhythms. Meanwhile the lyrics, in Haitian Creole, lash out at anti-democratic forces: “Arbitrary, illegal, anti-Constitutional.” PARELESASAP Rocky, ‘D.M.B.’For ASAP Rocky, “bitch” is an endearment. “D.M.B.” — “Dat’s my bitch” — is a love song; the video clip features glimpses of Rihanna, his girlfriend. “Bitch” is also a usefully percussive syllable in a multilayered production that constantly warps itself with woozy crosscurrents of pride, defensiveness, affection and machismo. Rocky raps and sings through “D.M.B.” with a shifting flow, and for all his aggression, he sounds genuinely affectionate. PARELESTirzah, ‘Ribs’The London-based artist Tirzah makes love songs in the abstract: free-flowing and amorphous meditations on intimacy and interconnection. As on her 2021 album “Colourgrade,” the first record she made since becoming a mother, the unconditional relationship she’s singing about on her hazy new single, “Ribs,” could be between a parent and child, though it has a welcoming universality about it too. “You see things I can’t see, you see love and in between,” Tirzah sings openheartedly. “Hold onto me.” ZOLADZGlasser, ‘New Scars’“New Scars” is an eerie, enveloping benediction from Glasser, a.k.a. the songwriter, singer and producer Cameron Mesirow. It begins with sparse, bell-like, electronically altered and harmonically ambiguous piano notes, a counterpoint as Glasser sustains and repeats a kind of mantra: “Try to remain with the love/there’s no room for shame.” Eventually, orchestral strings swell around her and her vocals grow into a choir as she moves on to a terse but somehow encouraging thought: “We carry through life.” PARELES More

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      Bad Bunny on His Surprise Album, ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’

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      “I’ve made it clear to people that I’m never going to make a record that’s the same as another,” the pop star said. His fourth album was inspired by a spectrum of Caribbean music.Bad Bunny approached his fourth album with a bit of a lighter touch: “It’s a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesMost pop stars would move heaven and earth to attend the Met Gala. But for Bad Bunny, one of music’s most idiosyncratic figures, it’s just another Monday night. “Obviously I’m happy that they invited me,” he said, twirling from side to side in a high leather swivel chair at New York’s venerated Electric Lady Studios about 48 hours before the exclusive fashion fête. “I know that day is going to be an exciting thing,” he continued. “But I’m working a lot this week!”Last Monday, he announced his casting as the lead of a live-action Marvel movie, playing a character from the Spider-Man universe named El Muerto. Two days after that, he was filming music videos in Puerto Rico. Throughout it all, he was preparing for the release of his fourth studio album, “Un Verano Sin Ti” (“A Summer Without You”), which dropped on Friday.At the gala on Monday, Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — wore a custom cream boiler suit and skirt with puff sleeves, designed by Riccardo Tisci for Burberry. At Electric Lady, calmly putting the final touches on the album and working on some new material, he sported a quintessentially Benito look: pastel pink swim trunks, a checkered blue cardigan and a wide-brimmed sage fisherman’s hat. His left thigh was covered in tattoos, including the sad-faced cartoon heart that appears on the artwork for his new album, and an outline of his home, Puerto Rico. His right thigh bore only one design: the logo for Pokémon Go.Since his genre-crushing debut in 2018, Bad Bunny, now 28, has been nearly unstoppable, colliding pop punk, synth-pop, bachata, dembow and reggaeton on his way to becoming a global superstar. He released two LPs in 2020, including “El Último Tour Del Mundo,” the first fully Spanish-language album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. He’s been the most streamed artist on Spotify two years in a row.The story of Bad Bunny’s mythical ascent from a grocery bagger in the small town of Vega Baja to a torchbearer for a new generation of reggaeton and trap artists has become nearly folklore. In the past few years, he’s also transformed into a fashion renegade, an emerging social critic, a semiprofessional wrestler and a budding actor. In July, he will make his feature film debut in “Bullet Train,” a bloody action movie in which he fistfights Brad Pitt. Bad Bunny said he trained with stuntmen for weeks to prepare.“I always wanted to act and the opportunity came along, but I didn’t know that one of the first ones was going to be with Brad Pitt,” he said incredulously.“At the end of the day, I’m still the same person I’ve always been,” he added. “That’s what’s important, what you have to know. I shouldn’t care how the world sees me, but rather, who I know I am,” he continued. “With that, I’ll be very happy.”Bad Bunny at the Met Gala earlier this week, wearing Riccardo Tisci for Burberry.