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O winged Lady,Like a birdYou scavenge the land.Like a charging stormYou charge,Like a roaring stormYou roar,You thunder in thunder,Snort in rampaging winds.Your feet are continually restless.Carrying your harp of sighs,You breathe out the music of mourning. — from “Hymn to Inanna” by Enheduanna,translated from the Sumerian by Jane Hirshfield PROPHETESS ONE RISKS ANGERING the gods […] More
O winged Lady,Like a birdYou scavenge the land.Like a charging stormYou charge,Like a roaring stormYou roar,You thunder in thunder,Snort in rampaging winds.Your feet are continually restless.Carrying your harp of sighs,You breathe out the music of mourning. — from “Hymn to Inanna” by Enheduanna,translated from the Sumerian by Jane Hirshfield PROPHETESS ONE RISKS ANGERING the gods […] More
Florence Welch, the front woman of the band, apologized to fans for canceling her recent shows after undergoing what she said was lifesaving surgery.Florence Welch, the front woman of the English indie rock band Florence + the Machine, announced on Instagram that she had undergone emergency surgery, which is why she had canceled some of her recent shows.“I had to have emergency surgery for reasons I don’t really feel strong enough to go into yet, but it saved my life,” Welch wrote.“I’m so sorry that I had to cancel the last couple of shows,” she added.The singer said she plans to return to the stage for the Meo Kalorama festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where she is slated to perform on Sept. 1, and close out her Dance Fever tour in Malaga, Spain, on Sept. 2.The Dance Fever Tour was initially postponed in November, when an X-ray revealed that she had been dancing on a broken foot, Welch said on Instagram at the time.“It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a U.K. tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea,” she wrote in November.In her most recent Instagram post, she assured fans that her feet were fine but said that upon her return to the stage she might not be jumping around as much, adding, “you can do that for me.”“Suffice to say I wish the songs were less accurate in their predictions,” she wrote. “But creativity is a way of coping, mythology is a way of making sense. And the dark fairy tale of Dance Fever, with all its strange prophecies, will provide me with much-needed strength and catharsis right now.”The band is most known for its hit “Dog Days Are Over,” which peaked at 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, and “Shake it Out,” which peaked at 72 in 2012. More
The Florence + the Machine frontwoman reveals what kept her motivated while working on the band’s next album: dancers, “Dracula” and daffodils.Florence Welch thought she would be happy when the pandemic brought live music to a temporary end. For the past 13 years, after every tour, the shamanic frontwoman of the British rock band Florence + the Machine told herself, “I’m going to settle down.” Instead, she would write more songs — which is exactly what happened in 2020, culminating in her fifth album, “Dance Fever” (out May 13).“The whole record is a ‘be careful what you wish for’ fable,” she said via phone from her London home, where she spent quarantine. “The monster of the performance heard me: You don’t want to tour anymore? Sit still for a year. How do you feel now?”With nothing to do during lockdown, Welch, 35, subsisted on a steady diet of scary movies. “Horror was like a poultice,” she said. “I couldn’t watch a rom-com or a film where people were eating in restaurants. I needed to see people losing it.” As a result, “Dance Fever” — named for the dancing mania that swept through Europe after the Black Death — is a collection of haunting rock songs that are frothing for release.“Every album is a reaction to the last thing you made, and I was a little sick of my own [expletive], which is heavy piano,” Welch said. “I missed guitars.” Half of the album was produced alongside the Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, St. Vincent), who helped Welch refine what she loved about her previous records. The kinetic dance single “Free” is mellowed by “Morning Elvis,” a swelling confessional about the time she was so hung over she missed a planned visit to Graceland. (Welch has been sober since 2014, but before that, she said, “I thought the way to hang onto your rock ’n’ roll roots was to be the drunkest person in the room.”)In her living room, surrounded by what she called a “graveyard of suitcases” in preparation for her upcoming return to the stage, Welch shared the cultural hobbies and passions that have shaped her career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Pina Bausch Pina has been one of the biggest influences on my life, especially on my performance style. “Bluebeard” was the last thing I saw at Sadler’s Wells in London before all the theaters started shutting. Her work speaks to me in a way that is really hard to put into words, and I think that is the point of dance. I can be so verbose. I can talk things around and around and get nowhere. To dance is so purely about the human experience.2. “Cabaret” What makes “Cabaret” one of the great musicals is the undercurrent of darkness and sex and death. One of the first theater shows that I went to see when everything started opening up was “Cabaret” with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, directed by Rebecca Frecknall. I was in floods of tears. I felt like I had been filled up again. I love musicals. Growing up, I didn’t think about becoming a pop star. I wanted to be on Broadway. But I was a really awkward kid. I begged my mum to send me to stage school and she was like, “No.” I definitely get my love of music from my dad.3. