Weather Station (Music Group)

Subterms

    Latest story

    50 Shares99 Views

    Best Songs of 2022

    by

    Seventy-two tracks that identify, grapple with or simply dance away from the anxieties of yet another uncertain year.Jon Pareles’s Top 25Full disclosure: There can’t be a definitive list of best songs — only a sampling of what any one listener, no matter how determined, can find the time to hear in the course of a year. For discovery’s sake, my list rules out the (excellent) songs on my favorite albums of the year, and it’s designed more like a playlist than a countdown or a ranking. Feel free to switch to shuffle.1. Residente featuring Ibeyi, ‘This Is Not America’Backed by implacable Afro-Caribbean drumming and Ibeyi’s vocal harmonies, the Puerto Rican rapper Residente defines America as the entire hemisphere, while he furiously denounces historical and ongoing abuses.2. The Smile, ‘The Opposite’Thom Yorke of Radiohead — in a side project, the Smile — wonders, “What will become of us?” Prodded by a funky beat and pelted by staggered, syncopated guitar and bass notes, he can’t expect good news.3. Wilco, ‘Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull’With Wilco picking and strumming like a string band, Jeff Tweedy spins a free-associative fable about elemental forces of life and death, leading into a brief but probing jam that reunites country and psychedelia.4. Rema featuring Selena Gomez, ‘Calm Down’The crisply flirtatious “Calm Down,” by the Nigerian singer Rema, was already a major African hit when Selena Gomez added her voice for a remix. He’s confident, she’s inviting — at least for the moment — and the Afrobeats syncopation promises a good time.5. Emiliana Torrini and the Colorist Orchestra, ‘Right Here’A plinking Minimalist pulse and a deft chamber-pop arrangement carry the Icelandic songwriter Emiliana Torrini through fond thoughts of hard-won but durable domestic stability.Thom Yorke, left, and Jonny Greenwood of the Smile performing at Usher Hall in Edinburgh in June. The band also includes the drummer Tom Skinner.Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns, via Getty Images6. Lucrecia Dalt, ‘Atemporal’“Atemporal” (“Timeless”) is from “Ay!,” Lucrecia Dalt’s heady concept album about time, physicality and love. It’s a lurching bolero that dovetails lo-fi nostalgia with vaudeville horns and an electronically skewed sense of space.7. Burna Boy, ‘Last Last’The Nigerian superstar Burna Boy juggles regrets, justifications and resentments as he sings about a romance wrecked by career pressures, drawing nervous momentum out of a strumming, fluttering sample from Toni Braxton.8. Aldous Harding, ‘Lawn’The tone is airy: unassuming piano chords; a high, naïve voice; a singsong melody. But in one of Aldous Harding’s least cryptic lyrics, she is trying to put the best face on a confusing breakup.9. Madison Cunningham, ‘Our Rebellion’Madison Cunningham sings, wryly and fondly, about an opposites-attract relationship in a tricky, virtuosic tangle of guitar lines.10. Big Thief, ‘Simulation Swarm’Adrianne Lenker’s wispy voice belies the visionary ambition — and ambiguity — of her lyrics. So does the way the band, not always in tune, cycles through four understated folk-rock chords, swerving occasionally into a bridge. It’s a love song with a backdrop of war and transformation, delivered like a momentary glimpse into something much vaster.11. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’Somewhere between folk-rock plaint and short story, Margo Price sings about a pregnant woman at a clinic, with a hard-luck past and a tough decision to make.12. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’Cool, fast, precise and merciless, the Bronx rapper Ice Spice dispatches a hapless suitor by designating him as a new slang word: “munch.”13. Jamila Woods, ‘Boundaries’Mixing a suave bossa nova with a tapping, stubbornly resistant cross-rhythm, Jamila Woods neatly underlines the ambivalence she sings about, as she ponders just how close she wants someone to get.14. Stromae featuring Camila Cabello, ‘Mon Amour’The cheerful lilt of Stromae’s “Mon Amour” is camouflage for the increasingly threadbare rationalizations of a compulsive cheater; he gets his comeuppance when Camila Cabello asserts her own freedom to fool around.15. Giveon, ‘Lie Again’Giveon floats in a jealous limbo, hoping not to be exposed to hard truths. His voice is a baritone croon with an electronic penumbra, in a track that hints at old soul translated into ghostly electronics.16. Tyler ICU featuring Nkosazana Daughter, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Inhliziyo’No fewer than three leading producers of amapiano, the patient, midtempo South African club style, collaborated on “Inhliziyo” (“Heart”), creating haunted open spaces for the South African singer and songwriter Nkosazana Daughter to quietly lament a heartbreak.The Nigerian star Burna Boy addresses the challenges of balancing a relationship with his growing career on “Last Last.”Ferdy Damman/EPA, via Shutterstock17. Tinashe, ‘Something Like a Heartbreak’Nothing feels entirely solid in this song: not Tinashe’s breathy vocals, not the beat that flickers in and out of the mix, not the hovering tones that only sketch the chords. But in the haze, she realizes, “You don’t deserve my love,” and she moves on.18. Jessie Reyez, ‘Mutual Friend’Revenge arrives with cool fury over elegant, vintage-soul strings as Jessie Reyez makes clear that someone is definitely not getting a second chance.19. 070 Shake, ‘Web’Danielle Balbuena — the songwriter and producer who records as 070 Shake — overdubbed herself as a full-scale choir in “Web,” a pandemic-era reaction to the gap between onscreen and physical interaction. She wants carnality in real time, insisting, “Let’s be here in person.”20. Holly Humberstone, ‘Can You Afford to Lose Me?’In an ultimatum carried by a stately crescendo of keyboards, Holly Humberstone reminds a partner who’s threatening to leave just how much she has already put up with.21. Brian Eno, ‘There Were Bells’“There Were Bells” contemplates the slow-motion cataclysm of global warming as an elegy and a warning, with edgeless, tolling sounds and a mournful melody as Brian Eno sings about the destruction no one will escape.22. Caroline Polachek, ‘Billions’Is it love or capitalism? Caroline Polachek sings with awe-struck sweetness — and touches of hyperpop processing — against an otherworldly backdrop that incorporates electronics, tabla drumming and string sections, at once intimate and abstract.23. Stormzy, ‘Firebabe’In a wedding-ready, hymnlike ballad, Stormzy sings modestly and adoringly about a love at first sight that he intends to last forever.24. Hagop Tchaparian, ‘Right to Riot’A blunt four-on-the-floor thump might just be the least aggressive part of “Right to Riot” from the British Armenian musician Hagop Tchaparian, which also brandishes traditional sounds — six-beat drumming and the snarl of the double-reed zurna — and zapping, woofer-rattling electronics as it builds.25. Oren Ambarchi, ‘I’The first section of an album-length piece, “Shebang,” by the composer Oren Ambarchi, is a consonant hailstorm of staccato guitar notes, picked and looped, manipulated and layered, emerging as melodies and rejoining the ever-more-convoluted mesh.Jon Caramanica’s Top 22There are plenty of ways to try out something new — fooling around with your friends, tossing off a casual but not careless experiment, disappearing so deeply into a feeling that you forget form altogether.1. GloRilla featuring Cardi B, ‘Tomorrow 2’Kay Flock featuring Cardi B, Dougie B and Bory300, ‘Shake It’It was a great year for the Cardi B booster plan. Like Drake before her, she is an attentive listener and a seven-figure trend forecaster, as captured in these two cousin-like feature appearances. “Shake It” is as credible a drill song as a non-drill performer has yet made — Cardi’s verse is pugnacious and tart. And “Tomorrow 2,” with its big BFF energy, helps continue construction of a new pathway for female allyship in hip-hop.2. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’Ice Spice is a gleefully patient rapper. On “Munch,” she pulls off a perfectly balanced tug of war between neg-heavy seduction and the affect of being utterly unbothered.3. Bailey Zimmerman, ‘Rock and a Hard Place’The trick of this catalog of a couple’s catastrophic collapse is that the arrangement never lets on that the circumstances are dire, but atop it, Bailey Zimmerman sings like he’s narrating a boxing match.4. Lil Yachty, ‘Poland’A non-song. A koan. A cry from beneath the ravenous eddies. A memory bubbling up from repression. A tractor beam. A stunt. A hopeful warble. A promise of infinite tomorrows.5. The Dare, ‘Girls’Epically silly and epically debauched, “Girls” marks a return(?) of quasi(?)-electroclash(?), but, more pointedly, is a reminder of the perennial power of lust, sweat and arch eroticism.Cardi B didn’t put out a lot of her own music in 2022, but she showed up in a savvy selection of features.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters6. Sadie Jean, ‘WYD Now? (10 Minute Version) [Open Verse Mashup]’The logical endpoint of the TikTok duet trend: one extended posse-cut version aggregating everyone’s labor into a lofi-beats-to-study-to forever loop. The wooden spoon provides.7. Lil Kee, ‘Catch a Murder’From his arresting debut mixtape “Letter 2 My Brother,” a caustic and bleak pledge of revenge from the Lil Baby affiliate Lil Kee, who sing-raps as if in a trance of menace.8. Cam’ron, Funk Flex #Freestyle171Another year, another casual calisthenics lesson from Cam’ron, the last avatar of the intricately economical style that dominated Harlem rap in the ’90s and remains staggering to observe.9. Yahritza y Su Esencia, ‘Soy El Unico’The first song Yahritza Martinez wrote — at age 13 — was “Soy El Unico,” a defiantly sad retort from a discarded partner to the discarder that pairs the groundedness of Mexican folk music with a vocal delivery inflected with hip-hop and R&B.10. Kate Gregson-MacLeod, ‘Complex (Demo)’This song began life as viral melancholy on TikTok, a brief portrait of someone stuck in the gravitational pull of a person who doesn’t deserve their care. The finished song is desolate but resilient, a hell of a plaint.11. NewJeans, ‘Cookie’Most striking about “Cookie,” the best song from the debut EP by the impressive young K-pop girl group NewJeans, is its ease — no maximalism, no theater. Simply a cheerful extended metaphor over an updated take on the club-oriented R&B of a couple of decades ago, finished off with a tasteful Jersey club breakdown.12. Jack Harlow featuring Drake, ‘Churchill