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      Paramore Steps Into a New Era, and 8 More New Songs

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

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      On ‘Fossora,’ Björk Is a Daughter, a Mother and a Universe

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      The Icelandic visionary’s 10th studio album can be thorny and intense, but it finds hope across generations.No way around it: “Fossora,” Björk’s 10th studio album, can be heavy going, thorny and intense. But it’s well worth an effort.“Fossora” continues the songwriter, producer and multimedia visionary’s lifelong project of linking personal experience to larger natural and cosmic processes — to place herself in the universe and the universe within herself. It arrives five years after “Utopia,” a determinedly airy album featuring the sounds of birds and flutes. “Utopia” was a deliberate, gravity-defying rebound and contrast to Björk’s wounded, heartsick, string-laden 2015 album, “Vulnicura,” and “Fossora” is yet another self-conscious change of elemental direction.“Fossora,” derived from the Latin for “digger,” prizes earthiness: the fleshy physicality of life and death, pleasure and suffering, romantic and parental love. To ground the music, Björk’s new tracks often feature low-register instruments like bass clarinets and trombones (though flutes also reappear).Björk’s production and arrangements on “Fossora” present her at her most unapologetically abstruse: closer to contemporary chamber music than to pop, rock or dance music. Her melodies, as always, are bold, declarative, and delivered with passion and suspense. But on “Fossora,” Björk doesn’t necessarily center those melodies as the hooks they could be. And while she collaborates on some tracks with the Indonesian electronic producers Gabber Modus Operandi, she’s not aiming for dance-floor beats.In her new songs, the tempos often fluctuate organically, like breathing. And more than ever, Björk places her voice within a teeming musical ecosystem that’s likely to include a tangle of instrumental polyphony and layered vocals, with every element of the mix insisting on multiplicity.The songs on “Fossora” encompass mourning, self-assessment and hard-won connection and renewal. “Obstacles are just teaching us/So we can just merge even deeper,” Björk declares in “Ovule,” a stately, trombone-weighted consideration of personal and digital togetherness.For much of the album, Björk, 56, contemplates the 2018 death of her mother, Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, and her own generational roles as a child and a mother. (Björk’s children, Sindri and Isadora, appear among the album’s backing vocals.) In “Sorrowful Soil,” Björk summons overlapping, antiphonal choirs for a prismatic yet coolly scientific consideration of motherhood: “In a woman’s life she gets 400 eggs but only two or three nests.” It’s followed by “Ancestress,” with gamelan-like gongs and a string ensemble shadowing Björk’s vocal lines as she recalls moments of her mother’s life and death: “The machine of her breathed all night while she rested/and then it didn’t.”But the album also recognizes obstinate, essential life forces: love, hope and — as a biological analogue — subterranean fungal growth. The album’s graphics and the video for its opening song, “Atopos” (from the Greek for “out of place” or “unusual”), are full of mushroom imagery, and the title song of “Fossora” — an unlikely merger of neoclassical Stravinsky-like woodwinds, ricocheting vocals and sporadic and then brutal electronic thumps — boasts, “For millions of years we’ve been ejecting our spores.” In a song titled “Fungal City,” amid tendrils of clarinet countermelodies and pizzicato strings, Björk exults in a new romance, singing, “His vibrant optimism happens to be my faith too.”That optimism is by no means naïve. In “Victimhood,” the album’s darkest sonorities — six bass clarinets huffing and growling their lowest tones over an impassive ticktock beat — accompany and nearly engulf Björk’s vocals as she struggles with shattered expectations and longs for perspective: “I took one for the team/I sacrificed myself to safe us,” she sings. But she’s trying to “heed a call out of victimhood,” and she finds it as the song ends. Then celebratory flutes greet her in “Allow,” a paean to nurturing as healing: “Allow allow allow you to grow,” she sings. “Allow me to grow.”The album concludes with “Her Mother’s House,” an abstract near-lullaby that envisions children’s rooms as chambers of a mother’s heart. It intertwines the multitracked voices of Björk and her daughter, singing, “The more I love you, the better you will survive.” They find an evolutionary purpose in an emotional bond.“Fossora” doesn’t aim to be a crowd-pleaser. It’s hard to imagine these studio phantasms onstage (though Björk may well find a way). But Björk’s interior worlds are vast.Björk“Fossora”(One Little Independent) More

