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      Why Electro’s Exacting Duo Justice Wanted to Break Its Own Rules

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      For “Hyperdrama,” Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay’s first album in eight years, the duo added genre experiments and guests to its arsenal of bangers.The sun was setting on the opening night of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend and the mood backstage in Justice’s artist compound was simmering anxiety, masked by glasses of wine and discrete vaping.In a few hours, the Paris-based electronic music duo would debut an all-new stage show and give fans an early taste of “Hyperdrama,” its new studio album, out April 26. The setting was meaningful: Justice played its first real show at Coachella in 2007 just before releasing “Cross,” the album that propelled it to the forefront of the electro scene, and this appearance would be its first big concert since 2018.In the eight years since Justice’s “Woman” LP arrived, dance music subgenres have risen and fallen in favor, yet the pair has remained indifferent, focused strictly on its own trajectory. “Hyperdrama,” a 13-track album with guest appearances by Miguel, Thundercat and Tame Impala, riffs on its longtime aesthetic — melodic hooks, funky bass lines, the occasional blown-out fuzzy beat — and stretches out in fresh ways.Though Justice’s Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay were joined by friends and former collaborators, many of whom had flown in from France, the two remained on the fringes of the backstage gathering, periodically conferring with their longtime lighting designer, Vincent Lérisson, or Pedro Winter, the manager who discovered them in the early 2000s. The new show is a complex production built largely around Lérisson’s massive, swirling display, which took over 18 months to create and involves 11 tons of lights and kinetic motors on trusses. Justice prides itself on its precision, and knew there were hundreds of things that could go wrong.The pair finally took the stage just before 10:30 p.m. and faced each other in Celine suits and sunglasses, unleashing intertwining grooves from across its discography. Songs from “Hyperdrama,” like the four-on-the-floor thump of “Neverender” and the relentless “Generator,” fit seamlessly with “D.A.N.C.E.,” the buoyant single that earned its first Grammy nominations, and the scuzzy strut of “Phantom.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      St. Vincent Dives Headfirst Into the Darkness

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      On a recent Tuesday night in a dressing room of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, Annie Clark, the 41-year-old musician who records as St. Vincent, thumbed through a shelf of secondhand records and sipped a glass of pink champagne. Clark, invited to D.J. the venue’s grand reopening party, was the room’s first inhabitant since a major renovation restored the former movie palace; a pristine, new-car smell lingered.Holding court among a few members of her team and her 23-year-old sister, Clark was an attentive host in this antiseptic space, ready with a witty remark (the carefully curated LPs were probably “someone’s deceased grandma’s record collection”) or a topped-off beverage. She wore a cream-colored silk blouse, black kitten-heeled shoes and a gauzy black bow tied artfully around her neck.Even in a moment of relative repose, Clark possessed a feline hyper-awareness of her surroundings. Dave Grohl, who plays drums on two tracks off St. Vincent’s blistering new album “All Born Screaming,” later told me in a phone interview, “When you’re talking to her and you’re looking in those eyes, you can only wonder what reels are whirring in her brain, every second.” He added, amused, “I’ve never seen her with her eyelids half closed.”Clark is a gifted and nimble guitarist with a dexterously spiky playing style that contrasts with the moony smoothness of her voice. She is also known for the absolute commitment of her live performances. “What she does is so transformative,” said the musician Cate Le Bon, Clark’s close friend of over a decade, in a video interview. “When I see her play, it freaks me out sometimes. I can be even helping her get ready for a show, and it’s like I know nothing of the woman who’s onstage.”“All Born Screaming” began with a sonic puzzle: “How do I render the sound inside my head?”Raphael Dias/Getty ImagesSeven albums and 17 years into an acclaimed solo career, Clark has eked out a singular space in music, occasionally intersecting with the mainstream but for the most part staying uncompromisingly countercultural. She has collaborated with both David Byrne and Dua Lipa; the riot grrrl pioneers Sleater-Kinney and the post-post-riot-grrrl pop star Olivia Rodrigo. She was one of four female musicians asked to front Nirvana for a night in 2014 when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “She’s obviously outrageously talented,” Grohl said. “For her to play a Nirvana song was, maybe, a lot less complicated than her own music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vampire Weekend’s New Album Goes Underground and All Over

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicVampire Weekend recently released its fifth album, “Only God Was Above Us.” From the band that got started nearly two decades ago at Columbia University but now resides in Los Angeles, it’s an LP that ponders hitting 40, the lessons of history, generational legacies, myths and memories of New York City and Vampire Weekend’s own peculiar status as both an indie-rock success story and an arty pop outlier. It’s also the band’s noisiest album — and perhaps its kindliest.On this week’s Popcast with the guest host Jon Pareles, three critics discuss Vampire Weekend’s latest conundrums, counterpoint, sonic extremes and hidden jam-band core — and its fascination with tunnels.Guests:Amanda Petrusich, staff writer at The New YorkerMatthew Strauss, deputy managing editor of PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Sons of Paul McCartney and John Lennon Release New Song