Downs’The student befriends the teacher. Both drop out for a life of partying, followed by self-reflection, followed by more partying.13. Ethel Cain, ‘American Teenager’Midwest emo as refracted through Southeastern parchedness under a filter of radio pop-rock, delivering devastating sentiment about the emptiness of the American dream and the hopelessness of those subject to its whims.Ethel Cain turns a critical eye on the American dream with her debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter.”Irina Rozovsky for The New York Times14. Joji, ‘Glimpse of Us’You OK, bro?15. Delaney Bailey, ‘J’s Lullaby (Darlin’ I’d Wait for You)’One long ache about the one who’s slipping away: “Darlin’, I wish that you could give me some more time/To herd the whole sky in my arms/And release it when you’re mine.”16. Muni Long, ‘Another’Luscious, indignant, scolding.17. Romeo Santos featuring Rosalía, ‘El Pañuelo’Two traditionalists at heart, each feeling out the outer boundaries of their appetite for risk while still honoring what the other can’t quite do.18. Hitkidd featuring Aleza, Gloss Up, Slimeroni and K Carbon, ‘Shabooya’Roll-call rap that bridges the early ’80s to the early ’20s, with a cadre of Memphis women reveling in filth and sass.19. Kidd G featuring YNW BSlime, ‘Left Me’Lil Durk featuring Morgan Wallen, ‘Broadway Girls’What is hip-hop to country music these days? A source of vocal inspiration? A place for experimentation? Close kin? Safe harbor?20. Fireboy DML and Ed Sheeran, ‘Peru’The globe-dominating update of the Fireboy DML solo hit features bright seduction delivered with jaunty rhythm from Ed Sheeran.Lindsay Zoladz’s Top 25Anxiety abounds in this modern world, and music is one surefire way to process it — or maybe, for a few minutes at a time, to escape from it. The songs on this list consider both options.1. Hurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Life on Earth’Conventional wisdom tells us that life is short, time flies and there are never enough hours in the day. But Alynda Segarra takes the long view on this elegiac, piano-driven hymn: “Rivers and lakes/And floods and earthquakes/Life on Earth is long.” As it progresses at its own unhurried tempo, the song, remarkably, seems to slow down time, or at least zoom out until it becomes something geological rather than selfishly human-centric. The thick haze of climate grief certainly hangs over the track (“And though I might not meet you there, leaving it beyond repair”) but its lingering effect is one of generosity and spaciousness, inspiring a fresh appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things.2. The 1975, ‘Happiness’Matty Healy, the gregarious leader of the British pop group the 1975, is rarely at a loss for words, but on the supremely catchy “Happiness,” infatuation leaves him tongue-tied: “My, my, my, oh/My, my, my, you.” Ultimately, though, the song becomes an ode to giving oneself over to forces beyond control: like love, the unknown or maybe just the groove — particularly the loose, sparkling atmosphere the band taps into here.3. Beyoncé, ‘Alien Superstar’The moon is a disco ball and it orbits around Beyoncé on this commanding dance-floor banger, a studied but lived-in ode to ball culture and Afrofuturism. Like the rest of the remarkable “Renaissance,” the song’s focus flickers constantly from the individual to the collective, as Beyoncé’s braggadocious boasts of being No. 1, the only one, share space with her exhortations to find that unicorn energy within: “Unique, that’s what you are,” she intones regally, before a transcendent finale in which the song takes flight on a Funkadelic spaceship of its own making.4. Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’The melody keeps ascending to nervy, dangerous heights, like a high-wire walk without a net: “I know the cost of flight is landing,” Amanda Shires sings on this imagistic torch song, trilling like some newly discovered species of bird. The title is playfully provocative, but it takes a twist in the song’s final lyric, when Shires proclaims, “I know I can take it like … Amanda” — a fitting finale for such a singular song of self.Amanda Shires makes a strong statement on “Take It Like a Man,” also the name of her latest album.Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York Times5. Taylor Swift, ‘Anti-Hero’Rejoice, you who have suffered through “Look What You Made Me Do,”“Me!” and even “Cardigan”: For the first time in nearly a decade, Taylor Swift has picked the correct lead single. “Anti-Hero” is one of the high points of Swift’s ongoing collaboration with the producer Jack Antonoff: The phrasing is chatty but not overstuffed, the synthesizers underline Swift’s emotions rather than obscuring them and the insecurities feel like genuine transmissions from Swift’s somnambulant psyche. Prospective daughters-in-law, you’ve been warned.6. Rosalía, ‘Despechá’Rosalía, smacking her gum, eyebrows raised, one hand on an exaggeratedly cocked hip: That’s the attitude, and this is its soundtrack. “Despechá” — abbreviated slang for spiteful — is a lighter-than-air, mambo-nodding dance-floor anthem, and an invitation to join the ranks of the Motomamis. As always, she makes pop perfection sound as easy as A-B-C.7. Pusha T, ‘Diet Coke’Pusha T, is, as ever, part rap-poet and part insult comic on the razor-sharp “Diet Coke,” bending language to his will and laughing his enemies right out of the V.I.P. room: “You ordered Diet Coke — that’s a joke, right?”8. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’“Fruity,” like the best hyperpop, is an anarchic affront to refinement and restraint, an ever-escalating blast of melodic delirium and warped excess. It’s a sugar rush, it’s brain-freeze-inducing, it’s recommended by zero out of 10 dentists. Turn it up loud.9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs featuring Perfume Genius, ‘Spitting off the Edge of the World’Yeah Yeah Yeahs grow elegantly into their role as art-rock elders here, not just by slowing to a tempo as confidently glacial as the Cure’s “Plainsong,” but by placing a spotlight on the existential dread of the next generation. “Mama, what have you done?” Karen O sings, channeling the voice of a frightened child. “I trace your steps in the darkness of one/Am I what’s left?”10. Grace Ives, ‘Lullaby’Grace Ives makes music of interiority, chronicling the liminal moments of her day when she’s by herself, daydreaming: “I hear the neighbors sing ‘Love Galore,’ I do a split on the kitchen floor,” goes the charming “Lullaby,” a passionately sung, welcoming invitation into her world.11. Weyes Blood, ‘It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody’The pandemic left many people isolated in their own heads, questioning their perceptions, feeling disconnected from a larger whole. The clarion-voiced Natalie Mering has written a soothing anthem for all those lost souls in the emotionally generous “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”; its title alone is an offering of solace and sanity.12. Florence + the Machine, ‘Free’A bass line buzzes like a live wire, snaking continuously through this exorcism of anxiety. “The feeling comes so fast, and I cannot control it,” Florence Welch wails as if possessed, but she eventually finds her catharsis in the music itself: “For a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free.”13. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’“I’m walking past him, he sniffing my breeze,” the rising star Ice Spice spits expeditiously on this unbothered anthem; before he can even process the insult, she’s gone.14. Drake, ‘Down Hill’A sparse palette from 40 — finger snaps, moody synth washes, light Afrobeats vibes — gives Drake plenty of room to explore his melancholy on this standout from the welcome left turn “Honestly, Nevermind.”15. Alex G, ‘Miracles’An aching, bittersweet meditation on the holiness of the everyday, and an expression of intimacy from one of indie rock’s most mysterious, and best, songwriters.16. Carly Rae Jepsen, ‘Western Wind’The one-time “Call Me Maybe” ingénue shows off a breezier and more mature side, as impressionistic production from Rostam Batmanglij helps her conjure California sunshine.17. Mitski, ‘Stay Soft’“You stay soft, get eaten — only natural to harden up,” Mitski sings on this sleek but deceptively vulnerable pop song, as her voice, fittingly, oscillates between icy cool and wrenching ardor.Drake takes a refreshing swerve into dance music with the songs on “Honestly, Nevermind.”Prince Williams/Wireimage, via Getty Images18. Miranda Lambert, ‘Strange’Down is up and wrong is right in this topsy-turvy, tumbleweed-blown country rocker, on which a wizened Miranda Lambert sings like a woman who’s seen it all: “Pick a string, sing the blues, dance a hole in your shoes, do anything to keep you sane.”19. Plains, ‘Problem With It’Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee, embraces her twang and her Alabama upbringing on this collaboration with the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson; the result is a feisty, ’90s-nodding country-pop gem.20. Charli XCX, ‘Constant Repeat’“I’m cute and I’m rude with kinda rare attitude,” she boasts on the best song from her aerodynamic “Crash” — a top-tier lyric befitting some next-level Charli.21. Alvvays, ‘Belinda Says’As in Belinda Carlisle, whom the Alvvays frontwoman Molly Rankin addresses at the climactic moment of this blissfully moody song: “Heaven is a place on Earth, well so is hell.” Towering waves of shoegaze-y guitars accentuate her melancholy and give the song an emotional pull as elemental as a tide.22. Jessie Ware, ‘Free Yourself’A thumping, glittery one-off single from the British musician finds her continuing in the vein of her 2020 disco reinvention “What’s Your Pleasure?” and proving that she’s still finding fresh inspiration from that sound.23. Koffee, ‘Pull Up’The Jamaican upstart Koffee has a contagious positivity about her, and this reggae-pop earworm is an effortless encapsulation of her spirit.24. Anaïs Mitchell, ‘Little Big Girl’“No one ever told you it would be like this: You keep on getting older, but you feel just like a little kid,” the folk musician Anaïs Mitchell sings on this moving standout from her first solo album in a decade, which poignantly chronicles the emotions of a demographic drastically underexplored in popular music: women at midlife.25. The Weather Station, ‘Endless Time’“It’s only the end of an endless time,” Tamara Lindeman sings in a mirror-fogging exhale, eulogizing a whole host of things taken for granted — love, happiness, the inhabitability of Earth — expressing a fragile, and very human, disbelief that they won’t last forever. More

