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      Overlooked No More: Sinn Sisamouth, ‘King’ of Cambodian Pop Music

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      He and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea, drew from a wide range of Western and local influences. They disappeared after the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Before the singer-songwriter Sinn Sisamouth disappeared, he had become a fixture on radio programs and in nightclubs in Cambodia and beyond. For more than two decades, from the 1950s until the mid-’70s, fans praised his smooth voice and evocative lyrics about love and the Cambodian landscape.He and his bandmates — most notably the singer Ros Serey Sothea — stood out for their versatile repertoire of jazz, rock ’n’ roll and popular Khmer ballads, among other styles. Sometimes they would use the melody of a Western song — the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” for example — while adding orchestration and writing original Khmer lyrics for it.They played a major role in defining the sound of Cambodia’s popular music industry, with Sinn Sisamouth emerging as one of the country’s most revered stars.Then, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power, enacting a four-year campaign of execution, forced labor, disease and famine that killed at least 1.7 million people. The work of artists and intellectuals was brutally repressed, and Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea were among the many Cambodians who disappeared amid the violence and upheaval.Even now the circumstances of their deaths are unclear, though family members are certain they are no longer alive. Sinn Sisamouth’s granddaughter Sin Setsochhata said that, based on research by her father, her family believes that Sinn Sisamouth disappeared in the southern province of Kandal, which borders Vietnam. Some believe he died in a labor camp. The Guardian reported in 2007 that he had been shot. By some accounts, before his execution, believed to be in 1976, he pleaded to sing one last song.Many of Sinn Sisamouth’s recordings survived, however, and they still exert a deep influence on Cambodian culture.“He was a pioneer,” the Cambodian musician Mol Kamach said in “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll,” a 2014 documentary film, by John Pirozzi, about Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea and other musicians. “He was an example to other professional singers that singing modern is like this.”Sinn Sisamouth was believed to have been born on Aug. 23, 1933, in the northeastern province of Stung Treng. (Some accounts list his birth year as 1932 or 1935.)His father, Sinn Leang, was a prison warden; his mother was Sib Bunloeu, according to a 1995 article in The Phnom Penh Post. At the age of 7 or 8, Sinn Sisamouth moved to the western province of Battambang, where his uncle helped him develop an early interest in playing traditional Khmer music on stringed instruments like the tro khmer, a type of fiddle, and the chapei, a lute.Sinn Sisamouth arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital, when he was 17 and enrolled in a medical school there with the goal of becoming a hospital nurse, but he never lost his love of music. He performed for sick patients to help them relax, his granddaughter said, and spent his breaks playing his mandolin under a tree.He later began performing live at the headquarters of Cambodia’s newly established national radio, and his profile rose.“When it came to singing technique, Sinn Sisamouth was king,” Prince Panara Sirivudh, a member of the Cambodian royal family, said in the documentary. “His voice was so beautiful, and he wrote very sweet songs.”Popular Western music was imported to Cambodia as early as the 1940s by the royal palace and by Cambodians who could afford to travel to Europe, and the country’s rock ’n’ roll scene began in earnest in the 1950s, according to a study by LinDa Saphan, the associate producer of the documentary and a professor of sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City.The sound blended high-pitched, operatic singing with the distorted electric guitar solos that were popular in American music at the time.Sinn Sisamouth became representative of this new style because he had an ability to write both ballads and upbeat rock songs, Saphan wrote, but the voices of Ros Serey Sothea and other female vocalists on his recordings were the “final touch that made this Cambodian mix so enticing.”Early in his career, Sinn Sisamouth was invited to perform with Cambodia’s royal ballet; he appeared in dapper suits and bow ties, his hair combed back. He also traveled overseas — to India, Hong Kong and beyond — with a traditional band formed by the queen’s son, Norodom Sihanouk, a composer and saxophonist (and future king) who played a major role in developing the country’s cultural industries in the postcolonial era.It was a hopeful time in Cambodia’s history: The country had achieved independence from France in 1953 and was shaping its identity and culture.As Sinn Sisamouth’s popularity grew, his former neighbors in the countryside marveled at hearing his songs on the radio. Some referred to him as “golden voice” or the “Elvis of Cambodia.”“A medical student — how can he sing?” the villagers said at the time, his sister recalled in the documentary.He met Ros Serey Sothea when she was 17 at the national radio station and recorded with her for more than a decade.Though they were never romantically involved, “their musical conversations were love stories filled with a sense of yearning and despair, of palpable loss, yet holding out the possibility of reconciliation,” Saphan wrote.By the early 1970s, amid a scene of go-go bands, big hairdos and youthful exuberance, the duo had produced several hit songs, including a few for Cambodian films. Sinn Sisamouth also wrote and directed the 1974 film “Unexpected Song,” which included some of his original music and a performance by Ros Serey Sothea.The duo’s music has received renewed interest. Sinn Sisamouth is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, “Elvis of Cambodia,” and Ros Serey Sothea is the subject of a graphic novel, “The Golden Voice,” which is scheduled to be published next year.Sinn Sisamouth married one of his cousins, Khao Thang Nhoth, and they had three sons and a daughter, according to The Post. One of his sons, Sin Chanchhaya, also became a musician.For all of Sinn Sisamouth’s performing prowess, he was an introvert who spent most of his time alone, his granddaughter said. Often after having dinner with his family he would retire to his studio to compose.“All the emotions — the spirit, the connection, the interior feelings — were expressed through his music,” she said. More

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      J Balvin Attempts to Reintroduce Himself on ‘Jose’