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      James McCartney teamed with Sean Ono Lennon for “Primrose Hill,” a ballad with echoes of the Beatles aesthetic.For six decades, the partnership summarized by the songwriting credit “Lennon-McCartney” has been pop music’s gold standard. So there was some surprise last week when fans woke up to a brand-new track from McCartney and Lennon — if not the same duo.James McCartney, the son of Linda McCartney and the Beatles’ Paul McCartney, released the song, “Primrose Hill,” last Thursday. He co-wrote it with Sean Ono Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and the Beatles’ John Lennon.James, 46, announced the single — a dreamy ballad with echoes of the Beatles’ style — on social media the day after its release. Its B-side, “Beautiful,” came out in February.“With the release of this song it feels like we’re really getting the ball rolling and I am so excited to continue to share music with you,” he wrote.James began releasing his own music with a 2010 EP titled “Available Light,” which he recorded partly at Abbey Road. His first full album, “Me” from 2013, was produced by David Kahne, a former record executive who has worked with the Strokes, Linkin Park, Lana Del Rey and yes, Paul McCartney. (The album featured vocals, guitar and drums from his father.) Its follow-up, “The Blackberry Train,” came out in 2016. James previously contributed to albums by both of his parents, including “Flaming Pie” and “Wide Prairie.”Through a representative, McCartney and Ono Lennon declined to comment on the new track.Paul McCartney did tout his son’s fresh work on social media, adding: “lots of love to Sean Ono Lennon.”Perhaps the most poignant reaction to the track, and to the opportunity and burden of the Beatles legacy, came from yet another band scion: the drummer Zak Starkey, who is the son of the drummer Ringo Starr.One observer had ruefully commented on an Instagram post from an unofficial Paul McCartney fan account, “Sad ya can’t just walk your own road.”Starkey — an accomplished drummer who has toured with the Who and Oasis — replied, the Beatles are a “wall u cannot go thru over or under — I was 25 when I came to terms with that.” More

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      Taylor Swift Sells a Rainbow of Vinyl Albums. Fans Keep Buying Them.

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      Artists across pop genres are finding success with colored vinyl and different variants of their releases. For Swifties, the urge to collect them all is strong.When Taylor Swift released nine vinyl editions of her album “Folklore” in 2020, Tylor Hammers, a fan in Florida, took notice. But it wasn’t until “Midnights” two years later that he became a true collector, scouring the internet and retail shops for every variation of her albums he could find — spending about $1,000 in the process — and cataloging the technicolor expanse of Swift’s LP output in an online discography.“I get enjoyment out of being a completionist,” Hammers, 24, said in a recent interview.He’s not the only one.Although streaming remains the dominant music format, physical media has been a growing niche where the industry can cater to so-called superfans, who express their dedication to artists by shelling out big bucks for collectible versions of new releases, sometimes in multiple quantities. K-pop acts like BTS pioneered this strategy by putting out an array of elaborate CD packages, often featuring goodies like postcards and photo booklets, which helped the boy band repeatedly go to No. 1.But nobody does it quite like Swift, or at least at the same scale. Last year she sold 3.5 million LPs in the United States, thanks in part to five pastel-hued variants of “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of her 2014 album, and the popularity of Swift’s entire catalog during her record-breaking Eras Tour.When Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” comes out on Friday, it will be available in a portfolio of different versions — on vinyl, CD and even cassette — with bonus tracks and, on certain “deluxe” editions sold through Swift’s website, trinkets like magnets, photo cards and engraved bookmarks. Some items, like a standard CD, go for as little as $13. But last weekend, Swift’s site offered a limited run of autographed LPs for $50, which, according to fans on social media, vanished in 20 minutes.“The Tortured Poets Department” comes out on Friday in a number of different versions and formats including CD, left, and cassette. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Avoided a Collision on the Charts. (Again.)