    More stories

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Buzzy Band Wet Leg Trips Out at a Party, and 13 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Bartees Strange, La Marimba, Sharon Van Etten 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.Wet Leg, ‘Angelica’The latest single from the buzzy post-punk revivalists Wet Leg tells a more linear story than their drolly absurdist breakout “Chaise Longue”: “Angelica” captures that all-too-relatable experience of feeling awkward at a bad party, observing with a pang of envy the people who actually seem to be having fun. “I don’t know what I’m even doing here,” Rhian Teasdale deadpans, “I was told that there would be free beer.” But she and bandmate Hester Chambers finally get to let loose on the chorus, as the song’s surf-rock-meets-French-disco groove explodes, however briefly, into a psychedelic freakout. LINDSAY ZOLADZBartees Strange, ‘Heavy Heart’With its jangly guitar riffs and a cutting post-hardcore edge, Bartees Strange’s “Heavy Heart” at first seems like a simple slice of mid-00s nostalgia. But there is more longing for another time here. Strange, who grew up playing in hardcore bands in Washington, D.C., shatters genre tropes with ease: there is a rap-sung verse, a blossoming horn section, an aura of tender hope. “Heavy Heart,” which Strange wrote during a period of personal crisis in 2020, is about the guilt he experienced around the passing of his grandfather and the sacrifices his father made for his family. But it’s not a submission to that feeling; Strange sings, “Then I remember I rely too much upon/My heavy heart.” This is a relinquishing — a promise to embrace the possibility that lies beyond debilitating regret. ISABELIA HERRERAKevin Morby, ‘This Is a Photograph’“This Is a Photograph,” by the songwriter Kevin Morby (from the Woods and the Babies), starts out sparse and low-fi and keeps gathering instruments and implications. He juxtaposes momentary images with mortality: “This is what I’ll miss about being alive,” he repeats, between descriptions of mundane scenes. His vocals are largely spoken, more chanted than rapped, over a repeating modal guitar line that the arrangement keeps building on: with keyboards, drums, guitars, saxes and voices, a gathering of humanity to hold off the solitude of death. JON PARELESLabrinth and Zendaya, ‘I’m Tired’“Hey Lord, you know I’m tired of tears,” Labrinth sings in “I’m Tired,” a gospel-rooted song from the “Euphoria” soundtrack that retains the barest remnants of gospel’s underlying hope. It contemplates oblivion as much as redemption: “I’m sure this world is done with me,” Labrinth adds. Organ chords and choir harmonies swell, yet even when Zendaya comes in at the end, vowing to get through somehow, she wonders, “It’s all I got, is this enough?” PARELESRobyn, Neneh Cherry and Maipei, ‘Buffalo Stance’Neneh Cherry’s album “Raw Like Sushi,” released in 1989, was both of and ahead of its time: reveling in the ways pop, electronics, hip-hop and rock were merging and defining what an autonomous woman could do with them all. This week she released a remade version of the international hit “Buffalo Stance” featuring the dance-crying Swedish songwriter Robyn and the Swedish American rapper-singer Mapei. Cherry’s original, with vintage vinyl scratching for rhythm, was about fashion, poverty, exploitation and defiance: “No moneyman can win my love,” she taunted. The remake is slower and warier, with snaking minor-key guitar lines and even more skepticism about what men want. PARELESSharon Van Etten, ‘Used to It’Following her recent, upbeat single “Porta,” “Used to It” is a return to the more meditative side of Sharon Van Etten. Vividly imagistic lyrics and the smoky hush of Van Etten’s voice unfurl across the track with an unhurried confidence: “Where are you going, you rainstorm?” Van Etten sings. “Are you used to it, pouring out your life?” ZOLADZHaim, ‘Lost Track’“Lost Track” — a playfully punny title for a previously unreleased one-off single that is also about someone in an emotional free-fall — is as understated as a Haim song gets. Handclaps take the place of the group’s usually forceful percussion, Danielle Haim’s signature guitar is absent from the verses, a plinking toy piano gives the whole thing a dreamlike vibe. But the dynamism the Haim sisters are able to create from such simple means, and the way the song suddenly and satisfyingly builds to a crescendo during the chorus, is a testament to their deft and resourceful song craft. The music video, by the group’s longtime collaborator and Alana Haim’s “Licorice Pizza” director Paul Thomas Anderson, casts Danielle as a fidgety malcontent at a country club, her frustration bubbling over as she shouts the song’s most triumphant line, “You can sit down if you don’t mind me standing up!” ZOLADZOmah Lay and Justin Bieber, ‘Attention’Justin Bieber isn’t done with Nigerian Afrobeats; his restrained croon dovetails nicely with the equanimity of Afrobeats singers. Meanwhile, Western producers are learning Afrobeats techniques. Last year Bieber joined a remix of “Essence,” a worldwide hit by Wizkid. Now he’s collaborating with another Nigerian star, Omah Lay, on “Attention,” which melds Afrobeats and house music in a production by Avedon (Vincent van den Ende), from the Netherlands, and Harv (Bernard Harvey), from Kansas City. Separately and then together, Bieber and Lay state a longing that might be either for romance or clicks: “Show me a little attention.” PARELESNew Kids on the Block featuring Salt-N-Pepa, Rick Astley and En Vogue, ‘Bring Back the Time’At a moment when current hitmakers like the Weeknd and Dua Lipa revive glossy, pumped-up 1980s sounds — ballooning drums, arpeggiating synthesizers — the not-so-New Kids on the Block cannily position themselves as a nostalgia act for both music and video. Abetted by early-MTV contemporaries, they fondly parody 1980s videos from Devo, Talking Heads, A Flock of Seagulls, Robert Palmer, Twisted Sister, Michael Jackson and more. “We’re still the same kids we were back in ’89,” they proclaim, all evidence to the contrary. PARELESLa Marimba, ‘Suéltame’The Dominican singer-songwriter La Marimba may have a smoky voice, but don’t confuse it for hushed modesty. Her single “Suéltame,” or “Let Me Go,” is nothing less than a battle cry: this is punk perico ripiao, an electric take on the oldest style of merengue, with a liberatory spirit. (On Instagram, La Marimba said the song is a response to the everyday struggles of women and girls in the Caribbean.) Over razor-sharp synths and the raucous metal scrapes of the güira, La Marimba demands freedom through gritted teeth: “Let me go already/I am how I want to be.” HERRERAMelissa Aldana, ‘Emelia’The Chilean-born tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana was in the middle of a dream about motherhood one night when the melody to “Emelia” came to her. Pillowy and suspended, caught between longing and rest, this tune is the moment on “12 Stars” — Aldana’s latest release for Blue Note Records — when she and her hyper-literate quintet of rising jazz all-stars slow down and fully embrace the blur. The pianist Sullivan Fortner is the biggest smudge artist here, adding clouds of harmony on Rhodes, cluttering the airspace around Lage Lund’s guitar, and complementing the distant, even-toned longing of Aldana’s saxophone. At the end of the song, taking the melody home, she tongues the instrument’s reed, letting her notes crack; then the music cuts off and the voices of young children come in, bringing the track to a close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOThe Weather Station, ‘To Talk About It’“I’m tired of working all night long, trying to fit this world into a song,” Tamara Lindeman sighs, although the striking achievement of her latest album as the Weather Station is how often she is able to do just that. “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars,” out Friday, is at once spacious and granular: Lindeman’s precise lyricism zooms in on particular human experiences and scenes, but her airy, piano-driven compositions allow for all sorts of environmental ambience and collective anxieties to seep in. “To Talk About,” the album’s latest single, features vocals from the Toronto-based musician Ryan Driver, and seeks refuge from an emotionally fatiguing world in quiet, shared intimacy: “I am tired,” Lindeman repeats, this time adding, “I only want to lie beside my lover tonight.” ZOLADZCarmen Villain, ‘Subtle Bodies’The composer Carmen Villain blends nature recordings, instruments, samples and programming to create tracks that feel both enveloping and open. “Subtle Bodies,” from her new album “Only Love from Now On,” stacks up layers of quiet polyrhythm, swathes them in pink noise that could be wind or waves, nudges them forward with a muffled two-note bass loop and wafts in sustained tones and distant wordless voices; it’s ambient but clearly in motion. PARELESLila Tirando a Violeta & Nicola Cruz, ‘Cuerpo que Flota’“Cuerpo que Flota,” the first single from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta’s forthcoming album “Desire Path,” refuses to hew to tradition. Alongside the Ecuadorean producer Nicola Cruz, Lila stitches together murmurs; a muted, stuttering half-dembow riddim; and layers of