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      The Colombian star skips innovation and presents an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that established him as a global force on his sixth studio album.If there is one figure in pop music who has perfected the language of feel-good cultural affirmation, it is J Balvin. For over a decade, the 36-year-old Colombian star has claimed he is on a mission to “change the perception of Latinos in music,” using his rainbow aesthetics, smooth reggaeton textures and radio-ready trap hits as ammunition.There have been plenty of milestones, including “Mi Gente” and “I Like It”: his chart-crushing collaborations with Willy William and Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny and Cardi B. Both tracks have become flash points for jejune narratives about “booming” Latino cultural representation: a tale that flattens differences among people of distinct races, languages and countries — and suggests this music is influential only when the Anglo mainstream is paying attention.There was his performance at Coachella 2019, when Balvin became the first reggaeton artist to play the festival’s main stage. There are his cartoonish visuals, leopard-print hairstyles and flowery album covers designed by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. And there are his ad-libs — “J Balvin, man,” “Leggo” and “Latino gang!” — signature catchphrases that have become so trite, they’re essentially begging for meme-ification.“Jose,” his sixth studio album, arrives at a moment when Balvin has finally established himself as a global celebrity. The record considers what is possible when a pop idol, especially one from Latin America, no longer needs to prove himself.At the end of “Jose,” Balvin takes a true gamble. For what may be the first time in his career, he gets deeply personal.So, allow J Balvin to reintroduce himself. “Jose,” Balvin’s first name, is a 24-track behemoth that follows in the vein of other playlists-as-albums — the kind of project intended to dominate streaming platforms, like the recent supersized releases from Kanye West and Drake. But the album struggles to truly innovate: “Jose” is an itinerant, unfocused effort that offers an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that have established him as a force: pop-reggaeton, trap and EDM.The majority of the album (about 13 of its tracks) — like “Bebé Que Bien Te Ves,” “Lo Que Dios Quiera” and “Fantasías” — falls firmly within the sphere of ultrapolished, creamy popetón. It is an unimaginative formula, and one that Balvin has mastered: blend a lilting dembow beat, a candy-coated melody and lyrics about the gushy soap opera of a dance-floor courtship or a sexual fantasy for maximum streams. Elsewhere, Balvin returns to Top 40 trap, another style he’s known for: On “Billetes de 100,” featuring the Puerto Rican star Myke Towers, Balvin offers a self-mythologizing reminder that he can actually rap. “In da Getto,” a resort-ready EDM track produced by Skrillex, elaborates on yet another sound that has helped catapult Balvin to international stardom.Some songs aim for novelty. The opener, “F40,” is a self-assured blast of reggaeton bombast that shifts tempos, slowing to an irresistible, carnal crawl. And “Perra,” a collaboration with Tokischa, is an audacious, X-rated venture into dembow, a street sound born in the barrios of the Dominican Republic that has recently caught the attention of the wider Latin music industry, despite its longtime grasp on popular music in the Caribbean country.It is only in the last third of “Jose” that Balvin takes a true gamble: For what may be the first time in his career, he gets vulnerable and deeply personal. “7 de Mayo,” named for Balvin’s birthday, is a chronicle of his rise from the streets of Medellín to eminence, featuring spoken samples of his mother, Alba, and an awards-show thank you from the reggaeton forefather Daddy Yankee. “In a barrio in the middle of Medallo, this one was born/With sweat on my forehead/Calluses on my hands,” Balvin reminisces in Spanish. While the intimacy is new for Balvin, the song follows the formula of hip-hop origin stories too closely (nearly mimicking Jay-Z’s “December 4th”). It feels like Balvin is being forced to complete a tedious homework assignment, rather than reflecting earnestly on his personal hardships.“Querido Rio,” a soft guitar ballad dedicated to his newborn son with echoes of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” similarly falls flat. Its shallow lyrics and syrupy delivery land with cloying sentimentality: “I don’t just want to be your father/I also want to be your best friend,” Balvin croons in Spanish.For an artist who paints himself as pathbreaking, “Jose” feels remarkably safe. At this point, Balvin does have the power to nuke expectations — those of his own career trajectory, his imagined community and the genres he operates within. Instead, “Jose” colors inside the lines, safeguarding Balvin’s reign by reveling in the familiar.J Balvin“Jose”(Universal Music Latino) More

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      Britney Spears’s Father Files to End Her Conservatorship

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      In a new petition, lawyers for James P. Spears wrote that if the singer “believes that she can handle her own life, Mr. Spears believes that she should get that chance.”Britney Spears’s father, James P. Spears, who agreed earlier this summer to eventually step down from his own role in the conservatorship that has overseen her finances and controlled much of her life since 2008, filed a petition on Tuesday asking the court to “now seriously consider whether this conservatorship is no longer required.”The filing marked a turnaround for Mr. Spears, who long insisted that the guardianship — which was imposed 13 years ago amid concerns over the singer’s mental health and possible drug use — was in his daughter’s best interest. Last month, he said he would eventually step aside from his role overseeing the singer’s finances once there could be “an orderly transition to a new conservator,” but argued that he should not be immediately removed. Until now, he has not said that the conservatorship should end, something that Ms. Spears announced she wanted publicly for the first time in a June court hearing, when she called the arrangement “abusive.”“As Mr. Spears has said again and again, all he wants is what is best for his daughter,” Mr. Spears’s lawyer, Vivian Lee Thoreen, wrote in the new filing. “If Ms. Spears wants to terminate the conservatorship and believes that she can handle her own life, Mr. Spears believes that she should get that chance.”Ms. Spears, 39, has not yet filed her own formal petition to end the conservatorship; she has, however, asked the judge to remove her father as conservator of her estate. He has not served as her personal conservator since September 2019, when Jodi Montgomery, a licensed professional conservator, took over on an ongoing temporary basis.Mr. Spears’s lawyer wrote that Ms. Spears had recently “demonstrated a level of independence that calls into question whether a conservatorship of the person is required.” Ms. Thoreen cited news reports that the singer had been driving — something she had previously been unable to do under the strictures of the conservatorship — and that she had recently chosen her own counsel, Mathew S. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor and Hollywood lawyer who took over as Ms. Spears’s representative in July. When the conservatorship began, Ms. Spears was found to be incapable of hiring her own counsel.“If Ms. Spears has the capacity and capability to engage counsel on her own, she presumably has capacity and capability to handle other contractual and business matters,” Ms. Thoreen wrote.In a statement, Mr. Rosengart called the filing “vindication” for Ms. Spears. “To the extent Mr. Spears believes he can try to avoid accountability and justice, including sitting for a sworn deposition and answering other discovery under oath, he is incorrect and our investigation into financial mismanagement and other issues will continue,” he said.As a movement among the singer’s fans known as #FreeBritney grew online, arguing that the conservatorship should end, Mr. Spears consistently defended his management of his daughter’s life. In the court filing, his lawyer again maintained that the arrangement “helped Ms. Spears get through a major life crisis, rehabilitate and advance her career, and put her finances and her affairs in order.”But, his lawyer wrote, the situation had changed when Ms. Spears spoke out fervently against the conservatorship. In June, Ms. Spears told the court that her father “loved” his control over her life and should be in jail for his actions as conservator. She has vowed not to perform as long as her father is in charge.As recently as last month, Mr. Spears had fought Ms. Spears’s efforts to remove him from the arrangement and sought to deflect blame for Ms. Spears’s complaints on other people with responsibilities, including Ms. Montgomery, who has opposed Mr. Spears’s continued involvement in the conservatorship.But in the new filing, Mr. Spears’s lawyer wrote that the singer should be able to choose her own doctor and manage her therapy. He also supported Ms. Spears’s request that the conservatorship end without a medical evaluation, which experts have said is unlikely.Over the years, Ms. Spears has raised questions about the fitness of her father to serve as her conservator, citing his struggles with alcoholism. Confidential court records obtained by The New York Times indicated that as early as 2014, she said that she wanted to explore removing her father as conservator; in 2016 the singer told an investigator that she wanted the arrangement terminated as soon as possible. She started publicly calling for its end in her rare public appearance in court in June, where she told the judge overseeing her case, “I just want my life back.”The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 29.Liz Day contributed reporting. More

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      The Secret to Yebba’s Debut Album? A Big Voice and Lots of Time.

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      The 26-year-old singer and songwriter endured a family tragedy on the journey between tasting viral success and assembling a complete artistic vision with Mark Ronson.The singer and songwriter Yebba has a story she tells about the moment she realized she was fated to pursue a career in music.It was the summer after her freshman year of college, and she was working at a warehouse, taking apart laptops. She’d started posting clips of her singing to Instagram, and they were beginning to get traction around the internet. One day after work, she was jogging alongside a bean field near her childhood home in Arkansas, and thinking about what the future might entail, when it happened.In a recent video interview, she was reflexively self-aware about how this might sound. “I’m just going to put it in the way that I know how to say it, because I don’t really talk in churchy language as much anymore,” she said, her eyes wandering around her room before making direct contact. “But I really did feel the Lord say, from my stomach, ‘I do want you to be a singer.’ And I had this moment where I just stopped running, and I sat down and prayed, just laying in the dirt.”What followed was not unique among singers who’ve broken out in the digital era. Virality brought surprise attention from established stars like Missy Elliott and Timbaland, which led to invitations to collaborate with other established stars and move to New York, where dreams are made of, as the song goes. But what Yebba, now 26, did next is unusual: She didn’t rush out a debut album with a phalanx of young writers and producers. She waited.After around five years of focusing on her mental health, navigating the pitfalls of the music industry and recording take after take until listening back to her singing was no longer what she called “very embarrassing,” she will release her debut LP, “Dawn,” on Friday. And the spiritual connection that guided Yebba to her career has helped her take her time, regardless of how many people have said “hurry up.”“I just don’t give a damn,” she said of the expectations placed on her as her career has slowly taken shape. Over two interviews Yebba spoke with consideration and purpose, often pausing for several seconds to collect a thought. Occasionally, she would tear up when the conversation turned serious, only to crack a joke a moment later. At one point, she showed off some of the art hanging in her Chelsea apartment: an abstract painting by the artist Shawn Shrum, and a green print she jokingly brushed off as “a basic bitch purchase from Anthropologie.”“They can’t haze me, because I didn’t sign up for a sorority,” she said. “But I did sign up to create things with other people’s money, and that’s all anybody can ask of me — that’s all I can ask of myself, is to hold true to what I’ve agreed to do so far. And the second I’m called to do something else, I’m gone.”Mark Ronson, who produced “Dawn,” said Yebba is steadfast in her taste. “You’re never going to get a sound or a color or a tone past Yebba that she doesn’t like,” he said. “She put her trust in me, but only in the name of realizing her vision.”Though Yebba has logged high-profile collaborations with artists like Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith — and an appearance on Drake’s latest album, “Certified Lover Boy” — “Dawn” doesn’t sound like the debut of a burgeoning pop sensation hopping onto trends. The album has a rich retro palette, draws deeply from jazz and R&B and is set in a dusky register that gives Yebba’s flexible voice room to roam. (On the cathartic “October Sky,” her melody lines gently float along before suddenly ascending in a burst of pyrotechnics.) The LP was inspired by D’Angelo’s “Voodoo,” one of Yebba’s artistic touch points, and recorded at Electric Lady Studios with several members of the “Voodoo” band.