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      Pop’s two reigning queens are often cast as rivals, but they have continually supported each other — and spaced out their album releases.In February, Taylor Swift took the stage at the Grammy Awards to accept the prize for best pop vocal album. After dutifully thanking the Recording Academy and her fans, she got down to business: “My brand-new album comes out April 19,” she said, in a surprise announcement revealing “The Tortured Poets Department.” It was a heads up for her loyal followers, as well as anyone else in the business with a spring release on the radar: If you want your new album to debut at No. 1, don’t release it on April 19. Or April 26. Or May 3, for that matter.A week later, following a teaser during a Super Bowl commercial, Beyoncé also dropped news of a new album: “Cowboy Carter” would arrive earlier than “Poets,” with breathing room, on March 29. Another pop powerhouse in the Grammy audience made her own announcement in early April: Billie Eilish will unveil her forthcoming third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” a month after Swift’s release, on May 17.Beyoncé and Swift, the 21st century’s pre-eminent pop stars, have often been cast as competitors if not rivals, a story line partly rooted in misogyny and amplified by dueling fan armies filled with stans, or superfans.For their part, the two artists have regularly dispelled the notion over the years. They were first linked, through no fault of their own, at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, when Kanye West interrupted a Swift acceptance speech to advocate for her fellow nominee Beyoncé; later that night, Beyoncé brought Swift onstage to finish her remarks. In 2021, Swift shared on Instagram that Beyoncé had sent her congratulatory flowers after Swift won the album of the year Grammy for “Folklore,” calling Beyoncé “the queen of grace & greatness.” And last year, following their blockbuster stadium tours, they appeared at each other’s concert film premieres, a pointed rebuke to message-board zealots looking to sow discord.“Clearly, it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when the two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion,” Swift told Time magazine. (Representatives for Swift and Beyoncé declined to comment.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Film Will Stream After 54 Years on Disney+

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      Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s unloved — or misinterpreted? — 1970 documentary, the source for Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” will stream on Disney+.In 2021, the director Peter Jackson’s sprawling and vibrant Beatles docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” streamed on Disney+ to nearly universal acclaim. The three-part epic, which ran nearly eight hours, captured the drama and frenzy as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded, over the pressure-filled month of January 1969, what would become the last album that the Beatles released, “Let It Be.”As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs. Fans tend to remember it as an intriguing historical document capturing the late-stage creative flights of a seismic musical force, but also as a divorce proceeding of sorts, with stark moments of internal discord as the band hurtled toward a nasty split.By that view, “Get Back,” with its abundant moments of jokey banter and on-set clowning, was seen by some as an overdue corrective to “Let It Be.”Little surprise but Lindsay-Hogg, 83, has a very different view. The acclaimed director had a hand in inventing the music video, with his promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, and went on to win plaudits for the 1980s British mini-series “Brideshead Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles creative and business interests. Lindsay-Hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Thursday Ends a 13-Year Break From New Music With a Pointed Song

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      “Application for Release From the Dream,” which the band released Friday, marks the beginning of a fresh era for a group that helped bring emo to the mainstream.Thursday, the band once described as the “great screamo hope” for helping break the shouty punk subgenre into the mainstream with its 2001 album “Full Collapse,” has returned with its first new song in 13 years on Friday, “Application for Release From the Dream.” The title alone underscores just how drastically things have changed for Thursday and its peers over the past two decades: Emo has evolved from a niche concern to a form of classic rock, and the artists who put it on the map are now in their late 40s, navigating a very different kind of life.Geoff Rickly, the band’s gregarious, garrulous frontman, spent the past decade as a multitasker in Brooklyn’s art scenes before documenting his path to sobriety with his 2023 literary debut, “Someone Who Isn’t Me.” In the past, the band’s songwriting process might start with “a Times Square hotel and a bag of coke,” he said, and would likely end with the lifelong friends barely on speaking terms.“When we write, we fight,” Rickly, 45, explained in a video interview last week. But the band has enjoyed a détente since a 2016 reunion spurred by Atlanta’s Wrecking Ball Festival, a short-lived celebration of hardcore music. “I’ve been getting along so well with my brothers, I don’t want to fight any more.”Thursday — Rickly, the guitarist Steven Pedulla, 49, and the drummer Tucker Rule, 45 — got its start in the New Jersey hardcore D.I.Y. scene, playing basements and VFW halls, and rose to become one of the leaders of a movement where melodies were often secondary to raw poetics. Though the genre quickly devolved into often-unintentional self-parody, over the past 15 years, emo has been undergoing both a re-examination and a resurgence. A new generation has been drawn into its emotional eruptions while purposefully pushing back on its Warped Tour stereotype of white men writing vengefully about exes — reflecting the post-#MeToo climate by holding even the biggest bands accountable for their past offenses and elevating more diverse viewpoints.When Thursday posted a goodbye note on its website on Nov. 22, 2011, the band didn’t rule out live performances. “At the height of our thing where things are tense and there’s all this pressure, you go, ‘What would it be like to have a normal life?’” Pedulla explained. “And now all these years later, man, I’m really miserable when I’m not doing the band.”“Application for Release From the Dream” has been a work in progress over the past year, with Rickly shuttling back and forth between New York and the band’s New Jersey studio. The track builds from moody to explosive, striking a happy medium between Thursday’s strident early work and its final full-length, “No Devolución,” which presaged a pivot of former hardcore artists to shoegaze and dream-pop. But Thursday has no plans to make a true follow-up to “No Devolución,” describing its new model as recording and releasing singles as it writes them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More