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” I really wasn’t a horror aficionado. I have enough scary thoughts in my head to not want to be scared recreationally. But I got Covid just before we did the album cover shoot. I was pretty sick, so I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula,” which was visually a really big reference for the record and the costumes. The script is a little clunky but somehow that and the overacting all adds to the magic. There was a period of time where I was, for lack of a better phrase, drinking all the vampire content that I could.4. Donlon Books They have the most amazing niche, rare and strange books, like “Wisconsin Death Trip” [by Michael Lesy]. If I’m trying to impress someone who I think is really cool, that’s where I take them. It’s where I took Phoebe Bridgers and she told me I should buy Carmen Maria Machado. I remember her pulling out “In the Dream House” and she was like, “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.” I had been interested in making a song about all the reasons why I’m not great at being a girlfriend. Phoebe opened a page and it was a very similar list of character defects. I was like, Oh, this speaks to me so deeply. That’s where the obsession with Carmen Maria Machado began.5. Superheroes I feel like this is something people wouldn’t expect, but I love superhero stuff. My whole stage persona is a mix of my childhood obsession with Rogue from “X-Men” and a Victorian ghost. I don’t think I’ve ever liked a movie more than “Thor: Ragnarok.” I’m not like a Marvel or DC obsessive — I’ll watch everything. Sometimes they can be hit-or-miss, I admit. But there’s something about the humor of superheroes when they get into normal stuff. Nothing satisfies me more than someone in a cape arguing about something really mundane.6. Walking to get coffee and pick up flowers I love to walk out of my house, down the street, and notice the seasons change. It was one of the things I missed the most during Covid. Now I feel such an enormous amount of gratitude to get a coffee that somebody else made and pick up some flowers. My dad told me once that his favorite flower is a daffodil and I became very interested in daffodils. They’re narcissus and they were used by ancient Romans as sleep medicine, or maybe poison, I’m not really sure. I wrote the song “Daffodil” in peak pandemic, and I really thought maybe I had lost it because the chorus is just me saying “daffodil.” Like, do I need to pull it back?7. @poetryisnotaluxury I don’t know who set it up, I don’t know who runs it, but I found some of my favorite poems from their Instagram. “This Is the Poem I Did Not Write” by Rita Dove. “Kitchen/Holidays” by Eileen Myles. And “Meditations in an Emergency” by Cameron Awkward-Rich. The last line just destroys me: “Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.”8. “Suspiria” The original and the remake are my two favorite horror films together. I love the dancing. I was listening to Tilda Swinton do an interview about it, and she pulled a lot of her references from a pre-Pina choreographer called Mary Wigman. That led me to be really interested in her. She did this dance called “Hexentanz” in 1914, which is “Witch Dance,” a reference for the “Heaven Is Here” video.9. “Yellowjackets” “Yellowjackets” appeals to me because of my fascination with all things culty, but also it portrays the violence of the hormonal shift of girlhood so well. I think there’s something about being a young woman that feels very murderous. That’s what I was trying to get with a song like “Dream Girl Evil.” It can be dangerous for people to think you’re incredibly nice. When you get, “You’re an angel,” that seems like such a high place to fall from. When I see messy or violent or terribly behaved women, especially young women, there’s a liberation. To not have to try and survive by being good.10. Scent Bar The whole band, we don’t really party anymore. We go to fragrance bars instead. Weirdly, [the musician/filmmaker] Adam Green was the original fraghead, the technical term for the fragrance community. He smells so good. He opened the door for us. When I had Covid, I was terrified I was going to lose my sense of smell. I woke up and I knew something was wrong. I have a big fragrance collection and I couldn’t smell anything. I was weeping and spraying perfume at 3 in the morning. When I told my friends, they were like, “Isn’t that a regular evening for you?” More
Hear tracks by Bonnie Raitt, Kehlani, Mahalia 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.Florence + the Machine, ‘King’Career vs. family. Artistic inspiration vs. a stable life. “The world ending and the scale of my ambition.” Florence Welch takes them all on in “King,” which affirms both the risks and rewards of her choices. Like many of the songs Welch writes and sings for Florence + the Machine, “King” moves from confessional to archetypal in a grand, liberating crescendo, while its video elevates her from a tormented partner to something like a saint. JON PARELESBonnie Raitt, ‘Made Up Mind’It’s an old story: the bitter end of a romance. “Made Up Mind,” written and first recorded by a Canadian band called the Bros. Landreth, tells it tersely, often in one-syllable words: “It goes on and on/For way too long.” On the first single from an album due April 22, “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt sings it knowingly and tenderly, after a scrape of guitar noise announces how rough the going is about to get. PARELESKehlani, ‘Little Story’Kehlani has long narrated tales of devastating romance, but “Little Story,” the latest single from the forthcoming album “Blue Water Road,” opens a portal to a world of candor. Sounding more self-assured and tender than they have in years, the singer (who uses they/them pronouns) curls the honeyed sways of their voice over the delicate strumming of an electric guitar. “You know I love