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBad Bunny has approached each of his albums with an explicit goal. “Since forever I’ve made it clear to people that I’m never going to make a record that’s the same as another,” he said. But beyond the ambition to warp genres, he’s also refused to genuflect to industry conventions, especially ones for Spanish-speaking artists.“I could have done a track with, who knows, Miley Cyrus or Katy Perry,” he explained, referring to his first 2020 album, “YHLQMDLG.” “But no, I was making ‘Safaera’ with Ñengo Flow and Jowell y Randy. And I was putting the whole world onto underground from Puerto Rico, you know? That makes me feel proud of what I represent.”He approached “Un Verano Sin Ti” with a bit of a lighter touch: “It’s a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist.” He drew on both recent experiences and nostalgia for dog days of the past. “When I was a little kid, my family would go to the West on vacation,” he said, referring to the coast of Puerto Rico. For “Un Verano Sin Ti,” he decided to explore the eastern side, near Río Grande and Fajardo. The majority of the album was recorded there and in the Dominican Republic.“Un Verano Sin Ti” is a pop album, but not necessarily a straightforward one. Bad Bunny infuses it with electrifying beat switches, raunchy raps and astral synths. The record was inspired by an expansive spectrum of Caribbean music: the deep cuts of the beloved salsa singer Ismael Rivera; Dominican dembow; and groups like Buscabulla, who appear on the song “Andrea.”“The album is very Caribbean, in every sense: with its reggaeton, its mambo, with all those rhythms, and I like it that way,” Bad Bunny said. Though his career often takes him far from home, he’s always kept Puerto Rico close — sometimes, he still pronounces his “Rs” with the guttural, back-of-the-throat intonation so common in the countryside. And he still has that Caribbean sense of humor. When asked about what he hoped to do at the Met Gala, he joked, “I want my hookah,” cackling.“I shouldn’t care how the world sees me, but rather, who I know I am,” Bad Bunny said. “With that, I’ll be very happy.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesOn the mutant mambo of “Después de la Playa,” Bad Bunny sings on a live mic over the Dominican band Dahian el Apechao, echoing the style of the merengue experimentalist Omega El Fuerte. “Titi Me Preguntó,” a shape-shifting dembow track with a horror-movie synth outro, samples Kiko El Crazy, the pink-haired dembow eccentric.“Un Verano Sin Ti” also contains collaborations with indie artists like the Marías and Bomba Estéreo, and plunges deeper into gauzy dream-pop textures and wistful synth interludes that feel vast and intimate all at once. The aural landscape is reminiscent of indietronica artists like M83, but Bad Bunny and his producers Tainy, MAG and La Paciencia immerse it in Caribbean gloss.Both MAG and Bad Bunny were partially inspired by Buscabulla’s lush synth pop, and Bad Bunny said he listened to the duo’s 2020 album, “Regresa,” on repeat during quarantine.“It was Easter Sunday and we got a call from a bunny,” the duo’s multi-instrumentalist, Luis Alfredo Del Valle, joked in a phone interview. On “Andrea,” Bad Bunny renders a portrait of a Puerto Rican woman hoping to live life on her own terms, and Buscabulla’s vocalist, Raquel Berríos, assumes the character’s voice. “I felt that the chorus had to carry a lot of weight about what it means to be a woman from the Caribbean,” Berríos said. “I had never worked this hard for a song.”Del Valle remarked on Bad Bunny’s “indie bent”: “It’s pretty notable that he has that platform and he’s down to bring in people who are usually not in that realm,” he said. Berríos agreed: “Music should just be like that,” she said. “It should be free.”Bad Bunny has a musical sensibility that exemplifies how the mainstream relies on cues from the underground and it’s one way he likes to make grand industry statements. On other tracks, he engages in more overt social commentary.Much like “Estamos Bien” before it, “El Apagón” is a torch song that captures both the beauty and tragedy of Puerto Rican life. The track references the blackouts that persisted after a private consortium took over the island’s energy distribution last year. But it also incorporates laugh-out-loud citations of old school reggaeton, including a salacious lyric from DJ Joe’s “Fatal Fantassy” mixtape. It even ends with a send-off for the mainland investors who have descended on the island in search of tax breaks, driving up home prices and displacing locals. “Que se vayan ellos,” sings Gabriela Berlingeri, Bad Bunny’s girlfriend. “Esta es mi playa/esta es mi tierra” (“Let them leave. This is my beach/this is my land”).“This is a song from the heart,” Bad Bunny said, explaining that he wrote the lyrics for Berlingeri to sing. “I didn’t want to get a famous artist,” he added. “I wanted someone to sing it out of love, because it’s a sincere message.”Bad Bunny has taken note of musicians outside of Latino culture suddenly embracing Latin music: “But remember that it’s from here,” he said, “and that we know how to do it like it’s supposed to be done.