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      ‘Sirens’ Review: The Risk in Rocking Out in Beirut

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      A documentary about an all-female metal group in Lebanon shows the difficulties of asserting complex identities in a repressive environment.“Sirens,” a documentary by Rita Baghdadi about Slaves to Sirens, an all-female metal group out of Beirut, Lebanon, opens in 2019 with the band united and happy — they’ve been invited by a record label to play a small stage at Glastonbury Festival in England. And while they wind up playing to a handful of people, the band gives its all.Slaves to Sirens is a five-piece, and its neon-haired singer, Maya Khairallah, nails the monster voice that’s so common in contemporary metal. But the movie’s focus is on the band’s two guitarists and main composers, Shery Bechara and Lilas Mayassi. Baghdadi (“My Country No More”) shows how difficult it is to assert their identities in a repressive environment.When the band returns home to Beirut, an environment in constant turmoil — one where they’re barely tolerated, if noticed at all — tensions emerge.Nobody in the band is getting any younger. Lilas still lives with her mother. She has to enact childish subterfuges when her Syrian girlfriend comes to visit to hide the true nature of her relationship. Shery, bristling at Lilas’s bossiness (and perhaps still hurt because the two were once romantically involved), quits.With few other choices, Lilas and Shery find their way back to each other, at least creatively. The ending, in which the reunited Sirens play before an enthusiastic crowd, is heart-tugging and rousing, even for non-metal heads.SirensNot rated. In Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Lizzo Plays New Notes on James Madison’s Crystal Flute from 1813

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      A classically trained flutist, the singer, rapper and songwriter spent more than three hours admiring the flute collection at the Library of Congress. Madison’s instrument was made for the second inauguration by a Parisian craftsman.Lizzo looked uncharacteristically nervous as she crossed the stage in a glittering mesh leotard with tights and sequined combat boots.A classically trained flutist who began playing when she was in fifth grade and considered studying at the Paris Conservatory, she has woven flute into many of her songs, has played virtually with the New York Philharmonic, and her flute, named Sasha Flute, even has its own Instagram page.But waiting for her on Tuesday night was an exquisite (and highly breakable) musical instrument that had arrived at her concert in Washington under heavy security: a crystal flute that a French craftsman and clockmaker had made for President James Madison in 1813.“I’m scared,” Lizzo said, as she took the sparkling instrument from Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, a curator at the Library of Congress, who had carefully removed the flute from its customized protective case. “It’s crystal. It’s like playing out of a wine glass.”As the crowd roared, Lizzo played a note, stuck out her tongue in amazement, and then played another note, trilling it as she twerked in front of thousands of cheering fans. She then carried the flute over her head, giving the crowd at Capital One Arena one last look, before handing it back to Ms. Ward-Bamford.“I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s,” Lizzo proclaimed. “We just made history tonight.”It was a symbolic moment as Lizzo, a hugely popular Black singer, rapper and songwriter, played a priceless instrument that had once belonged to a founder whose Virginia plantation was built by enslaved Black workers. And the flute had been lent to her by Carla D. Hayden, the first African American and first woman to lead the Library of Congress.The moment came together after Dr. Hayden asked Lizzo on Friday to visit the library’s flute collection, the largest in the world, with about 1,700 of the instruments.Dr. Hayden wrote on Twitter: “@lizzo we would love for you to come see it and even play a couple when you are in DC next week. Like your song they are ‘Good as hell.’”Lizzo responded without much hesitation.“IM COMING CARLA! AND IM PLAYIN THAT CRYSTAL FLUTE!!!!!” she wrote.Lizzo arrived on Monday, with her mother and members of her band. Dr. Hayden and staff members ushered her into the “flute vault,” and gave her a tour of the collection, which includes fifes, piccolos and a flute shaped like a walking stick, which Lizzo said she might want as a Christmas present.Lizzo spent more than three hours at the library, trying out several instruments, staff members said.She played a piccolo from John Philip Sousa’s band that was used to play the solo at the premiere of his song, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” And she played a plexiglass flute, made in 1937, filling the ornate Main Reading Room and marble Great Hall with music, to the delight of library workers and a handful of researchers who happened to be there.“Just the enthusiasm that Lizzo brought to seeing the flute collection and how curious she was about it,” Ms. Ward-Bamford said in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s been wonderful.”Most of the collection — including Madison’s crystal flute — was donated in 1941 by Dayton C. Miller, a physicist, astronomer and ardent collector of flutes.The flute’s silver joint is engraved with Madison’s name, title and the year 1813.Library of CongressMadison’s flute had been made for his second inauguration by Claude Laurent, a Parisian craftsman who believed that glass flutes would hold their pitch and tone better than flutes made of wood or ivory, which were common at the time.The flute’s silver joint is engraved with Madison’s name, title and the year 1813. “It’s not clear if Madison did much with the flute other than admire it, but it became a family heirloom and an artifact of the era,” the library said.The library believes that the first lady, Dolley Madison, might have rescued the flute from the White House in 1814, when the British entered Washington during the War of 1812, although it has not found documentation to confirm the theory.Only 185 of Mr. Laurent’s glass flutes remain, the library said, and his crystal flutes are especially rare. The Library of Congress has 17 Laurent flutes, it said.When Lizzo asked if she could play Madison’s crystal flute at her concert on Tuesday, the library’s collection, preservation and security teams swung into action, ensuring the instrument could be safely delivered to her onstage.“It was a lot thrilling and a little bit scary,” Ms. Ward-Bamford said.Or as Lizzo told her cheering fans after she played the instrument: “Thank you to the Library of Congress for preserving our history and making history freaking cool. History is freaking cool, you guys.” More