“In my head I wish I was a rapper, but really I just write folk songs,” she said.Yebba was born Abbey Smith in West Memphis, Ark. Her father was a preacher, and she grew up singing in the church, becoming a worship pastor by age 15. With fond exasperation, she relayed a story about her intermittent rebellions: “I would say that I want to quit, and he would say ‘Abigail, who’s your favorite singer?’ And I’d say, ‘Aretha Franklin.’ ‘And what did Aretha do before she became Aretha Franklin?’ ‘She sang in her daddy’s church.’”Not long after her moment of divine intervention, Yebba dropped out of college and moved to New York, where she played a 2016 show for the events company SoFar Sounds and sang a hypnotic song called “My Mind.” When video of the performance was eventually uploaded to YouTube that December, it blew up bigger than she could have imagined. “That one song was such a moment of worship, instead of really performative — I felt like God’s presence was there,” she said.But just a few weeks after the SoFar show, Yebba’s mother died by suicide. She went home to West Memphis, where she struggled with her feelings. “A lot of people around me encouraged me to ‘let it go’ — like, what the [expletive] does that mean?” she said. “All I have, as an artist, is a whole bunch of time to reflect.”After “sitting at home in Arkansas, like a robot,” Yebba returned to New York, where she thought a lot about the next step of her nascent career. She sang for A Tribe Called Quest. She went to London to meet with potential labels. But nothing was appealing. More troubling was the realization that her mother’s death was perceived as potential content, in some rooms. At a Grammys event, she said one label head introduced her to another artist by saying, “Her mom just died by suicide, but it’s all good because she’ll be able to write really good songs out of it.”In response, “I dropped my purse, and I ran out,” Yebba said, a look of transparent disbelief scrawled over her face. She needed more time.A crucial turning point came in 2018, when she met Ronson as he was putting together collaborators for what would become his “Late Night Feelings” album. Ronson said their rapport was cemented on their second day together, when Yebba good-naturedly made fun of a jacket he’d worn, telling him he was “trying too hard.” (“When an artist has the talent and the warmth to back it up, I don’t mind,” he said of the dig.) Their sessions led to three songs on Ronson’s album, and the music that would eventually become “Dawn.”“In my head I wish I was a rapper, but really I just write folk songs,” Yebba said.Heather Sten for The New York TimesSome of the tracks took years to complete. “October Sky,” initially written in the wake of her mother’s death, required around 300 vocal takes. “I felt like when I lost my mom, I felt like I had lost everything that meant anything to me before,” Yebba said. But over time, with Ronson’s support, the process eased. “All I Ever Wanted,” the final song written for the record, with stacks of harmonies and a glowing string arrangement, came together in just a few days.The pianist James Francies, a friend of Yebba’s who plays on the album, said she took care to surround herself with the right people. “At any moment, she’s like ‘If this doesn’t feel right, I don’t want to do this,’” he said. “And I’ve always respected and loved that about her, because she’s always put the music first, and she’s always put her peace of mind first.”The album was completed before the start of the pandemic, but Yebba decided to hold its release and prioritize her mental health. “I don’t want to glorify rock bottom, but I was sitting on my couch doing my daily routine of chain smoking cigarettes,” she said. “I was just like, ‘I can either be a professional cigarette smoker and a professional drinker, or I can be a professional singer.’ I don’t agree that artistry has to be miserable, because that’s against every single reason why I was bonded to the music.”But after taking her time, she’s finally ready for the next step. The album’s title doesn’t just refer to the break of day; it was her mom’s name, too. “I feel like now I get to be 26, instead of always being so immersed in grief,” she said. “I no longer feel like my life is some chore that I haven’t completed — that my mom is hanging over my head. There are new ways to honor her.” More

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      Abba Previews First Album in 40 Years, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Charli XCX, Bobby Shmurda, Japanese Breakfast 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.Abba, ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’Before Max Martin’s hit factory ruled radio playlists, another Swedish pop phenomenon had its run: Abba, which is reuniting after nearly 40 years. A new album, “Voyage,” is due on Nov. 5 and quasi-concert dates are scheduled in London in May; the singers will be digitized images backed by a live band. Though the verses of “Don’t Shut Me Down” are about a woman surprising an ex with her return, the choruses also recognize the strangeness of Abba’s reappearance: “I’m not the one you know/I’m now and then combined,” Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sing, backed and produced by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. “And I’m asking you to have an open mind.” Meanwhile, the music reclaims familiar ground: a strutting march with gleaming orchestration and scrubbing disco guitars, stolid and earnestly tuneful. JON PARELESCharli XCX, ‘Good Ones’Charli XCX oscillates between big-gesture pop and artier impulses, but “Good Ones” swings the pendulum back to pop. It’s produced by Oscar Holter, from the Max Martin stable that also concocted the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” and it looks back directly to the 8th-note synthesizers of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Hopping between registers, Charli XCX indicts herself — “I always let the good ones go” — neatly and decisively. PARELESJuls featuring Niniola, ‘Love Me’Everything is rhythm in “Love Me”: the shakers and hand drums, the squiggles of electric guitar, the overlapping call-and-response of the blithely syncopated Nigerian singer Niniola and a saxophone that eventually claims the last word. Juls, a Ghanaian-British producer, neatly balances 1970s Afrobeat, the hand-played, steady-state funk perfected by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, with the multitrack transparency of 20th-century Afrobeats. Even after the song erupts midway through, the groove keeps its sly composure. PARELESFred again.., ‘Billie (Loving Arms)’Sonically rich, big-tent-pop ambitious, soulful house music from Fred again.., a singer and songwriter who has worked with Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, was mentored by Brian Eno and has a soft spot for bright dance music that’s almost physically cheerful. JON CARAMANICATokischa and Rosalía, ‘Linda’On “Linda,” Rosalía — a white European woman who has dominated Spanish-language pop over the last few years — turns to the Dominican musician