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesAt one point on “El Apagón,” Bad Bunny declares in Spanish, “Now everyone wants to be Latino,” a reference to a sudden spate of musicians who “don’t have a thing to do with Latino culture” singing in Spanish or playing with reggaeton. “Even though you can feel proud and happy about that, deep down, you’re like,” he paused. “‘Now, cabrones? Why not before?’” For so long, the music industry scorned Latino artists, segregating them into confining sounds and aesthetics, he said. “It was like a huge line, a wall — us over here, and you over there.”“It’s not a critique, like, ‘Don’t do it!’” he added. “But remember that it’s from here, and that we know how to do it like it’s supposed to be done.”Bad Bunny knows he is constantly evolving. Much like the musical luminaries whose LPs line the forest-green hallways of Electric Lady, he understands that his career is defined by authentic reinvention. “I don’t think I’m going to be making reggaeton at 40,” he said. “That I’m sure of.”He’s not certain what awaits him in the next 10 years — maybe a few more albums or more prominent Hollywood roles. He swiveled around in his tall chair, a small grin crawling across his face. Of course a man this busy is plotting his eventual exit from the limelight. “I hope to be chilling, in a house with a farm and a horse — two horses,” he said of his future. “Tranquilito, tranquilito, tranquilito.” At peace. More

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      Fun Things to Do in N.Y.C. This May 2022

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      Looking for something to do in New York? Go see the Asian Comedy Fest at Stand Up NY and Caveat or the British singer Nilüfer Yanya at Webster Hall. Take the kids to Our First Art Fair, as part of NADA New York. Or you can still catch “Hangmen” on Broadway and the Jacques-Louis David blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Comedy | Music | Kids | Film | Dance | Theater | ArtComedyJes Tom, above at Union Hall in Brooklyn in February, will be among the performers in this weekend’s Asian Comedy Fest.JT AndersonAsian Comedy FestFriday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Stand Up NY, 236 West 78th Street, Manhattan; standupny.com. Saturday at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. at Caveat, 21A Clinton Street, Manhattan; caveat.nycFor the third straight year, Ed Pokropski, a writer and producer at NBCUniversal, and the producer and comedian Kate Moran have assembled dozens of performers for this festival, and like last year, they’re right on time to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The six shows will feature Julia Shiplett, Michael Cruz Kayne, Usama Siddiquee, Karen Chee with the puppeteer Kathleen Kim, the podcasters from “Feeling Asian,” and Yuhua Hamasaki from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Friday’s 8 p.m. lineup includes perhaps the festival’s buzziest performer: Jes Tom, a nonbinary trans comedian who co-stars in the new Hulu rom-com “Crush.” (Tom will also headline their own show on May 14 at the Bell House.) Tickets start at $25 per show ($65 for an all-night pass) and are available at asiancomedyfest.com. SEAN L. McCARTHYMusicDarius Jones, above at the Winter Jazzfest in 2018, has programmed this year’s MATA Festival, which concludes at National Sawdust this weekend.Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York TimesClassical MusicMATA FestivalFriday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn; live.nationalsawdust.org.This year’s iteration of the annual contemporary music blowout known as the MATA Festival has been programmed by the composer and alto saxophonist Darius Jones. For the festival’s final two nights, Jones has put together a set of works by younger artists on Friday and one of his own on Saturday. Friday’s concert will feature notable artists like Travis Laplante, who is scheduled to play his solo tenor saxophone opus “The Obvious Place.” And Saturday’s performance will offer the world premiere of Jones’s piece “Colored School No. 3,” which references a Brooklyn building once used as a segregated school for Black children into the early 20th century. Tickets for each night are $25. SETH COLTER WALLSNilüfer Yanya will headline at Webster Hall on Saturday.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesPop & RockNilüfer YanyaSaturday at 7:30 p.m. at Webster Hall, 25 East 11th Street, Manhattan; websterhall.com.Though as a teenager she was tapped to be in a girl group assembled by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction, Nilüfer Yanya chose a self-determined path over the prospect of pop stardom. The British singer’s debut album, from 2019, contained notes of jazz and indie pop but leaned predominantly into alt-rock, showcasing the guitar chops she had honed since picking up the instrument at age 12. Yanya’s sophomore effort, released in March, follows suit but pares her sound down to essential components: wafty melodies, crisp beats, circuitous guitar work reminiscent of Radiohead. Ironically titled “Painless,” the album is spiked with thorns, its lyrics tackling the complicated, damaging side effects of desire. On Saturday, Yanya heads a bill that also features two other singer-guitarists: Ada Lea and Tasha. Tickets start at $25 and are available at axs.com. OLIVIA HORNKidsOur First Art Fair at Pier 36, sponsored by the New Art Dealers Alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts, will feature works by children 12 and under. Above, a display from an after-school class at the museum in 2019.Children’s Museum of the ArtsOur First Art FairThursday from 4 to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at NADA New York, Pier 36, 299 South Street, Manhattan; newartdealers.org.