Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Bob Dylan and the Band, ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’
On Sept. 20, Bob Dylan will release “The 1974 Live Recordings,” the entire gigantic archive — 431 tracks — of his 1974 arena tour with the Band. Most of “Before the Flood,” the 1975 live album culled from that tour, had Dylan shouting brusquely through his 1960s classics. But he never performed a song the same way twice, and there’s far more melody and nuance in this version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” from Madison Square Garden. With the Band in full rowdy roadhouse mode — J.R. Robertson’s twangy guitar jabs, Richard Manuel’s honky-tonk piano, Garth Hudson’s wheezy organ — Dylan delivers the lyrics in a long-breathed croon that merges defiance and tribulation. By the time he belts, “Goin’ back to New York City — I do believe I’ve had enough,” he’s earned the inevitable roar from the hometown crowd. JON PARELES
Corinne Bailey Rae, ‘SilverCane’
With the single “SilverCane,” Corinne Bailey Rae exults in the adventurous streak that she revealed on her 2023 album, “Black Rainbows.” It opens with a blast of noise and — over a parade-worthy drum thump — struts through an ever-morphing funk arrangement. The lyrics mention American towns (though Bailey is English) on the way to envisioning a future where “All the people shout hurray/There will be no more hate.” PARELES
Linkin Park, ‘The Emptiness Machine’
Emily Armstrong of the hard rock band Dead Sara was announced on Thursday as a new vocalist in Linkin Park. She introduces herself on “The Emptiness Machine,” the first single from the rock veterans’ upcoming eighth album, “From Zero.” Stepping into the role of the group’s powerhouse singer Chester Bennington, who died in 2017, Armstrong certainly has big shoes to fill. But, as she proves on this bombastic new track, Armstrong shares Bennington’s facility in pivoting between melodic belting and throat-shredding screams. The song itself doesn’t cover much new ground, but maybe that’s the point: It suggests that, seven years after Bennington’s death, the rest of the band is now ready to carry on as closely as possible the way it was before. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
The The, ‘Cognitive Dissident’
The songwriter Matt Johnson’s outlook hasn’t exactly brightened up in the 24 years since his last studio album leading The The. From the 1980s until its 2000 album, “Naked Self,” The The gave Johnson’s bleak tidings all sorts of backdrops: guitars, synthesizers, smoldering noise. In “Cognitive Dissident,” which opens the group’s new album, “Ensoulment,” he describes an Orwellian present — “Truth stands on the gallows, lies sit on the throne/Something in the shadows communicates by code” — amid insistently syncopated percussion and echoey, descending guitars, expecting no escape. PARELES
Halsey, ‘Ego’
Halsey embraces a angsty pop-rock sound on “Ego,” a single from “The Great Impersonator,” a new album that arrives on October 25. As the musician chronicles the dizzying and alienating effects of fame, flashes of Natalie Imbruglia and Ashlee Simpson (a compliment!) give the song a satisfyingly nostalgic feel. “I think that I should try to kill my ego,” an impassioned Halsey sings on the infectious chorus, “because if I don’t, my ego might kill me.” ZOLADZ
Queen Naija, ‘Good Girls Finish Last’
Queen Naija’s “Good Girls Finish Last” starts out sounding like one more wistful goodbye song. “What can I say? I really tried, yeah I tried,” she sings over relaxed acoustic guitar chords. But it soon emerges that it was more than a fling. She’s breaking up with the father of her child, after she’s “traded her years for tears.” By the end of the song, she’s leading a call-and-response cheer: “Let me hear you say fed up!” PARELES
Jessie Murph featuring Bailey Zimmerman, ‘Someone in This Room’
“It’s you and me and broken dishes/Highs and lows too far to fix it,” Jessie Murph sings, with a quaver, to her partner. “How does it feel to break a man?,” Bailey Zimmerman replies. This is a domestic dispute, about partnership and self-image and mutual respect, turned monumental and momentous. It exposes a raw conflict that a couple has to figure out in the moment. PARELES
Aaron Parks, ‘Sports’
“Sports” rolls out its melody over four chords and a jovial six-beat rhythm, hinting at South African jazz and Weather Report. It’s from an album due in October by the jazz pianist Aaron Parks, and it’s written by Greg Tuohey, the guitarist in Parks’s quartet, Little Big. In “Sports,” the bassist David Ginyard Jr. holds down a vamp while the drummer Jongkuk Kim continuously toys with subtle cross-rhythms; Parks’s piano solo sprinkles clusters, trills and arpeggios around the chords, while Tuohey’s solo cranks up distortion and pushes toward rock. But the catchy tune is never far away. PARELES
Miguel Zenón, ‘Wave of Change’
The saxophonist Miguel Zenón deploys a nine-piece band with three brasses on “Golden City,” a collection of knotty, quick-changing compositions inspired by the multiethnic history of San Francisco. Amid the meter shifts and intricate arrangements of the album’s other compositions, “Wave of Change” gets down to earth with three growly trombones sharing a bluesy stomp — at least until percussion subdivides the beat, piano chords recast the harmony and Zenón’s alto saxophone steers the piece toward an unexpectedly introspective coda. PARELES
The post A Nuanced, Unreleased Live Bob Dylan Cut, and 8 More New Songs appeared first on New York Times.