static disturbance. The album samples pre-Hispanic flutes and ocarinas right alongside Lila’s electronic experimentation (you can even buy a 3-D printed ocarina along with the release), allowing her to forge her own dystopic, serrated universe where past meets present. HERRERA More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      glaive Showcases His Less Hyper Pop, and 13 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Raveena, the Weather Station, Immanuel Wilkins 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.glaive, ‘Icarus’The ostensibly summery, mid-tempo “Icarus” shows off the relatively less hyper side of the hyperpop star glaive, though its lines still hit like angst-ridden daggers: “We’re flying too close to the sun,” he sings to his romantic partner in crime. A highlight from the deluxe edition of his 2021 EP “All Dogs Go to Heaven” (cheekily retitled “Old Dog, New Tricks”),“Icarus” has an instantly catchy hook that shows why many hail glaive as the potential breakout star of his underground subgenre. But the song still retains an appealingly edgy sense of emotional mayhem: “I’m setting fire to my room, ’cause I don’t know what else to do!” LINDSAY ZOLADZThe Smile, ‘The Smoke’The Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead with Tom Skinner, a drummer from Sons of Kemet — has quickly demonstrated its range. The trio snarled through its first single, “You Will Never Work in Television Again,” only to play things cool on its second, “The Smoke.” A minute-long instrumental intro sticks to syncopated bass and dub-echoed drums, in a 10-bar pattern that threatens to trip up unwary dancers as it seems to switch between 4/4 and waltz. Yorke’s high vocals and a hazy horn arrangement join the rhythmic crosscurrent as he sings about what might be the heat of desire or destruction, crooning, “Smoke wakes me from my sleep.” JON PARELESImmanuel Wilkins, ‘Fugitive Ritual, Selah’Peaceful and incantatory, “Fugitive Ritual, Selah” offers a moment to re-center amid the dicey, kinetic tour de force that is “The 7th Hand,” the alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’s second album with his quartet. Wilkins is more often in a high-octane mode, but here he nearly caresses each note. He wrote “Fugitive Ritual, Selah” — which weaves through a melody built around harmonic shifts until finally landing on a repetitious, soothing coda — as a tribute to spaces like the Black church, where a distance from the white gaze allows for freer expression. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPierre Kwenders, ‘Papa Wemba’The Congolese musician Pierre Kwenders was born in Kinshasa and has lived in Montreal since 2001. “Papa Wemba,” from an album due in April, is a tribute to the singer, bandleader and snappy dresser Papa Wemba, who brought Congolese rumba, or soukous, to an international audience from the 1970s until his death in 2016. “Papa Wemba” adds electronic clout to the soukous beat — it sounds like it’s being punched out on a Teletype — and stirs up a rhythmic vortex with echoing guitars, gruffly sung and chanted vocals and a twin-saxophone riff that approximates the horns saying “Papa Wemba.” PARELESRaveena featuring Vince Staples, ‘Secret’Serpentine and luxurious, Raveena’s “Secret” is a pulsing after-hours affair. With her barely there voice, the R&B singer whispers silken come-ons, a steady thrum ricocheting off a muted tabla drum. It’s retrograde but futuristic, like the forthcoming concept album it appears on, which tells the story of a space princess from ancient Punjab. “Wait a sec, I’ll hit you right back,” Raveena coos in the chorus. You can almost feel her hot breath on your neck. ISABELIA HERRERASaba featuring G Herbo, ‘Survivor’s Guilt’“Survivor’s Guilt” is filled with wounds, yet Saba’s flow is breathless, like he’s outrunning the aftermath of trauma in real time. “I’m trying to move better/What’s really eating when you from a food desert,” he raps, echoing the hyper-speed flows of chopper forebears like Twista. A guest verse from G Herbo cements the song as an unforgettably Chicago linkup. HERRERAEx-Void, ‘Churchyard’Reuniting two members of the too-short-lived noise-pop band Joanna Gruesome, Ex-Vöid is a relatively new, jangly British power-pop group set to release its debut album later this year. The lush, taut “Churchyard” retains their previous band’s keen sense of melody, but this time favoring the sort of clean, bright guitar tones that broadcast their penchant for pop songcraft loud and clear. ZOLADZTess Parks, ‘Happy Birthday Forever’Tess Parks’s voice has an alluring, husky grain on “Happy Birthday Forever,” the first single from her upcoming album, “And Those Who Were Seen Dancing.” The Toronto-born artist hasn’t released an LP since her 2013 debut “Blood Hot,” and has since been collaborating with Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, but “Happy Birthday Forever” proves she’s a confident, enchanting presence on her own. The song is propelled by a jaunty beat and a bright piano riff, but there’s a dark undercurrent to the way Parks delivers her lines, like she’s exhaling cigarette smoke from the corner of her mouth: “Get me outta here.” ZOLADZDora Jar, ‘Lagoon’A lurching drumbeat, a barely tuned piano: The songwriter Dora Jar — who has lived in New York, California, Poland and England — doesn’t need much more to profess her longing in “Lagoon,” in terms both mundane and surreal: “My heart is a crustacean/Could you come and crack it open?” There’s an Elton John backbeat in her piano chords, but also a 21st-century sense of possibility, as vocal overdubs surround her and, for some reason, what sounds like a banjo surfaces near the end of the tune. PARELESThe Weather Station, ‘Endless Time’“It’s only the end of an endless time,” Tamara Lindeman sings in the opening moments of this shattering new ballad, the first song released from the Weather Station’s upcoming album, “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars.” Lindeman has said the March 4 LP is a kind of companion piece to last year’s excellent “Ignorance,” and “Endless Time” certainly mirrors its predecessor’s chilling evocation of loss as well as its elegant weaving together of the personal and ecological. But while “Ignorance” experimented with fractured, jazzy rhythms, “Endless Time” echoes through a sparse negative space — just a haunting piano accompaniment and Lindeman’s elegiac vocals. Any “companion record” to a strong artistic statement risks being dismissed as a collection of B-sides, but this arresting first single is Lindeman bringing her “A” game. ZOLADZDonna Missal, ‘Insecure’​​Sooner or later, every sound ricochets around Donna Missal’s “Insecure”: ticks and taps of percussion, calm keyboard note clusters, grainy simulated strings and whispery vocals that split into harmonies, get pitched up and down and waft up out of nowhere. “Never want to see you again,” she announces as the song begins, and she goes on to denounce her “baby” as an unapologetic liar. But the confrontation is hushed, private and solitary, as if it’s taking place in a sonic hall of mirrors. PARELESKatie Dey, ‘Real Love’The Australian songwriter Katie Dey is both deadpan and devastating as she sings about an abusive relationship and her own self-destructive impulses in “Real Love.” The verses have an offhand sound — a thumpy drumbeat, dinky keyboard chords — as she recalls how “I made myself small/you made yourself big,” but her vocals take on hyperpop glitches and an Auto-Tuned edge on the way to a chorus that crashes in with distorted guitars, as she declares, “I want love that hurts.” PARELESTyler Mitchell featuring Marshall Allen, ‘A Call for All Demons’The bassist Tyler Mitchell played briefly in Sun Ra’s Arkestra during the 1980s, then put in decades of work as a straight-ahead jazz musician before rejoining the group about 10 years ago, after its patriarch had died. By now, he’s a deeply embedded member of the band. Leading his own sextet on a new album, “Dancing Shadows” — with the Arkestra luminary and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, 97, as a featured guest — Mitchell covers a range of Sun Ra material alongside his own tunes; throughout, he guides things from below with the same bobbing, pulpy vigor that makes him sound at home in the Arkestra. “A Call for All Demons” is a tune that Sun Ra first recorded in the 1950s, and on Mitchell’s album it serves as the opening invocation. RUSSONELLONyokabi Kariūki, ‘Equator Song’Nyokabi Kariūki’s “Equator Song” radiates the dissonance of bilingual (or even trilingual) existence. Kariūki, who grew up in Kenya and now lives in Maryland, recorded the song on a trip to Kenya’s Laikipia county, collaging the chatter of weaverbirds — wordless, sky-high vocalizations floating into the ether. “You’ll find my soul on someone’s tongue,” she sings in English, harnessing the experience of living in a language that will never be your own. But instead of lingering in the discomfort or seeking some empty form of reconnection, Kariūki moves fluidly between English, Maa and Kiswahili. It is an acceptance of the diaspora’s constant condition of loss, and the beauty that exists within it. HERRERA More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      10 Works of Art That Evaded the Algorithm This Year