Tokischa and dembow for street cred. Tokischa is the genre’s resident insurgent, an iconoclast who makes government officials, homophobes and upper-class puritans clutch their pearls. It’s no surprise that “Linda” runs like a sexed-up playground chant; over a dembow-flamenco concoction, the two stars trill, “Nos besamo’, pero somo’ homie’” (“We kiss each other, but we’re homies”). This is the kind of song that sparks necessary reflection about race, power and collaboration — conversations about who these cross-cultural team-ups are designed to make rich, and who, if anyone, they intend to liberate. ISABELIA HERRERABobby Shmurda, ‘No Time for Sleep (Freestyle)’Bobby Shmurda’s first post-prison song — seven years after his breakout single “Hot ___” made him a star — feels like burning off excess energy. This six-minute freestyle is a workout; it’s delivered with a doggedness reminiscent of the fervor of Meek Mill, but leaves little room to breathe. The stakes here are purposely low. Releasing a song like this — no chorus, intense rhymes, cluttered flow — lightens the pressure that would come with seeking to score another hit as massive as his first. For now, he just wants to rhyme. CARAMANICAMartox featuring Gian Rojas, ‘Pausa’All cool grooves and saccharine strings, Martox’s “Pausa” is best enjoyed with a spiked seltzer. The Dominican duo, alongside the producer and vocalist Gian Rojas, collage disco grooves and syncopated bass lines into a prismatic beachfront boogie. HERRERAJhay Cortez, ‘Tokyo’The second track on Jhay Cortez’s new album, “Timelezz,” exemplifies a small rebellion happening in Spanish-language pop. At times, the production is aquatic; at others, its twinkling synths resemble a midnight drive through the streets of the Japanese capital. With a thumping four-on-the-floor rhythm, the track is another sign that reggaeton’s major players are embracing the textures of house music, and stretching the genre’s boundaries beyond the realm of stale pop. HERRERAJapanese Breakfast, ‘Glider’In “Glider,” a song she wrote for the video game Sable, keyboard patterns enfold Michelle Zauner, the singer, musician and producer who records as Japanese Breakfast. There’s wonderment in her voice as she sings about an excursion into the unknown: “It feels like everything is moving/Around me.” The keyboards start out plinking like music boxes, soon to be joined by sustained, cascading chords, an ever-thickening structure that can’t constrain her delight. PARELESAoife O’Donovan, ‘Reason to Believe’In a live-streamed home performance last year, the virtuoso folk singer Aoife O’Donovan played the 10 songs on Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” front to back. She accompanied herself alone on acoustic guitar, as Springsteen had on the original album in the early 1980s, but that’s about where the similarity ends. The original album was desperate and dark, with doubt coursing through its tracks like murky blood; O’Donovan treats them as canon, saluting Springsteen’s songcraft with clear, pitch-perfect articulation and affable delivery. The approach is suited best to “Reason to Believe,” the finale, a Springsteen classic that contemplates the mysterious pull of resilience. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLORuby Landen, ‘Pt. 1’Ruby Landen’s blend of Celtic-tinged acoustic-guitar fingerpicking and bowed strings — cello and fiddle — echoes the introspection of songwriters like Nick Drake. But she has her own story to tell, with an unassuming but pointed voice, in songs like “Pt. 1.” It’s an anatomy of a failed relationship — “Was it the safety of my presence that made you come undone?” — that she relays patiently and quietly. Then she segues into a modal, accelerating instrumental coda, picking behind fiddle and steel guitar, that needs no words to capture the underlying pain. PARELESNate Smith featuring Joel Ross and Michael Mayo, ‘Altitude’On drums, Nate Smith is in the business of inspiriting. Far from flashy, he’s an ebullient technician who keys into the subtleties of his bandmates’ playing and laces joie de vivre into his own. Smith, 46, just released “Altitude,” a breezy original and the latest single from a forthcoming album, “Kinfolk 2: See the Birds.” His band, Kinfolk, is joined here by a pair of young and prodigious improvisers: the vibraphonist Joel Ross and the vocalist Michael Mayo. The music video captures the group recording the song in the studio, just before the coronavirus pandemic struck; when Mayo digs into a short scat solo, improvising flawlessly in little rhythmic zags in the lower register and high-flying longer notes, you can see — and hear — him passing inspiration back and forth with the drummer. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Beach Boys ‘Feel Flows’ Boxed Set Explores the Band’s Reinvention

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      “Feel Flows: The Sunflower and Surf’s Up Sessions, 1969-1971” explores a time of experimentation and reinvention for the band.As the 1970s dawned, the Beach Boys were in crisis.The quintessential American rock band of the ’60s, whose sun-kissed harmonies and string of girls-cars-and-surf hits soundtracked the myth of California as paradise, had lost its lock on the charts. Brian Wilson, its leader, was withdrawn and unstable after an attempt at a super-ambitious album, “Smile,” collapsed in 1967. Facing irrelevance, the band even considered changing its name, to simply Beach.“When you put out a record and it’s not successful like you’re used to, you start questioning yourself,” the vocalist Mike Love said recently. “Are you doing things right? What do we need to change?”What the Beach Boys did next is the focus of a new boxed set, “Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions, 1969-1971.” In purely commercial terms, the band’s first two albums of the ’70s were duds. “Sunflower” (1970) stalled at No. 151 on the Billboard chart, a new low. “Surf’s Up” (1971) fared better, at No. 29, thanks to its semilegendary title song. Neither contained any hits.Yet in 135 tracks, most of them previously unreleased, “Feel Flows” makes a compelling case for this as a crucial but underexamined period of Beach Boys history, a time of experimentation and reinvention that highlighted the talents of the entire band. Along with the 1973 album “Holland,” it may have been the Beach Boys’ last truly progressive phase, before a mid-decade veer into nostalgic conservatism.For more than 50 years, the story of the Beach Boys has been told primarily through Brian Wilson: his vision, his triumphs, his struggles. “Feel Flows” suggests a different path through the contributions of the wider group, particularly Wilson’s two younger brothers, Carl and Dennis, who made huge strides as songwriters and in the studio.The boxed set puts a spotlight on the contributions of Dennis and Carl Wilson to the band’s sound.