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      Ray Edenton, ‘A-Team’ Studio Guitarist in Nashville, Dies at 95

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      In a career that spanned four decades, he played on thousands of sessions and accompanied many of the biggest names in country music.NASHVILLE — Ray Edenton, a versatile session guitarist who played on thousands of recordings by artists like the Everly Brothers, Charley Pride, Neil Young and Patsy Cline, died on Sept. 21 at the home of his son, Ray Q. Edenton, in Goodlettsville, Tenn. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Ronda Hardcastle.A longtime member of Nashville’s so-called A-Team of first-call studio professionals, Mr. Edenton contributed discreet, empathetic rhythm guitar to myriad hits in a career that spanned four decades. His name was less known than his musicianship, but generations of listeners knew the records he helped make famous, a body of work estimated to exceed 10,000 sessions.Ms. Cline’s “Sweet Dreams,” Webb Pierce’s “There Stands the Glass,” Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler,” Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” were among the blockbuster country singles, many of them also pop crossover successes, that featured his guitar work.“I did 22 sessions in five days one week,” Mr. Edenton, who retired in 1991 at age 65, said in looking back on his years as a studio musician during an interview at an event held in his honor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2007.“That’s four a day for three days and five a day for two days,” he went on. “You don’t go home on five-a-days, you sleep on the couch in the studio.”On the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love,” both of which reached the pop, country and R&B Top 10 in 1957, Mr. Edenton played driving, syncopated acoustic guitar riffs alongside Don Everly.“I lived for quite a few years off those licks I stole from Don,” he said at the 2007 event.It was in fact the two men matching each other note for note that gave those big-beat Everly classics their distinctive stamp.Although primarily a rhythm guitarist, Mr. Edenton was occasionally featured on lead guitar, notably on Marty Robbins’s 1956 recording “Singing the Blues,” which was galvanized by his careening electric guitar solo. His lead work on 12-string acoustic guitar was heard on George Hamilton IV’s 1963 hit “Abilene” — a record that, like “Singing the Blues,” topped the country chart and also reached the pop Top 20.Mr. Edenton was also a songwriter. His chief credit was “You’re Running Wild,” a Top 10 country single for the Louvin Brothers, written with his brother-in-law at the time, Don Winters, in 1956. (He also played rhythm guitar on the recording.)Mr. Edenton in the studio with the singer Charlie Louvin. He co-wrote “You’re Running Wild,” a Top 10 country single for Mr. Louvin and his brother Ira, in 1956.Hubert Long Collection, Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumMr. Edenton’s work as a session musician reached beyond country music, with singers like Julie Andrews, Rosemary Clooney, Sammy Davis Jr. as well as rock acts like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Sir Douglas Quintet. He played on Mr. Young’s acclaimed 1978 album, “Comes a Time.”He also took part in the Nashville sessions that produced the album “Tennessee Firebird,” a pioneering fusion of country and jazz released by the vibraphonist Gary Burton in 1967.“Everybody in the world came here, and we recorded with all of them,” Mr. Edenton said of Nashville’s studios in his Country Music Hall of Fame interview. “You might do a pop session in the morning and bluegrass in the afternoon and rock ’n’ roll at night.”In 2007, Mr. Edenton, who played mandolin, ukulele and banjo as well as guitar, was inducted with the rest of the A-Team into the Musicians Hall of Fame.Ray Quarles Edenton was born on Nov. 3, 1926, in Mineral, Va., a gold-mining town about 50 miles northwest of Richmond. He was the youngest of four children of Tom Edenton, a sawmill operator, and Laura (Quarles) Edenton, a homemaker.Young Ray taught himself to play ukulele and guitar at an early age and later provided music for square dances with his two older brothers, who played fiddle and guitar.In 1946, after serving in the Army, he joined a band called the Rodeo Rangers, which performed at dances and on the radio in Maryland and Virginia. Two years later he became the bassist for the Korn Krackers, an ensemble led by the guitarist Joe Maphis that appeared on the Richmond radio show “Old Dominion Barn Dance.” He began working at WNOX in Knoxville in 1949 before being treated for tuberculosis in a Veterans Administration hospital, where he spent 28 months.Mr. Edenton with the singer Jeanne Pruett and others. “Everybody in the world came here, and we recorded with all of them,” Mr. Edenton said. “You might do a pop session in the morning, and bluegrass in the afternoon, and rock ’n’ roll at night.”Hubert Long Collection, Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumMr. Edenton moved to Nashville in 1952 and became a guitarist at the Grand Ole Opry while also working in the touring bands of, among other luminaries, Hank Williams and Ray Price. A notable early recording session was “One by One,” a honky-tonk weeper that was a No. 1 country hit for Red Foley and Kitty Wells in 1954.Most country acts of the era did not feature drummers in their lineups. Mr. Edenton’s nimble, unobtrusive guitar playing, inspired by the cadences of a snare drum, created a steady demand for his services among record companies, especially when he was tapped to fill the vacancy created on the A-Team when the guitarist Hank Garland suffered disabling injuries in a car accident in 1961.Besides his daughter and his son, Mr. Edenton is survived by his wife of almost 50 years, Polly Roper Edenton. His marriage to Rita Winters, a country singer who performed under the name Rita Robbins, ended in divorce.“People often ask me about session musicians and why, back in those days, only a few people made all the records,” Mr. Edenton said in 2007, reflecting on his heyday with Nashville’s A-Team.“It was several things. You had to learn real quick. You had to adapt real quick. And if you couldn’t do that, you couldn’t do sessions.” More

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      Tedeschi Trucks Band Brings Something New to the Beacon: A Four-Part LP