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics reviewed exhibits featuring the drawings of the French Revolution’s chief propagandist and new work by the sculptor Charles Ray.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.While the New Art Dealers Alliance has always catered to the business’s youngest members, it would be hard to find exhibitors younger than some appearing at this year’s NADA New York exposition. They’re the entrepreneurs 12 and under participating in Our First Art Fair, presented by the alliance and the Children’s Museum of the Arts. Here, youngsters display and price their creations, receiving all proceeds. Little artists who missed the April submission deadline can still contribute by completing a required form and delivering it, along their work, to the fair. On Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., museum educators will also attend, providing art supplies and helping with last-minute entries. What doesn’t sell goes to the museum’s permanent collection — no small distinction. NADA passes start at $40; they’re free for children. LAUREL GRAEBERFilmThuy An Luu and Frédéric Andrei in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” which is screening at Film Forum starting on Friday.Rialto Pictures‘Diva’Ongoing at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.You’ve seen Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”? “Diva” is the other major film of 1981 (released in the United States in 1982) that involves a protagonist with a hot-potato audio recording, or technically two: Jules (Frédéric Andrei), a postman and opera fan, secretly records a star vocalist, Cynthia Hawkins (the real-life soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), who makes a point of only singing live, at a performance in Paris. Soon after, he unwittingly comes into possession of another tape that could expose an international drug-and-sex-trafficking operation.But the crazy convolutions of the plot are hardly the point. “Diva,” directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, who died in January, is perhaps the film most identified with a trend in France that became known as the cinéma du look, movies for which visual style and attitude left the prevailing impressions. In a print showing at Film Forum, the shades of blue are dazzling, and an elaborate chase through the Paris Metro is pretty exciting, too. BEN KENIGSBERGDanceValerie Levine of Ice Theater of New York performing “Arctic Memory” by Jody Sperling on Governors Island in February.Josef PinlacIce Theater of New YorkFriday and Saturday at 7 p.m.; Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Sky Rink, 61 Chelsea Piers, Manhattan; chelseapiers.com.After pivoting to pavement during the pandemic, Ice Theater of New York returns to its true milieu, which is also a fitting place to reflect on climate change. As part of its home season, the company will present the premiere of the choreographer Jody Sperling’s “Of Water and Ice,” which draws on her research in the Arctic and is set to music by D.J. Spooky. It will be joined on the program by 10 other works, many of them also new, with soundtracks ranging from Philip Glass to Rachmaninoff to Madonna. Don’t expect a string of Nathan Chen-like acrobatic feats, though; the company, founded in 1984, is rooted in the art of ice dancing, which combines the ethos of concert dance with the speed, momentum and strength of ice skating. Two of the form’s best-known practitioners, the British champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, will be honored at Monday’s gala performance. Tickets start at $25 and are available at icetheatre.org. BRIAN SCHAEFERTheaterDavid Threlfall, center, with, from left, Richard Hollis, Ryan Pope, John Horton and Alfie Allen in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “Hangmen” at the Golden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCritic’s Pick‘Hangmen’Through June 18 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; hangmenbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.In Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award winner, set in the 1960s, a menacing mod from London (Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones”) walks into a grim northern English pub run by a former hangman (David Threlfall). Pitch-black comedy ensues. Directed by Matthew Dunster, this production was a prepandemic hit downtown. Read the review.