      by

      Contemplation, not clicks: Our critic looks back on marble sculptures in Rome, songs of “atmospheric anxiety” and the Frick Collection in a new light.From left: A performer in “Catasterism in Three Movements”; one of the Torlonia Marbles; a detail from the refurbished Hôtel de la Marine in Paris. Schaulager, Laurenz Foundation, Tom Bisig, Basel; Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times; James Hill for The New York TimesThe coronavirus pandemic is a health crisis with so many cultural sequelae: above all, the absorption of all facets of our lives deeper into networks and phone screens. Even more than last year, I’ve been drawn to art, music and movies that, in one way or another, evade the workings of likes and shares — and carve out a place for human creativity in a world too governed by algorithmic logic.‘Cézanne Drawing’The apple of my eye. The Museum of Modern Art’s meticulous, almost overwhelming summer exhibition distilled modernism’s father figure to his essence, revealing the day-by-day, stroke-by-stroke scrutiny needed to make a piece of fruit as weighty as the Holy Family. Those bottom-heavy pears, those clumpy bathers. Those short daubs of green and blue in his views of Mont-Sainte-Victoire. Those Provençal rock formations — rocks of air and watercolor, Cézanne as geologist! What these hundreds of sheets reconfirmed, right on time, was that your art will never change another person’s life if it merely shows what you think. You need the distinction, the seriousness, that can only come from form. (Read our review of “Cézanne Drawing.”)“Bathers,” an 1890 pencil and watercolor work by Paul Cézanne, was featured in a Museum of Modern Art show.Metropolitan Museum of ArtRyusuke HamaguchiI’d call the 42-year-old Japanese film director the most exciting in years if he weren’t so … calm. “Drive My Car,” Hamaguchi’s unfailingly precise tale of a widowed actor sublimating his grief through his chauffeur and Chekhov, has virtues one fears have gone missing from cinema: long takes, guillotine-crisp editing, an unhurried faith in the importance of images. Like Jacques Rivette and Mike Leigh before him, Hamaguchi contrasts his unobtrusive camerawork with the conventions of theater — in this case, a multilingual “Uncle Vanya” production that builds to a silent, heart-stopping finale, when the troupe’s Sonya sighs “We shall rest!” in Korean sign language. Add to that “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” Hamaguchi’s three-part fugue of love and intuition also released this year, and you have the emergence of a stunning talent who finds the romance in rigor. (Read our review of “Drive My Car.”)Barney & FriendsTwo decades ago his world-making was mistaken for American Wagnerism; but Matthew Barney is more collaborative and more relaxed than you’d think, and he’s doing the best work of his career in the lighter register first seen in his 2019 film “Redoubt.”For the performance “Catasterism in Three Movements,” this September at the Schaulager in Switzerland, he ceded more than half the evening to the Basel Sinfonietta, who performed Jonathan Bepler’s churning music alongside a Berniniesque sculpture of copper, brass and scorched pine. Three women brought the remainder of “Catasterism” to life: the contact improvisation pioneer K.J. Holmes, the Cree hoop dancer Sandra Lamouche, and the athlete Jill Bettonvil as a sharpshooting Diana who pumped a dense-as-flesh Barney sculpture full of lead. (Read our review of Matthew Barney’s “Redoubt.”)K.J. Holmes, a Cree hoop dancer, was featured in “Catasterism in Three Movements,” a collaboration between the artist Matthew Barney and the composer Jonathan Bepler.Schaulager, Laurenz Foundation; Tom Bisig, Basel‘The Torlonia Marbles’Alone in Rome this spring, at the nearly empty Capitoline Museums, I saw the first public display in half a century of the greatest collection of ancient art in private hands. Travel restrictions made an accidental sleeper of the Torlonia family’s Greek and Roman sculptures: dozens of portrait busts, a hirsute billy goat reclining like a love god, a shattered Hercules recomposed from a hundred shards. Rome was my first trip abroad since the pandemic, and I’d submit to a dozen P.C.R. tests to see this actually legendary collection before it disappears again on Jan. 9. (Read our report on the Torlonia Marbles.)More than 90 rarely exhibited sculptures were on display in the “Torlonia Marbles” exhibition at Rome’s Capitoline Museum.Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times‘Promises’Astral but never spacey, architectural yet also boundless, this nine-movement, album-length composition deserved every one of the rave reviews that rained down upon its release in March. As Pharoah Sanders’s subdued tenor sax (and occasional vocalizations) weave around the London Symphony Orchestra’s strings and the synths and celesta of Sam Shepherd — a.k.a. Floating Points, a British electronic musician nearly five decades Sanders’s junior — “Promises” comes to feel like a self-regulating ecosystem, an ever denser net of music and motion. These guys knew what they were doing when they chose, for the album’s cover, a painting by Julie Mehretu, whose retrospective this year at the Whitney Museum of American Art had the same accumulating grandeur. (Read our review of “Promises.”)Frick MadisonThe secret to good decorating: just buy the best stuff and do nothing! The Frick’s down-to-the-pith reinstallation in the Whitney’s vacated building refiltered the Vermeers and Velázquezes we thought we knew, and isolated Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” in a sublime Brutalist cell illuminated by one of Marcel Breuer’s trapezoid windows. What Frick Madison has proved, more subtly, is that we can give art context in a hundred digital formats; museums’ bigger challenge is carving time and space to really look. (Read our story on the making of Frick Madison.)Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” is illuminated by one of the architect Marcel Breuer’s trapezoid windows while on display at the Frick Madison.Gus Powell for The New York TimesThe Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’I feel as useless / As a tree in a city park / Standing as a symbol of what / We have blown apart …. As forests burned in B.C. and diplomats dithered in Glasgow, the Toronto singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman, who performs as the Weather Station, turned in an unreserved, openhearted album of atmospheric anxiety, in which guitars mingle with greenhouse gases and loss is measured in metric tons. She knows we don’t need artists to tell us the climate has changed; we need them to tell us how we have. (Read our interview with the singer.)Parisian RenovationsParis had a quartet of major cultural openings this year. The Bourse de Commerce, renovated by Tadao Ando for the contemporary art collection of François Pinault, drew the most Instagram shares, but it was two renovated historical sites — the Musée Carnavalet, the museum of Parisian history, and the Hôtel de la Marine, the stupefyingly grand naval headquarters — that best married old and new. The city’s sweetest surprise is the old Samaritaine department store, reopened after 16 years, its Art Nouveau expanses renewed with the undulating glass of the Japanese firm Sanaa. (Read our story on the restoration of the Hôtel de la Marine.)The Hôtel de la Marine, the former headquarters of France’s Ministry of the Navy, has reopened as a museum.James Hill for The New York TimesBooks Are Back!Closer to home, the New York Public Library re-emerged from a far too long pandemic closure with a sweet new home: the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, formerly the decrepit Mid-Manhattan Library, rethought and revived by the Dutch firm Mecanoo with Beyer Blinder Belle. Its clean white expanses have computers galore (there’s even a Bloomberg terminal for budding teen traders), but the core remains its 400,000-strong circulating book collection, open for free browsing. A few years ago, the N.Y.P.L. was planning to sell this place, and to exile the books in its main research branch to New Jersey. The Niarchos — as well as Toshiko Mori’s renovation of the Brooklyn Public Library — is an affirmation that cities need readers, and readers need print. (Read our review of the new library.)Daniil Medvedev’s MockeryThe year’s finest and funniest performance art took place at Arthur Ashe Stadium, when the lanky young Russian smacked his last serve, won the U.S. Open title — and dumped his whole body onto to the court, miming a PlayStation move as he lolled like a dead fish. As arrogant as it was ridiculous, Medvedev’s side flop has stuck with me all this fall as a Gen-Z master class in how to stay human in a world of memes. If you must dive into the algorithm, then do it with total contempt. (Read our profile of the “octopus” Daniil Medvedev.) More