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      “I Am the Moon,” inspired by the 12th century Persian poem “Layla and Majnun,” gave the roots rockers focus, perspective and a host of new songs to play at their New York residency.In August 2019, Tedeschi Trucks Band performed “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” — the 1970 double album by Eric Clapton’s group Derek and the Dominos — in its entirety at the Lockn’ Festival in Virginia.The record is particularly meaningful to the married couple at the heart of Tedeschi Trucks: Derek Trucks (whose name was inspired by the Dominos) had played much of the material as a member of Clapton’s touring band; the second lead guitarist on the recordings was Duane Allman, founder of the Allman Brothers Band, in which Trucks played for 15 years with his uncle, Butch, on drums. Susan Tedeschi, meanwhile, was born on the very day the album was released.When the pandemic struck seven months later, the 12 members of the hard-touring Tedeschi Trucks Band were scattered and stuck at home for an indefinite future, so the guitarist and vocalist Mike Mattison suggested they all read something together and see what ideas or inspiration it might spark. The text he proposed was the 12th century Persian poem “Layla and Majnun,” which gave the beloved album its title and central theme of unrequited love. Clapton likened the epic narrative to his own infatuation with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison.The group, which blends Americana, roots- and blues-rock, had never used this kind of writing prompt, never tried to write in such a directed fashion. But as the lockdown dragged on, the exercise unleashed a wild creative outburst, eventually leading to 24 new songs, which were released over the summer as a series of four albums titled “I Am the Moon,” each with its own companion film. The final installment, subtitled “Farewell,” came out earlier this month, along with a boxed set that encompasses the entire project.“It was a hard reset for us,” Trucks said in a recent telephone call from the home that he, Tedeschi, and their two children share in Jacksonville, Fla. “Between that music being so important to us personally and the amount of isolation and madness in the story, it seemed to resonate with us and with the whole world in a lot of ways.”In a separate call, Tedeschi pointed to the parallels between the scope of the poem and the past few years. “Here’s all of us in isolation, at home, contemplating everything that’s going on,” she said. “And you have Layla and Majnun, who are separated, and he’s out in the desert by himself, going mad and losing his mental health. She’s locked away in a tower and can’t be with the person she wants to be with. And her dad and these other men basically tell her what she can do — we haven’t really come that far since the 12th century. So it seemed like we could go in a hundred different directions, but still be coming from that same source.”Starting this Thursday, the material from “I Am the Moon” — much of it being played live for the first time — will be the centerpiece of a seven-show stand by Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Beacon Theater, the 11th time in their career that the group will perform a multiple-night run at the Upper West Side landmark. (The Oct. 3 show will mark their 50th appearance at the venue.) It’s an extension of a tradition started by the Allman Brothers, who played more than 230 shows at the Beacon over 25 years, a familiar setting for the freewheeling, Grammy-winning ensemble to settle in and stretch out.Trucks, 43, has influences that extend far beyond American roots music into Indian and Eastern styles and avant-garde jazz (two installments of the “I Am the Moon” series have subtitles, “Crescent” and “Ascension,” borrowed from John Coltrane album titles). He joined the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Allman Brothers Band in 1999, before turning 20.Tedeschi, 51, came up in Boston as more of a straight-ahead blues player. She has six Grammy nominations of her own, and as a solo act, opened for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. The couple were married in 2001 and, after touring together as the Soul Stew Revival, they merged their groups into Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010.