a story, only when you’re the author,” Kehlani sings, pleading for a lover’s return. Strings crescendo into blooming petals, and Kehlani makes a pledge to embrace tenderness. “Workin’ on bein’ softer,” they sing. “’Cause you are a dream to me.” ISABELIA HERRERACarter Faith, ‘Greener Pasture’A bluesy lite-country simmerer in which the cowboy does not stick around: “I was his Texaco/A stop just along the road/I shoulda known I ain’t his last rodeo.” JON CARAMANICANorah Jones, ‘Come Away With Me (Alternate Version)’With the 20th anniversary of Norah Jones‘s millions-selling debut, “Come Away With Me,” arrives a “Super Deluxe Edition” featuring this previously unreleased alternate take of the title track, with the band work shopping the song. There’s a constant, pendulum-swinging guitar part in this version, matching the songwriter Jesse Harris’s lulling bass figure and pushing the band along. Ultimately you can see why this take didn’t make the cut: The biggest draw is Jones’s matte, desert-rose voice, and it seems most at home when in no hurry, cast in lower contrast to the rest of the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPorridge Radio, ‘Back to the Radio’One electric guitar chord is strummed in what seems to be 4/4 time, repeated, distorted and topped with additional noise for the first full minute of “Back to the Radio.” Then Dana Margolin starts singing, decidedly turning the 4/4 to a waltz as the lyrics push toward a confrontation with someone who matters: “We almost got better/We’re so unprepared for this/Running straight at it.” The song is pure catharsis. PARELESMahalia, ‘Letter to Ur Ex’The threat is both restrained and potent in “Letter to Ur Ex” from the English songwriter Mahalia. She’s singing to someone trying to maintain a connection that has ended: “You can’t do that any more,” she warns. “Yeah, I get it/That don’t mean I’m gonna always be forgiving.” Acoustic guitar chords grow into a programmed beat and strings; her voice is gentle, but its edge is unmistakable. PARELESEsty, ‘Pegao!!!’The Dominican American artist Esty collides genres and aesthetics like a kid scribbling on paper. “Pegao!!!,” from her new “Estyland” EP, mashes up the singer’s breathy, coy raps and sky-high melodies with razor-sharp stabs of synth and a skittish, percussive dembow riddim. She declares her imminent ascent in the music industry, whispering, “They say I’m too late/But I feel like I’m on time.” Her visual choices are part of the plot too: between the anime references, her love for roller skating (which has made her famous on TikTok) and a head full of two-toned braids, Esty’s aesthetic is a kind of punk dembow, her own little slice of chaotic good. HERRERAMura Masa featuring Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl, ‘Bbycakes’Here is how layered things can get in 21st-century pop. The English producer Mura Masa discovered “Babycakes” by the British group 3 of a Kind. He pitched it up and sped it up, keeping the catchy chorus hook. He also connected with Pink Pantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl. The new, multitracked song is still both a come-on and a declaration of love, but who did what is a blur. PARELESR3hab featuring Saucy Santana, ‘Put Your Hands On My ____ (Original Phonk Version)’Saucy Santana’s “Material Girl” is the optimal viral hit — easy to shout along with, organized around a catchy phrase, full of performative attitude. For Saucy Santana, onetime makeup artist for the rap duo City Girls turned reality TV star, its emergence as a TikTok phenomenon a couple of months ago (more than a year after the song’s initial release) was a classic case of water finding its level. And now, a future full of promising party-rap club anthems beckons. This easy-as-pie collaboration with the D.J.-producer R3hab is an update of Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip,” one of the seminal songs of Atlanta bass music, and a bona fide mid-1990s pop hit as well. It doesn’t top the original, but it doesn’t have to in order to be an effective shout-along. CARAMANICALil Durk, ‘Ahhh Ha’The first single from the upcoming Lil Durk album, “7220,” is full of exuberant menace. Lil Durk raps crisply and with snappy energy while touching on awful topics, including the killing of his brother DThang and of the rapper King Von, and instigating tension with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. In the middle of chaos, he sounds almost thrilled. CARAMANICAKiko El Crazy, Braulio Fogón and Randy, ‘Comandante’On “Comandante,” two generations of eccentrics — the Dominican dembow newcomers Kiko el Crazy and Braulio Fogón, alongside the Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Randy — join forces for a send-off to a cop who threatens to arrest them for smoking a little weed. Randy drops a deliciously flippant, baby-voiced hook, and Fogón’s offbeat, anti-flow arrives with surprising dexterity. When that timeless fever pitch riddim hits, you’ll want every intergenerational police satire to go this hard. HERRERACharles Goold, ‘Sequence of Events’The drummer Charles Goold and his band are hard-charging on “Sequence of Events,” the opening track to his debut album as a bandleader, “Rhythm in Contrast.” He starts it with a four-on-the-floor drum solo that has as much calypso and rumba in it as it does swing. When the band comes in — the slicing guitar of Andrew Renfroe leading the way, with Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, Taber Gable’s piano and Noah Jackson’s bass close on his heels — that open approach to his rhythmic options remains. Goold graduated from Juilliard, probably the premiere conservatory for traditional-jazz pedagogy, but he’s also toured with hip-hop royalty. All of that’s in evidence here, as he homes in on a sincere update to the midcentury-modern jazz sound. RUSSONELLO More