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThat was by necessity, since Brian Wilson was increasingly absent. The band recorded most of “Sunflower” and “Surf’s Up” in a studio built in Wilson’s Los Angeles home — directly below his bedroom, where Wilson spent most of his time, occasionally darting downstairs when inspiration struck.“Brian really was the Beach Boys — is, was, has been, shall be,” said Al Jardine, the rhythm guitar player, who still tours with Wilson. “He started to retreat from the Beach Boy experience, and the rest of us were still catching up.”In an interview, Brian Wilson said his withdrawal ended up having a positive effect. “It made the band want to play better and harder,” he said.Some songs on “Sunflower,” like “Add Some Music to Your Day,” have a bit of the old Beach Boys magic, with crisp harmonies and “dum-dum-bee-doo” backup parts, but they failed to catch on. Jardine recalled the band feeling reinvigorated after recording that track, only to be crushed when radio stations ignored it.By the time the Beach Boys began working on what became “Sunflower,” the band was nearing the end of a deal with its longtime label, Capitol, and had not had a significant hit since “Good Vibrations” in 1966. Rock was evolving fast, but the Beach Boys — now at the Reprise label, part of Warner Bros. — were perceived as being stuck in the past.“We were probably just seen as the surfer Doris Days, the surfing Kingston Trio,” said Bruce Johnston, the bassist and vocalist who had taken Brian’s place on tour and was starting to write songs for its albums. “It wasn’t ‘cool, my brother’ to play the Beach Boys for a while,” he added.The Beach Boys’ reputation wasn’t helped by Dennis Wilson’s association with Charles Manson and his cult, whose killing spree and subsequent trial were front-page news at the time.Separated from the context of early ’70s radio, though, “Sunflower” has striking highlights, like “All I Wanna Do,” with murky currents of guitars and electronics that seem like a harbinger of chillwave indie-rock. Brian Wilson said that “Forever,” written by Dennis and Gregg Jakobson — a simple, tender ballad with a mournful undertow — is his favorite Beach Boys song by another member.“It’s just a beautiful tune,” Brian added, sounding wistful. Dennis drowned in the ocean in 1983, at age 39, and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998, at 51.If “Feel Flows” has a central character, it is Carl Wilson. The lead guitarist and youngest brother, he was only 15 when the band released its first album, in 1962. And although he was the band’s de facto leader on tour — Brian had quit the road by early 1965 to concentrate on recording — Carl had always seemed the quietest, humblest Beach Boy, known mainly for his angelic lead vocal on “God Only Knows,” from the album “Pet Sounds.” (Dennis, the drummer, was the rowdy heartthrob and the only real surfer of the bunch.)By “Sunflower,” Carl was taking a stronger role in the studio, and he contributed two of the most powerful tracks on “Surf’s Up”: “Long Promised Road,” a gospel-like hymn of perseverance, and the pulsating, mysterious “Feel Flows.”Those songs had lyrics by Jack Rieley, then the group’s manager, who tried to whip the band into contemporary relevancy by getting the members to ditch old gimmicks like wearing matching outfits onstage. He also encouraged socially conscious lyrics, which the band took to heart, though it yielded some howlers. (From the environmental alarm “Don’t Go Near the Water”: “Toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble bath/So let’s avoid an ecological aftermath.”)The song “Feel Flows,” despite purple lyrics (“Unfolding enveloping missiles of soul/Recall senses sadly”), has a strong emotional pull — and an out-there flute solo by the jazz luminary Charles Lloyd — that has made it a favorite among Beach Boys connoisseurs. The director Cameron Crowe used it in the closing credits of “Almost Famous,” both as a period nugget and for how the song reflected the film’s ending theme of openhearted reconciliation.“It’s the feeling that you get of peaceful acknowledgment of the human adventure,” Crowe said. “It’s that feeling that great music gives you, which is that spot way above it all, seeing the whole shape of everything and coming to peace with it all.”The boxed set, produced by Mark Linett and Alan Boyd, who won Grammys for their work on “The Smile Sessions” from 2011, has some gorgeous extras, like an early version of Love’s “Big Sur” that is very different from the one that later appeared on “Holland.” There are also oddities like “My Solution,” a monster-movie novelty recorded by Brian on Halloween 1970, and a 40-second quotation from the Beatles’ “You Never Give Me Your Money,” performed on electric piano — but by whom? The producers think it was Johnston, who said he has no idea.Brian Wilson in the studio. Largely withdrawn after a collapsed attempt at a super-ambitious album in 1967, he stepped back as his bandmates took bigger creative roles in the early 1970s.Iconic Artists Group LLC/Brother Records Inc.The title track of “Surf’s Up” was the best-known song on the album, which didn’t produce any hits.Iconic Artists Group LLC/Brother Records Inc.Johnston, who started to come into his own as a songwriter during this time with songs like “Disney Girls (1957),” recalls the “Sunflower” sessions fondly, as proof of “how friends can do something wonderful together.” (Soon after that album, he left the Beach Boys for a time, and won song of the year at the Grammys in 1977 for “I Write the Songs,” a No. 1 hit for Barry Manilow.)Still, the standouts on “Feel Flows” remain the two Brian Wilson songs that closed the “Surf’s Up” album: “’Til I Die,” a haunting meditation on mortality, and the title track, which by its release had acquired mythic status as Wilson’s ultimate lost masterpiece. The song was written with the lyricist Van Dyke Parks during the “Smile” sessions, in 1966, and Wilson played a version of it at the piano on “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution,” a 1967 television documentary hosted by Leonard Bernstein. After that, the song vanished, even though many other “Smile”-era tracks had been repurposed for subsequent albums.Releasing the track in 1971 was also a calculated branding move, turning surfing lingo on its head to telegraph that the band was moving on. Completing it in the studio was a technical feat that involved Carl singing the lead for the song’s first movement, which had been produced by Brian and recorded with a full complement of studio musicians; the second half was drawn from a solo piano and vocal recording by Brian, with the group adding expansive vocals in the coda.“Surf’s Up” is perhaps the most analyzed song in Brian Wilson’s oeuvre; Bernstein, on “Inside Pop,” said it was “too complex to get all of, first time around.” Its melody is like the arduous scaling of a mountain toward a glorious peak, and Parks’s lyrics suggest an allegory about the challenge facing pop music — and the entire 1960s generation — in being taken seriously.