    • 50 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Best Albums of 2021

      by

      Less isolation didn’t mean a return to normalcy. Albums with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Olivia Rodrigo, Moneybagg Yo and Allison Russell stood out in 2021.From left: Grant Spanier; Noam Galai/Getty Images; Bethany Mollenkof for the New York TimesJon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesSongs of Trauma, Fear and TriumphThe past year was awash in recorded music — not only the stuck-at-home recordings that musicians occupied themselves with when touring evaporated during the pandemic, but also many albums that had been made before the lockdowns but had been shelved in hopes of some return to normalcy. The albums that resonated most with me during 2021 were songs of reflection and revelation, often dealing with traumas and crises, transfigured through music.1. Bomba Estéreo, ‘Deja’The Colombian duo Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs tied to the ancient elements: water, air, fire, earth. Each new one broadened an album that entwines folklore and electronics, personal yearning and planetary concerns. With Liliana Saumet’s tartly endearing singing and rapping and Simón Mejía’s meticulously kinetic productions, the songs dance through their fears. (Read our interview with Bomba Estéreo.)Simón Mejía and Liliana Saumet of Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs.Valerie Amor C2. Allison Russell, ‘Outside Child’Allison Russell, the longtime frontwoman of Birds of Chicago, transforms a horrific childhood — she was abused by her stepfather — into songs of joyful survival. “I’m still rising, stronger for my pain and suffering,” she sings. Drawing on soul, country, folk and deep blues, she connects her own story to myth and metaphor, remembering the trauma yet decisively rising above it. (Read our interview with Allison Russell.)3. Mon Laferte, ‘Seis’Sometimes visitors can see what residents take for granted. Mon Laferte is from Chile, but she has been living for more than a decade in Mexico and has immersed herself in its music. On “Seis,” she wrote songs that draw deeply on regional Mexican traditions — mariachi, banda, ranchera, corrido, norteño — to sing, in a voice that can be teasing or furiously incendiary, about deep passions and equally deep betrayals. (Read our interview with Mon Laferte.)Mon Laferte drew on Mexican traditions for one of two albums she released this year, “Seis.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times4. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’Tamara Lindeman, who writes songs and records as the Weather Station, surrounded herself with a jazzy, intuitive backup group for “Ignorance,” clearly aware of Joni Mitchell’s folk-jazz precedent. The rhythms are brisk and precise; winds, keyboards and guitars ricochet respectfully off her breathy vocal lines. She sings about impending disasters, romantic and environmental, and the widespread disregard for what’s clearly about to happen. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)5. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist born in Niger. Like Tinariwen, his band plugs North African rhythms and modal vamps into rock amplifiers and drums. But “Afrique Victime” further expands the sonic possibilities for Tuareg rock, from ambient meditation to psychedelic onslaught. Six-beat rhythms and skeins of guitar lines carry Moctar’s voice in songs that can be modest and introspective or unstoppably frenetic.6. Julien Baker, ‘Little Oblivions’“Beat myself until I’m bloody/And I’ll give you a ringside seat,” Julien Baker sings in one of the brave, ruthlessly self-indicting songs that fill “Little Oblivions,” an album about the toll of one person’s addictions on everyone around her. She played all the instruments herself, scaling her sound up to arena size and chiming like U2, even as she refuses herself any excuses or forgiveness. (Read our review of “Little Oblivions.”)7. Black Midi, ‘Cavalcade’The virtuosic British band Black Midi bristles in every direction: with jagged, skewed funk riffs; with pointed dissonances; with passages of Minimalistic, ominous suspense; with lyrics full of bitter disillusion. And then, just to keep things unsettled, come passages filled with tenderness and wonderment, only to plunge back into the fray. (Read our interview with Black Midi.)8. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Olivia Rodrigo, now 18, fixates on a breakup with an adolescent’s obsessiveness on “Sour,” building on the audience she found as a cast member in Disney’s “High School Musical.” With Taylor Swift as a role model for craftsmanship, her songs are as neatly detailed as they are wounded, and the production whipsaws through styles — calm piano ballad, ethereal choir harmonies, fierce distorted guitars — to match every mood swing. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)Olivia Rodrigo’s songs are neatly detailed.Erica Hernandez9. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’“Songwrights Apothecary Lab” was the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s pandemic project; she consulted neuroscientists, music therapists and ethnomusicologists to devise music for healing, and an online user’s guide prescribes the purpose of each song. But the songs are equally effective off-label; they encompass meditations, serpentine jazz compositions, calm or turbulent improvisations, open-ended questions and sly bits of advice, the work of a graceful, perpetually questing mind. (Read our interview with Esperanza Spalding.)10. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’A life of luxury can’t mollify Tyler, the Creator. He’s no longer the trolling provocateur he was a decade ago when he emerged with Odd Future, but he’s still intransigent and high-concept. After singing through most of his 2019 album, “Igor,” he’s back to rapping, now simulating a mixtape with DJ Drama as hypeman. In his deep voice, he raps about all he owns and all he can’t control — mostly romance — over his own dense, detailed productions, at once lush and abrasive. The album peaks with an eight-minute love-triangle saga, “Wichita”: a raw confession, cannily orchestrated. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)Tyler, the Creator swings back to mostly rapping on his 2021 album.Luis “Panch” PerezAnd here are another 15 deserving albums, alphabetically:Adele, “30”Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince”Khaira Arby, “New York Live”Billie Eilish, “Happier Than Ever”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Promises”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Rhiannon Giddens with Franceso Turrisi, “They’re Calling Me Home”Idles, “Crawler”Ka, “A Martyr’s Reward”Valerie June, “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers”L’Rain, “Fatigue”Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams”Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raise the Roof”Omar Sosa, “An East African Journey”Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales”Jon CaramanicaProcessing Pain, Blurring BoundariesIn the second year of global quasi-paralysis, what made the most sense were, once again, albums that felt like wombs and albums that felt like eruptions. When there was nowhere to go, literally or metaphorically, there were still places to retreat — to the gut, to history, to memory, to forgetting.1. Mustafa, ‘When Smoke Rises’Did you mourn this year? Were you broken in some way that was beyond words? Mustafa’s debut album was there with you, a startling, primal chronicle of relentless loss and the relentless grace required to navigate it. In moments when the ground buckled, this album was a cradle. (Read our interview with Mustafa.)Mustafa’s debut album is a profound meditation on loss.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times2. EST Gee, ‘Bigger Than Life or Death’The latest in a string of excellent releases from the Louisville, Ky., rapper EST Gee, whose verses are refreshingly burly and brusque, and who tells stories sprinkled with surprisingly vivid left-field details. A bold back-to-basics statement, utterly free of filigree.3. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’The most important new pop star of the year delivered a debut album of poppy punk and punky pop that’s sometimes musically blistering and always emotionally blistered. A reminder that a failed relationship might leave you icy or bruised or drained, but in truth, it frees you to be emboldened. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)4. Moneybagg Yo, ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’Moneybagg Yo is a casually sassy rapper — a don of tsk-tsking, fluent in arched eyebrows, dispositionally blunt. This is his fourth major-label album, and it’s punchy and robustly musical. À la peak 2 Chainz, Moneybagg Yo boasts so long and so intently that he sounds fatigued, and in turn, uproarious.5. PinkPantheress, ‘To Hell With It’This is music about listening to music, about the secret places we burrow into in order to make sure our favorite songs can wash over us unimpeded. The singing is sweet and melancholic, and the production flirts with memory and time — stories of right now and back then, all told as one. (Read our review of “To Hell With It.”)6. Summer Walker, ‘Still Over It’The most emotionally direct vocalist working in R&B today, Summer Walker is a bracing listen. And this album, her third full-length release, is rawly vindictive and unconcerned with polish, the equivalent of a public-facing Instagram account that feels like a finsta. (Read our notebook on Summer Walker.)Summer Walker’s third album is appealingly unpolished and intimate.Theo Wargo/Getty Images7. Lana Del Rey, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’Lana Del Rey albums have become pop music’s most compelling ongoing saga about American loneliness and sadness. This, the better of her two albums this year, is alluringly arid and dreamlike. (Read our review of “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.”)8. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’In which the rapper who introduced himself a decade ago as the genre’s great anarchist reveals something that was long clear to close observers: He reveres tradition. Brick-hard rhyme structures. Ostentatious taunts. Mixtape grit. All of it. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)9. Playboi Carti, ‘Whole Lotta Red’Just an unyieldingly odd record. Notionally a cousin of mid-2010s SoundCloud rap, it also has echoes of 1980s industrial rock and also the glitchcore of the 2000s. It’s buoyant and psychedelic and totally destabilizing.10. Kanye West, ‘Donda (Deluxe)’“Donda” lives at the intersection of Kanye’s “Yeezus” era and his Jesus era. On the one hand, there’s scabrous, churning production that sets a chaotic mood. On the other, there are moments of intense searching, gasps for air amid the unrest. (Read our notebook on “Donda.”)11. Rauw Alejandro, ‘Vice Versa’Rauw Alejandro, the most imaginative meta-reggaeton Latin pop star, dabbles in drum ’n’ bass and baile funk on his second major-label album. But the star is his hypertreated voice, which is synthetically sweet and appealingly lush, almost to the point of delightful suffocation. (Read our review of “Vice Versa.”)Rauw Alejandro’s latest album puts a spotlight on his vocals.Thais Llorca/EPA, via Shutterstock12. Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’Outlandish, eccentric, lustrous, mercenarily maximalist pop from the sing-rapper with the richest and keenest pop ear not named Drake.13. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Blood Bunny’Openhearted and effortlessly catchy indie punk-pop about lovelorn confusion and beginning to figure out you’re too cool for that. (Read our notebook on Chloe Moriondo.)14. Kidd G, ‘Down Home Boy’Why yes, those are Juice WRLD cadences in the singing on the year’s best country debut album. (Read our interview with Kidd G.)15. The Armed, ‘Ultrapop’Shrieking sheets of nervy noise — a battering ram.16. Carly Pearce, ’29: Written in Stone’A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album.17. Yeat, ‘4L’If “Whole Lotta Red” is too coherent for you, try Yeat.18. Conway the Machine, ‘La Maquina’A cold, cold, cold growl of a classic-minded hip-hop album.19. Farruko, ‘La 167’“Pepas” is here, along with a confidently expansive range of reggaeton styles.Farruko’s “La 167” is a showcase for reggaeton styles.Rich Polk/Getty Images20. Mickey Guyton, ‘Remember Her Name’A pop-country winner that feels both universal and singular. (Read our interview with Mickey Guyton.)… and 20 more albums for a more well-rounded year.42 Dugg, “Free Dem Boyz”Gracie Abrams, “This Is What It Feels Like”Aespa, “Savage”Jay Bahd, “Return of Okomfo Anokye”Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud, “The Plugs I Met 2”Ivan Cornejo, “Alma Vacía”Jhay Cortez, “Timelezz”Dave, “We’re All Alone in This Together”Drake, “Certified Lover Boy”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Cody Johnson, “Human the Double Album”NCT 127, “Sticker”RXK Nephew, “Crack Dreams”serpentwithfeet, “Deacon”Spirit of the Beehive, “Entertainment, Death”Don Toliver, “Life of a Don”Rod Wave, “SoulFly”Tion Wayne, “Green With Envy”Wiki, “Half God”Young Thug, “Punk”Lindsay ZoladzOpening Up Hearts and MindsIn an emotionally hung over year when so many people were trying to process loss — of loved ones, of charred or flooded homes, of the world as we once knew it — some of the best music offered an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with feelings we may have rushed right by before truly acknowledging. Sometimes we just needed a voice to capture and echo the absurdity all around us, but other times records gave us a way of experiencing nothing less than mass catharsis.1. Adele, ‘30’It takes a certain kind of record to make me want to quote Rumi, but Adele really killed this, so let me say: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”Adele has been our mass-cultural bard of heartbreak for the past decade, but in her music — save for the handful of instant-classic ballads scattered across her discography — I did not really get the sense that she was truly open in all the terror and glory that implies. Then she turned 30. “I’m so afraid but I’m open wide,” she sings on the divine “To Be Loved,” her imperial voice trembling but assured. Most breakup albums are full of anger, scorn, and blame, but this one is remarkably self-directed, a grown woman making a deeply considered choice to leap into the void and break her own heart wide apart. “I took some bad turns that I am owning,” she sings, audibly italicizing that last phrase, as if the preceding 10 tracks in all their startling honesty hadn’t already made that clear.On “19,” “21,” and “25,” Adele acted wise beyond her years: “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” she chided an ex on an album about being in her mid-20s, which also included a world-wearied number called “When We Were Young.” “30” refreshingly winds back the clock and finds her admitting that all along she was “just a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around” her. But now she sings like a mature woman who knows there’s still plenty of time to get wine-drunk on the everyday wonders of her own freedom, to break her heart open again and again in her newly omnivorous and sonically eclectic songs. This, at last, is Adele living up to her promise, pop majesty at the highest count. (Read our review of “30.”)Adele breaks her own heart open on “30.”Cliff Lipson/CBS2. Tyler, The Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’He’s still on the boat! Tyler has never sounded this breezy yet in control, but for all the luxurious braggadocio, there’s a darker undercurrent at work, too. “I remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions,” he raps at the beginning of the album; by the stunning penultimate track, the heart-tugging epic “Wilshire,” he’ll have to admit that’s impossible. Full of playful reflections on his past (“I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers”) and auspicious blessings for his future, “Call Me” finds Tyler dropping a stone into that murky blue and discovering unexplored new depths. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)3. Snail Mail, ‘Valentine’Lindsey Jordan begs, bargains and finally accepts the pain of heartache in this searing song cycle that further establishes her as one of indie rock’s brightest young stars. There’s a raw immediacy to these 10 songs that make them almost feel hot to the touch — the thrashing title track, the keening acoustic ballad “Light Blue,” even the slinky, synth-driven vamp “Ben Franklin.” Her nimble guitar work highlights a sharp ear for off-kilter melody, but at the core of “Valentine” is Jordan’s passionately hoarse voice, lungs filled to the brim with sound and fury. (Read our review of “Valentine.”)4. Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Heaux Tales’The chatty, candid interstitials woven through this wonderful album play out like an adult reunion of those young girls in the classroom from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” — now grown women swapping secrets, recollections and hard-earned wisdom. “Heaux Tales” is a prismatic, multiperspective snapshot of female desire in the 21st century, enlivened by the testimonies of friends like Ari Lennox and H.E.R. but made cohesive by the soulfully versatile voice of Jazmine Sullivan. She breathes life into a spectrum of emotions, from the sassy assertion of “Pick Up Your Feelings” to the naked yearning of “The Other Side,” proving that it would be too limiting to choose between being a hard rock or a gem. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? (Read our review of “Heaux Tales.”)Jazmine Sullivan explores the multiple dimensions of female desire in the 21st century on “Heaux Tales.”NAACP, via Reuters5. Illuminati Hotties, ‘Let Me Do One More’The indie producer turned surprisingly ebullient frontperson Sarah Tudzin is a personable and occasionally hilarious guide through the surreal ruins of late capitalism. “You think I wanna be a part of every self-appointed start-up?” she seethes in a punky, cartoonish voice, but a few songs later she’s exhausted enough to sound resigned to inevitable compromise: “The corner store is selling spit, bottled up for profit,” she sighs, “can’t believe I’m buying it.” Still, Tudzin’s songs glow with the possibility of human intimacy amid all the rubble, and they show off her mastery of so many different genres that by the end of the record, it seems like there’s no ceiling to her talent as both a producer and a finger-on-the-pulse songwriter. (Read our interview with Illuminati Hotties.)6. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Hell hath no fury like a young woman out to prove she’s no one-hit wonder. From the opening guitar-crunch of the Zoomer primal scream that is “Brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo proves there’s so much more to her than could be expressed even in a song as exquisitely expressive as her seismic smash “Drivers License.” Rodrigo fashions teen-girl sarcasm into a lethal weapon on the dream-pop “Deja Vu,” rails against the Instagram industrial complex on the barbed social critique “Jealousy, Jealousy” and transforms a sample of one of her idol Taylor Swift’s sweetest love songs into a tear-streaked heartbreaker on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” If it feels comparatively weak on the back end, that’s only because the first half of this album is probably the most impressive six-song run anybody put together this year. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)7. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician who records as the Weather Station, came up with a winning solution on her stirring album “Ignorance,” which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet. The graceful melancholy of “Tried to Tell You” surveys the natural beauty we’ve been too numb to mourn, while the sparse, jazzy “Robber” is a kind of musical tone-poem about large-scale corporate destruction. With her nimble voice — sometimes high and fluttery, other times earthy and low — and evocative lyricism, the songs of “Ignorance” animate, as one of her bandmates puts it, “the emotional side of climate change,” employing music’s depth of feeling to ignite political consciousness. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station finds artful ways to sing about the climate crisis.Angela Lewis for The New York Times8. Low, ‘Hey What’If only every band could sound this adventurous 30 years into existence. As their eerily heartfelt harmonies cut through with rhythmic blurts of electronic noise, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk sound, quite literally, like ghosts in the machine, imbuing vast, steely soundscapes with a disarming beauty. Following the sonic reinvention of the stunning 2018 album “Double Negative,” the Duluth band have continued to frame human yearning amid a churning and apocalyptic backdrop, with career-best songs like “Disappearing” and “Days Like These” capturing both the difficulty and the necessity of finding light in a dark age.9. Lucy Dacus, ‘Home Video’Lucy Dacus’s wrenching third studio album is as much an achievement of memoir as it is of songwriting, a vividly conjured coming-of-age story so personal that she used her own teenage diaries for research. “In the summer of ’07, I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she sings on “VBS” (as in, Vacation Bible School), before a gradual and all-consuming doubt begins to creep in. By the final song, when a friend tells her she’s afraid that their desires have rendered them “cursed,” Dacus responds, “So what?” As thoughtfully crafted as a collection of short stories, “Home Video” achingly chronicles the tale of a young person who loses her religion but in the process gains autonomy, a sense of identity and the glorious strength to tell her own truths in song. (Read T magazine’s interview with Lucy Dacus.)10. Dry Cleaning, ‘New Long Leg’“Are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more?” the ever-droll Florence Shaw asks, one of many absurdist yet somehow relatable philosophical questions she poses on the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s singular debut album. The instrumentation around Shaw swells like a sudden squall, but her deadpan, spoken-word musings — a mixture of found text, overheard chitchat and offbeat poetry — are the eye of the storm, remaining steady and strangely unperturbed in all kinds of weather.11. Billie Eilish, ‘Happier Than Ever’No record grew on me more this year than Billie Eilish’s patient and personal sophomore effort, which shuns repeat-the-formula predictability and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. It’s somehow even quieter than her sumptuously ASMR-triggering debut, until those sudden moments when it isn’t — as on the corrosive conclusion to the Nine-Inch-Nails-like “NDA,” or the fireworks display of pent-up frustration that rips open the title track. Exquisitely sequenced, this is a rare pop album that doesn’t show all its cards right away, but instead saves its strongest material for the end, building toward a satisfying finale and a hint at the potential versatility of her future. (Read our review of “Happier Than Ever.”)Billie Eilish’s second album, “Happier Than Ever,” reveals itself at its own pace.Rich Fury/Getty Images12. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’The fluid and incandescent playing of the Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar transcends borders, seamlessly fusing Western psychedelia with North African desert blues. “Afrique Victime,” his strongest and most focused record to date, showcases not only his quicksilver fingerwork but his innate gift for melody and songcraft, proving in every one of these nine blazing tracks that shredding is a universal language.13. Bitchin Bajas, ‘Switched on Ra’This shouldn’t work, or at least not nearly as well as it does: A drone synth outfit tackling the otherworldly compositions and complex harmonies of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra? But Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas approach the task with equal parts reverence and playfulness, assembling an Arkestra of 19 different analog synths and in the process creating a prolonged musical meditation on time, space and the meaning of retrofuturism. The vibes are exquisite, and the whole thing sounds like the Muzak that would play in an intergalactic portal’s waiting room.14. Remi Wolf, ‘Juno’Here’s to anyone who takes a technically skilled voice and chooses to do something delectably weird with it. The Palo Alto native Remi Wolf’s pipes are strong enough to have propelled her to Hollywood on the 2014 season of “American Idol,” but she’s since carved out a much less conventional path, making bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas, melodies and truly wild wordplay (“I love my family intrinsically, like Anthony Kiedis,” she sings, which — sure!). On “Juno,” one of the most promising debut albums of the year, Wolf throws everything she’s got at the wall — and a surprisingly high percentage of it actually sticks. (Read our interview with Remi Wolf.)Remi Wolf makes bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas.Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesSome runners-up worth mentioning:L’Rain, “Fatigue”Rostam, “Changephobia”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Lana Del Rey, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”/“Blue Banisters”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Palberta, “Palberta 5000”/Lily Konigsberg, “Lily We Need to Talk Now” More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Tamara Lindeman's New Album 'Ignorance' Explores Climate Change

      by

      @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More