“Susan and Derek both always seem to go to the place you want to go when playing music, and the whole band is with them at every step,” Norah Jones wrote in an email. “It’s that magical space above the norm that only can exist when one is open to a true musical exchange onstage. Everyone appreciates what everyone else is doing and it’s obvious. And the way Susan’s voice slices through the huge sound of the band and just soars is unreal.”There’s often been a sense, though, that the band’s recordings haven’t matched what they’re capable of onstage. “That’s kind of been the rap on our group,” Mattison said, “that we’re a great touring band and a great live band and when it comes time to do an album, we kind of go, ‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ The creative part, generating songs and things, has always kind of been an afterthought, but this time it was really intentional. At first, we didn’t quite know how to do it, but it took it on its own logic and started fueling itself.”Tesechi and Trucks agreed that diving into the themes of “Layla and Majnun” had an impact beyond the music, forcing them to think harder about their own marriage and relationships. “It actually made us stronger, and made us better listeners to each other,” Tedeschi said. “It made us incredibly thankful for our band, and for each other and our kids, but at the same time, it made you see the weaknesses and the strengths, and start working on the things that you have to work on. I think it was a healing thing for all of us.”“The Beacon is home turf in a lot of ways, but it’s always a little bit intimidating because there’s so much history there,” Trucks said.Anna Ottum for The New York TimesTrucks went further. “I think it kind of saved the band,” he said, pausing for the screeching sound of a hawk fight happening overhead. “I’m not really sure what we would have done if we had come out of the pandemic without new material and a new outlook. I’m not sure how long we would have just plugged away, business as usual.”Bringing the “I Am the Moon” material and this re-energized attitude to the Beacon residency comes with both excitement and a certain degree of pressure. “The Beacon is home turf in a lot of ways, but it’s always a little bit intimidating because there’s so much history there,” Trucks said.“Every one of those dressing rooms I have memories in, whether it’s our son, Charlie, being there when he was 10 or 12 days old or introducing Gregg and Butch to our kids,” he added, referring to Allman and his uncle. “There’s not many corners I can turn in the Beacon where some image doesn’t come to mind of important moments in my life — and lately, a lot of times that’s with people that aren’t here anymore, so you feel those ghosts.”Extended stays in one city (the band also does annual shows at the Chicago Theater) often lead to surprise guests or unexpected song choices. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” Tedeschi said, “but that’s kind of the fun of it. I’m going to call up some of my friends and see who shows up.”Trucks notes, however, that even before adding any other elements to the Beacon shows, the dozen or so songs from “I Am the Moon” that they still needed to rehearse would make things unpredictable enough. “When you’re doing seven nights, it forces you to dig deep,” he said. “But this year, we have so much new material, there’s already a built-in to-do list. We’re already on the high wire.” More