‘Plaza Suite’Through June 26 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; plazasuitebroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker revel in physical comedy as they play two married couples and a pair of long-ago sweethearts in the first Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s trio of one-act farces, a smash at its premiere in 1968. John Benjamin Hickey directs. (Onstage at the Hudson Theater. Limited run ends July 1.) Read the review.Critic’s Pick‘American Buffalo’Through July 10 at Circle in the Square, Manhattan; americanbuffalonyc.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss team up for David Mamet’s verbally explosive tragicomedy, set in a Chicago junk shop where an inept pair of small-time criminals and their hapless young flunky plot the theft of a rare nickel. Neil Pepe directs. Read the review.Hugh Jackman as Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man” at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘The Music Man’At the Winter Garden Theater, Manhattan; musicmanonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.Hugh Jackman, a.k.a. Wolverine, returns to the stage as the charlatan Harold Hill opposite Sutton Foster as Marian the librarian in Jerry Zaks’s widely anticipated revival of Meredith Willson’s classic musical comedy. It’s a hot ticket, and one of Broadway’s more stratospherically priced shows. (Onstage at the Winter Garden Theater.)Read the review.Art & Museums“The Oath of the Tennis Court” (1791), a presentation drawing in “Jacques-Louis David: Radical Draftsman” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a foundational event of the French Revolution.RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NYCritic’s PickJacques-Louis David: Radical DraftsmanThrough May 15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.“Radical Draftsman,” a momentous and deadly serious exhibition, assembles more than 80 works on paper by this prime mover of French Neo-Classicism, from his youthful Roman studies to his uncompromising Jacobin years, into jail and then Napoleon’s cabinet, and through to his final exile in Brussels. It’s a scholarly feat, with loans from two dozen institutions, and never-before-seen discoveries from private collections. It will enthrall specialists who want to map how David built his robust canvases out of preparatory sketches and drapery studies. But for the public, this show has a more direct importance. This show forces us — and right on time — to think hard about the real power of pictures (and picture makers), and the price of political and cultural certainty. What is beautiful, and what is virtuous? And when virtue embraces terror, what is beauty really for? Read the review.Critic’s PickJonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always RunningThrough June 5 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.A Lithuanian refugee who landed in New York City in 1949, Jonas Mekas became a founder of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Film Culture magazine and Anthology Film Archives. He also made scores of collagelike “diary” films. “The Camera Was Always Running” is Mekas’s first U.S. museum survey, and its curator, Kelly Taxter, approached the daunting task by mounting a high-speed retrospective projected on a dozen free-standing screens.Most of the films in the exhibition are broken up into simultaneously projected pieces, so that the full program of 11 takes just three hours. Many are diary films — abstract kaleidoscopic records of Mekas, his brother Adolfas, also a filmmaker, and the SoHo bohemians and Lithuanian transplants of their circle. Since the point of all this, even more than documenting the variety of Mekas’s life in particular, is to capture the magical incongruity of life in general, Taxter’s inspired staging may even make the works more effective. Read the review.Painted fabric hangings behind the sculpture “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro,” 1976. This entire installation originated as part of a performance piece.Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY, DACS, London and ACA Galleries; Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesCritic’s PickFaith Ringgold: American PeopleThrough June 5 at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, Manhattan; 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org.Ringgold’s first local retrospective in almost 40 years features the Harlem-born artist’s figures, craft techniques and storytelling in inventive combinations. And it makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now. The show begins with a group of brooding, broadly stroked figure paintings from the 1960s called “American People Series.” All the pictures are about hierarchies of power; women are barely even present. Ringgold referred to this early, wary work as “super realist.”In the ’80s, an elaboration on the painted quilt form, called “story quilts,” brought Ringgold attention both inside and outside the art world. It is the vehicle for Ringgold’s most formally complex and buoyant painting project, “The French Connection.” Overall, it feels, in tone, like a far cry from the “American People” pictures, but there’s politics at work in the French paintings, too. Read the review. More

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      ‘We’ Review: Arcade Fire’s Enduring Anxiety