“At that point it represented exploration, a desire to get out of the box,” Parks said in an interview. “It was rebellion and liberation and confirmation, all wrapped up in a melodic wonderment.”By 1971, a polemic about rock as high art — after the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” and “Abbey Road,” after the Who’s “Tommy” — may have seemed moot. Speaking now, Wilson said it came out “right on time,” and it still feels like a philosophical maze.Carl Wilson and Mike Love in the studio. “For whatever reason, people will focus on the negative things. But they would be missing the point of the Beach Boys, which is so overwhelmingly positive,” Love said.Iconic Artists Group LLC/Brother Records Inc.Last year, the Beach Boys signed a reported nine-figure deal with Iconic Artists Group, founded by the industry power broker Irving Azoff, with the band selling the majority of its intellectual property rights, including their trademarks and the rights to much of their music. It is one of a string of high-profile catalog deals recently — Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young and members of Fleetwood Mac have also made agreements — that are changing the financial game for older artists. Executives at Iconic say they view their job as taking care of artists’ legacies, not managing their current careers.What it will mean for the Beach Boys is unclear. Band members — now in their late 70s and early 80s — and others surrounding them mention loose ambitions for television specials, themed restaurants and perhaps a tour tied to the 60th anniversary of their first album. And “Feel Flows” is a reminder of how much Beach Boys history can still be mined to entice audiences that may know the band only from “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and “California Girls.”Yet despite many statements over the years that old hatchets have been buried — the intraband litigation file goes back decades — the Beach Boys are not quite united. There are still two separate touring units: Love, with Johnston, performs under the Beach Boys name, while Brian Wilson plays with Jardine; both are touring this fall. Just a year ago, Wilson and Jardine supported a boycott after Love’s Beach Boys were booked to perform for a group that supports trophy hunting.Neither Wilson nor Love see any conflict. “For whatever reason,” Love said, “people will focus on the negative things. But they would be missing the point of the Beach Boys, which is so overwhelmingly positive.”“To be able to do ‘California Girls,’ ‘I Get Around,’ ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’” he added, “all these great tunes, 50, 60 years later, is pretty miraculous.” More

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      Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi’: How 88rising Crafted an Evocative Soundtrack

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      The Asian arts collective worked closely with the director Destin Daniel Cretton to put its imprint on the anticipated movie.One concert was all it took to spark the idea of the Asian arts collective 88rising overseeing the soundtrack for one of the most hotly watched action movies of the year.It happened in early 2019, when Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of the forthcoming Marvel Studios movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” caught an energetic Los Angeles gig by the Chinese hip-hop group Higher Brothers. “I’ve never been to a show that was primarily made up of Asian Americans who were all just owning themselves,” Cretton said in a recent interview. “Nobody felt like an outsider; I don’t know if you want to call it a punk rock mentality, but everybody was so pumped to be there.”Sean Miyashiro, the 40-year-old founder of 88rising (which includes Higher Brothers on its roster) was there, and when the two met backstage, Miyashiro didn’t need a formal pitch to convince the director of what his artists could do. Cretton “looked like he was hypnotized,” Miyashiro recalled. “He told me he’d never seen a bunch of Asian kids just wilding out like that — thrashing and jumping in the mosh pit. That really stuck with him.”Over the last few years, 88rising has steadily made inroads into the music industry. Its artists rack up millions of streams on listening services; it stages a festival, Head in the Clouds, which will return in November to Los Angeles (the pandemic foiled last year’s event). And the “Shang-Chi” soundtrack is an opportunity to showcase how Miyashiro’s mission for 88rising — to “provide and celebrate Asian creatives, especially in music, no matter where you’re from” — is part of a shift in available creative outlets for Asian Americans across the United States.Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé previously assembled albums that accompanied “Black Panther” and the remake of “The Lion King.” The 88rising roster doesn’t possess a generational megastar (yet), so “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: The Album,” which was executive produced by Miyashiro and 88rising and arrives Friday alongside the movie, functions as a sampler for the label’s offerings.“There’s this trust — that’s what makes the whole machine work,” Niki said.Natt LimRich Brian raps throughout the LP, including on “Run It.”Natt LimRich Brian, whose wry lyricism and laid-back persona made him the first 88rising artist to receive mainstream attention, raps throughout the record. DPR Ian and DPR Live, who Miyashiro calls “two of the most exciting artists coming from Korean R&B,” sound like smooth-voiced Daft Punk robots on “Diamond + and Pearls.” There are also contributions from artists outside of the 88rising universe, such as Anderson .Paak and Jhené Aiko, who serve as a bridge between musical worlds.While the typical orchestral palette — stirring strings, ethereal voices — is used to score “Shang-Chi,” the 88rising album is liberally incorporated throughout the film. The delirious party cut “Run It,” a collaboration between DJ Snake, Rich Brian and Rick Ross, is synced with the hero’s first fight scene, as he battles a group of villains on a city bus. “We were able to go back and forth with Sean and his artists to mold that track, so when you watch that scene, you’ll see very classic scoring techniques but through an electronic song,” Cretton said.In 2015, when 88rising was founded, a close collaboration with a director of a Marvel film might have sounded like an overly ambitious goal. Miyashiro, who was between jobs and “super broke,” as he put it, decided to take the plunge and break ground on his long-gestating dream of centering Asian creatives under one hub.“Nothing existed at the time, which is staggering to think about because this was only six years ago — there was not one media platform or YouTube channel dedicated to this type of creativity,” he said. “So I was like, ‘Man, we should do that.’ And it just took off.”A one-time employee of Vice, where he helped found the electronic music website Thump, Miyashiro had the instincts for identifying and packaging compelling content. After Rich Brian went unexpectedly viral in 2016 with his self-released song “Dat $tick,” Miyashiro signed him to 88rising. In an equally savvy move, he and his team filmed a video where established rappers reacted to the song. (21 Savage, a skeptic in that video, has since collaborated with Rich Brian and also appears on the “Shang-Chi” soundtrack.)Despite its ascendance onto a larger stage, those involved with 88rising stressed that it’s still an independent brand that’s learning how to operate in real-time. “It feels like a family; it’s very tight knit; it’s not like this major company with thousands of employees,” said the 88rising singer Niki, who appears on several songs on the “Shang-Chi” album. “The same people that I’ve worked with four years ago are the same people that I’m still on a text thread with today.”Though 88rising has steadily grown from those early days, the “Shang-Chi” album represented a very different kind of assignment. Miyashiro and Cretton said Marvel was mostly hands-off with the music. However, there were some ground rules. None of the songs could include cursing, and Miyashiro had to install a bank vault’s worth of security programs on his computer before he could see any material from the movie.The pandemic threw the process for a loop, too. After the Covid-19 lockdowns began, Miyashiro didn’t hear from Cretton for months. “Frankly speaking, I forgot about it,” he said. The conversation picked back up over the summer, with Miyashiro and Cretton hashing out the loose thematic framework for the album, which parallels the movie: a young Asian American, beholden to his family lineage and expectations, must grow into his own person.Miyashiro’s mission for 88rising is to “provide and celebrate Asian creatives, especially in music, no matter where you’re from.”Philip Cheung for The New York TimesWarren Hue appears on “Always Rising” (alongside Niki and Rich Brian), “Lazy Susan” (with 21 Savage, Rich Brian and Masiwei) and “Foolish” (with Rich Brian and Guapdad 4000).Natt Lim“We didn’t want to make music about a superhero,” Miyashiro said. Instead, he wanted to depict what it’s like to absorb a particular environment while growing up, citing Kendrick Lamar’s album “good kid, m.A.A.d. city” and the film “Goodfellas” as references. The movie begins in San Francisco, and Miyashiro, who was raised in San Jose, said the Bay Area was a big inspiration: “I took a lot about what I saw and what life at home was like: life with my friends, getting into trouble, mischief, all these different themes wrapped around growing up as an Asian American kid in California.”Beyond that initial template, and the demands of whatever particular scene Cretton happened to be scoring, Miyashiro let his artists have free rein. “There’s this trust — that’s what makes the whole machine work,” Niki said. “He doesn’t really micromanage or anything; he’s very much allowing us to find ourselves, and just be completely what we want to be.”The realities of recording during a pandemic, with a roster that splits time between Asia and America, introduced additional pressures. Warren Hue, a Indonesian-born rapper who’s featured on multiple tracks, recorded in both Jakarta and Los Angeles; Niki said she tracked her vocals with a USB microphone in her guest room in Los Angeles. “We had to take Zoom calls super late at night, into 4 a.m.,” said Miyashiro, who noted that they did rapid testing for every in-person studio session.But sleeplessness has long been a demand of Miyashiro’s quest to expand 88rising and further a musical dialogue between Asian, American and Asian American audiences. It’s exceedingly rare to find a company that puts out pan-Asian music, he pointed out: Korean labels tend to stick with Korean artists, and so forth. “When we’re growing up in America, it’s all Asian homies — we’re kicking it with everybody,” he said. “So naturally, we’ll work with creatives from a lot of different countries, and we’re really proud of that, too.”Cretton, who was born and raised in Hawaii, said he never listened to any Asian American musicians growing up, simply because he wasn’t aware that any existed. “As a kid, you don’t really think you’re missing anything until your brain develops enough to realize, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weak,’” he said.“When I go to an 88rising show, I’m seeing a reflection of myself not only up onstage, but also in those giant crowds of Asian faces,” he added. “There’s an exhilaration and a release that almost feels like a buildup of generations who’d lacked that. It’s very exciting to be at a point where new artists are being celebrated across all cultures.” More

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      ‘Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James’ Review: A Very Kinky Guy

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      A new documentary explores the serious artistry behind this “punk-funk” legend’s outlandish persona.The main title of this Sacha Jenkins-directed documentary derives from a sketch on Dave Chappelle’s still-mourned former show on Comedy Central. He regularly reenacted anecdotes told by the comic Charlie Murphy; in one of these, the funk renegade Rick James did some obscene blustering at a bar before announcing “I’m Rick James, bitch!” The sketch resulted in new visibility for James while also making him a cartoon.But then again, James’s outlandishness constituted the through-line of his visible career. This film strives to make the case for James as a serious artist, a social commentator and funk innovator who never got his due.To this end, the movie spends substantial time on James’s roots in Buffalo, N.Y. The contemporary rap artist Conway, also a Buffalo native, speaks of the miserable segregation of the city. James’s enlistment in the Navy in the early 1960s could be seen as a desperate bid to escape his origins. It was an unsatisfactory one. Going AWOL, he landed in Toronto and formed several musical alliances, among them an R&B inflected band with Neil Young that picked up many stylistic cues from the Rolling Stones. James was the lead singer and more than one interviewee from this time says he consciously imitated Mick Jagger.The period in which James’s woodshedding and partying achieved détente led to “punk funk” hits in the late ’70s. One interviewee insists on a distinction between the frat appeal of “Super Freak” and the deeply felt anger of “Ghetto Life.” But James’s vices soon overwhelmed his art and destroyed his character. MC Hammer’s sampling of “Super Freak” in the early 90s led to a windfall for James, which in turn was vacuumed up by his appetites. Despite a stint in prison and various stabs at sobriety, he died in 2004, an active user.The movie wants the viewer to believe that James didn’t have it easy — and he didn’t. But it can’t skate over the aberrant actions that led to his imprisonment. “Bitchin’” is fascinating and troubling viewing.Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick JamesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Showtime platforms. More