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      K-pop Queens Blackpink Hit No. 1 With CDs and ‘Signed’ Digital Albums

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      The girl group tops the Billboard 200 for the first time with “Born Pink,” which had 102,000 equivalent sales — including 64,000 on CD.It may be a streaming world, but getting to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart these days often comes down to selling a lot of vinyl LPs or even those semi-passé silver data platters known as CDs.Back in April, Tyler, the Creator catapulted 119 spots to the top when his album “Call Me if You Get Lost” came out on vinyl nearly a year after its initial release. The following month, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” had solid streaming numbers but relied on vinyl to nab the year’s biggest opening (still). And in June, the K-pop kings BTS landed at No. 1 with mediocre streams but big CD sales of a compilation album, “Proof.”This week, another K-pop group, the four-woman Blackpink, rockets to the top with physical sales.“Born Pink,” the quartet’s second full-length studio album, becomes its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 102,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 37 million streams — a modest sum, representing only about a quarter of the group’s composite sales number for the week. The rest is attributed to old-fashioned purchases of “Born Pink” as a compete unit, including 64,000 made for the 17 different configurations of the album on CD.As Billboard noted, many of these CD editions came in collectible packages — with alternative covers, autographs and other goodies like postcards and stickers — that were initially priced as high as $50, but were discounted over the course of last week. Blackpink also sold a “signed digital album” through its website for $4.99, and marked its standard downloadable album down to $3.99.Those sales helped push “Born Pink” past Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the streaming behemoth that has occupied the top slot on and off for 11 weeks. In its 20th week on the chart, “Un Verano” falls to No. 2 with the equivalent of 93,000 sales, mostly from streams.Another K-pop group, NCT 127, opens at No. 3 this week with “2 Baddies”; most of its 58,500 equivalent sales were for CDs, with the album’s 12 tracks garnering fewer than four million streams. By comparison, the 23-track “Verano” has been averaging 130 million to 140 million clicks a week for the last couple of months.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in fourth place, notching its 88th time in the Top 10 since early 2021. Since the Billboard 200 began in 1956, only five other titles have appeared more times in the chart’s Top 10. All of them were movie soundtracks or Broadway cast recordings from 1965 or before, like “South Pacific,” with 90 weeks charting that high, and “My Fair Lady,” with 173.Also this week, the Weeknd’s hits collection “The Highlights” is No. 5. More

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      Jim Post, Known for a Memorably ‘Groovy’ Hit Song, Dies at 82