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      The band’s sixth album, “We,” shares many of its predecessor’s thematic fixations on dangerous digital rabbit holes. The music sometimes can’t find its way out, either.Arcade Fire has always sounded at once representative of and defiantly out of step with its own time. It’s easy to slot the group into the aesthetic of the so-called New Sincerity, a post-9/11 ideology that rejected the previous micro-generation’s embrace of hip cynicism and postmodern irony. Arcade Fire, by definition, cared. Numbness and ennui were its boogeymen. Throughout the first decade of its run, the Canadian band released a series of loose concept albums that targeted time-tested opiates of the masses — organized religion on “Neon Bible” in 2007, conformist living on “The Suburbs” in 2010.Still, there was something backward-glancing about the group — not necessarily a bad thing. Arcade Fire was at its sharpest when it was trying to puncture the inherited mythology of the midcentury past. But it was never quite as successful when it shifted its gaze toward the present and began raging against the machines, first on its ambitious 2013 album, “Reflektor,” and again on its less inspired 2017 follow-up, “Everything Now.”Which is why it’s unfortunate that the band doubles down on this approach throughout much of its sixth album, “We,” an LP that wishes to be seen as a course correction but still shares many of its predecessor’s thematic fixations. We are living through an age of anxiety and the end of an empire, we are reminded on songs with grand, explanatory titles like, well, “Age of Anxiety I” and “End of the Empire I-IV.” The first is a searching, forlorn opener with rhythmic backing vocals that huff and puff shallowly, as though they can never quite catch their breath. The nine-minute, multipart suite “End of the Empire” has a few delightful twists, but is ultimately airy and vague, seeking to channel the sort of modernized vision of impending apocalypse that artists like Phoebe Bridgers (“I Know the End”) and Lana Del Rey (“The Greatest”) have recently pulled off more succinctly and sharply.“Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” has some dazzling musical moments, like when a brooding synth line suddenly explodes into the evil twin of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Win Butler and Régine Chassagne co-produced “We” with Nigel Godrich, known for his work with Radiohead, and their collaboration makes the more up-tempo material pop.There are a few instances, though, when head-scratching lyrics take the listener out of what should be an ecstatic moment. The catchiest and most upbeat number on “We” is “Unconditional II (Race and Religion),” a neo-80s pop gem sung by Chassagne with backing vocals from Peter Gabriel. The beat and melodic line are hypnotic, yet the song is built around the hook “I’ll be your race and religion” — a weighty, loaded (or maybe just awkward) statement that is never unpacked enough to make the listener want to sing along.Aside from the galvanizing lead single, “The Lightning I, II,” which many heralded as a return to form, the band sounds most comfortable on the “We” songs that speak in a folk-rock idiom, like the understated closing title track. The sweet, rollicking “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” addresses Butler and Chassagne’s 9-year-old son, imparting to him their own hard-won life lessons while reflecting on the limitations of parental guidance. Call it attentive-dad rock. “There are things that you could do that no one else on earth could ever do,” Butler sings warmly, “But I can’t teach you.”The antidote for the age of anxiety that this record proposes is relatively straightforward: to opt out of the flat and depersonalizing world of the digital rabbit hole and reinvest in IRL personal connection. “I wanna get wild, I wanna get free,” Butler sings on the subdued final track, accompanied by a pastoral-sounding 12-string guitar. “Would you wanna get off this ride with me?” The stakes feel a bit low, though, because I’m not entirely convinced he was ever on the ride to begin with.Most of the most potent recent art about the agony and ever-diminishing ecstasy of being too online — Patricia Lockwood’s brilliant novel “No One Is Talking About This,” the last few albums by the British pop group the 1975 — has spoken the language of the internet vividly, with a specificity that suggests its authors are not entirely apart from the culture they’re critiquing, and that is precisely what makes their eventual protestations palatable. Arcade Fire’s depictions of our techno-dystopia, instead, feel more distant and diffuse.“I unsubscribe,” Butler sings repeatedly throughout “End of the Empire,” and Chassagne underlines it with her backing vocals until the line’s fleeting cleverness wears thin. But what, exactly, are they relinquishing? Despite its occasional moments of brilliance, “We” too often finds Arcade Fire stuck in a digital maze of its own design, ignoring the fact that it’s always sounded more at home off the grid.Arcade Fire“We”(Columbia) More