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      He and his wife, Cathy Conn, had a Top 10 single with “Reach Out of the Darkness” as Friend & Lover in 1968. It’s still played today, but it was their only hit.Jim Post, best known as half of the duo Friend & Lover, whose only hit was a memorable one — “Reach Out of the Darkness,” which proclaimed with flower-power earnestness, “I think it’s so groovy now that people are finally gettin’ together” — died on Sept. 14 in Dubuque, Iowa. He was 82.His former wife Janet Smith Post, with whom he wrote two children’s books, said his death, in hospice care, was caused by congestive heart failure.“Reach Out of the Darkness,” which rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1968, featured Mr. Post and his wife at the time, Cathy Conn, singing lyrics that say, in part:Don’t be afraid of loveDon’t be afraid, don’t be afraidDon’t be afraid to loveListen to meEverybody needs a little love.Although the lyrics say “Reach out in the darkness,” an executive of Verve Forecast Records, the label that released the record, gave it the title “Reach Out of the Darkness.” That title suggested something different to Mr. Post, who wrote the song.“Reach out in the places where you’re not enlightened,” he explained to The South Bend Tribune in 2009. He then recited the chorus: “Reach out in the darkness, reach out in the darkness, reach out in the darkness and you may find a friend.”The song fared better than the duo’s album of the same name, and after a few more singles that were not successful, Friend & Lover disbanded and Mr. Post and Ms. Conn divorced. Ms. Conn died in 2018.Mr. Post injected extra elements into “Reach Out” for a 2009 recording, giving it a radically new arrangement and merging it with “Get Together,” the late-1960s Youngbloods hit that urged listeners, “Everybody get together / Try to love one another right now.” He called the medley “Reach Out Together.” He said at the time that “Reach Out,” mashed up with a song from the same era with a similar sensibility, was as relevant as it had been in 1968.“What is the theme of our country now?” he asked. He answered his own question: “Coming together.”“Reach Out of the Darkness” received new life in 2013 when it was heard over the closing credits of a sixth-season episode of “Mad Men” while Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination was being reported on television. Writing on the arts and culture website Across the Margin, L.P. Hanners said that the upbeat 45-year-old song “was perfectly paired with the duality featured in the final scene of ‘Man With a Plan.’”The song was also heard on the soundtrack of the 2015-16 TV series “Aquarius,” which starred David Duchovny as a homicide detective on the trail of Charles Manson in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.Jimmie David Post was born on Oct. 28, 1939, in Houston and grew up on a farm about 20 miles outside the city. His father was a longshoreman, his mother a homemaker.A singer from an early age, Jim won a school talent contest in first grade, which led to a performance on a local radio show. Later, he told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1972, he was a “successful evangelistic singer” who had performed in more than 500 churches around the United States by the time he was 22.In the early 1960s, Mr. Post became part of a three-man folk group, the Rum Runners, which in 1963 released a version of the traditional song “You Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Around” as a single on Mercury Records. When they played at a club in Kansas City, Mo., a year later, Dick Brown of The Kansas City Star wrote, “To a major extent, the vocals depend on the remarkable tenor voice of Jim Post.”While on tour in Canada with the Rum Runners, Mr. Post met Ms. Conn, a dancer, and left the group to be with her. They soon began performing as Friend & Lover and made their name at the Earl of Old Town, a folk club in Chicago where singers like Steve Goodman and John Prine also performed.Although Friend & Lover was a folk act, their records used studio musicians and achieved more of a pop sound — and, at least at first, pop success.After the breakup of both Friend & Lover and his marriage to Ms. Conn, Mr. Post became a solo act and returned to folk music.“Jim was a wonderful character with a wide vocal range,” the folk singer Bonnie Koloc, who watched Mr. Post perform both with Ms. Conn and alone at the Earl of Old Town, said in an interview. “He was such an enthusiastic performer. We all loved him.”Mr. Post, who was married and divorced five times, is survived by a daughter and a grandson.He later changed directions, conceiving and touring with one-man musical shows. The first, in 1986, was “Galena Rose: How Whiskey Won the West,” about a 19th-century lead-mining rush in Galena, Ill., where he lived for many years.Then, in the mid-1990s, when he began to look like Mark Twain, Mr. Post created “Mark Twain and the Laughing River,” a show that married his songs to Twain’s words. The CD of the show earned him an American Library Association award for notable recordings.He followed that about a decade later with “Mark Twain’s Adventures Out West.”“Reach Out of the Darkness” remained a notable part of Mr. Post’s life 54 years after its release, through continued airplay and the royalties he received.“Two months ago, he got a check for $6,000,” his friend Bob Postel said in an interview.He added: “He was always proud that he wrote it and it surprised the hell out of him that it was a hit. That song paid for a lot of gas.” More