What’s New
Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Serena Joy’
Olivia Rodrigo sings about complacency and complicity in “Serena Joy,” named after a character in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” who is privileged yet trapped within the theocratic, male-dominated dystopia of Gilead. It’s a lean, taut post-punk song, with a metronomic beat and a terse guitar hook. “If you close your eyes then it can’t be your fault,” Rodrigo taunts, but the chorus warns, “If they do it to them / They’ll do it to you.” When the closing lines repeat “Everything is just fine,” the tone of Rodrigo’s voice says the opposite.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Prince, ‘The Guilty Ones’
Prince’s vault still seems inexhaustible. A new album, “Timeless,” includes nine previously unheard tracks recorded from 1977 to 2012 and a live version of “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” Prince recorded “The Guilty Ones,” a fast, Hendrix-y rocker, in 2007. “Time to teach a lesson with the six-string and the sticks / That he was still the master,” Prince sings. He proceeds to do so with layers of frenetic riffing and over-the-top lead guitar.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Asher White, ‘The Eagle Is No Omen’
Asher White has released more than two dozen albums online over the past decade, recording as a one-person studio band and piling on poppy melodies, lo-fi instruments and splintered lyrics. “The Eagle Is No Omen” — from her new album, “Love Aggregates” — is nimble, tuneful and borderline inscrutable. The track breezes along with cheerful, ever-changing cross talk among all the instruments; White is a jam band all by herself.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Dawn Richard, ‘Chuuuuurch’
Dawn Richard’s album “Creole Culture,” due Oct. 9, will include “Chuuuuurch,” which directly connects the ecstasy of the club and the church. Both provide refuge and community: “A place where everybody grooves.” Richard sings about pain and ambition while the beat moves through house and bounce music on the way to the release of gospel — with a choir, handclaps and a New Orleans tuba down below.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Pedro Luis Ferrer, ‘Conga del Pueblo’
The songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer has long been a poetic voice of Cuban identity, aspiration and conscience, often displeasing the government. He currently resides in Miami and Spain, although he visited Cuba to record parts of his new album, “La Bunga.” It’s a duo album; Ferrer multitracked guitars, piano and trumpet with extensive percussion and vocals from Lena Ferrer, his daughter and longtime collaborator. With Cuba struggling under a United States fuel blockade, “Conga del Pueblo” (“The People’s Conga”), affirms the patient determination of ordinary citizens: “The people are silent / The people mark the world with their light,” he sings. “Blessed people, show us the way.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Keb’ Mo’, ‘One Day Away’
“The Breakdown,” the new album by the 74-year-old bluesman Keb’ Mo’, is full of mature, consoling advice in bare-bones acoustic settings. “One Day Away” concludes the album with encouragement for times when “things got tough / you fell apart.” Over cozy fingerpicking, he offers steadfast optimism: “You may be closer than you think to your miracle,” he counsels.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Dawuna, ‘Love’s Ekongo’
An ekongo is an African thumb piano, and Ian Mugerwa, the songwriter from Baltimore who records as Dawuna, uses one to pluck the serene arpeggio that circles through “Love’s Ekongo,” from his album due in November, “Love’s Arp.” Dawuna concocts hazy, lo-fi R&B tracks in the studio; in “Love’s Ekongo,” he’s smitten but bewildered. With his voice doubletracked as two tangled melodies, he croons, “I cannot even talk about it, got me going insane.” Also in the mix are shouting children, wavery pitch-shifted vocals and loops of African drumming, all thickening the confusion.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
What’s New in Instrumental Music
Yr Knives, ‘Fear&Trimbling’
The core of Yr Knives, a four-piece band from Chicago, is the gnarled interaction — at once contentious and cooperative — of two guitarists, Andrew Trim and Brian Sulpizio. In “Fear&Trimbling,” they mesh in dissonant counterpoint, paced by the rhythm section of Douglas McCombs (from Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day) on bass and Quin Kirchner on drums. They wrangle, diverge, collide and eventually connect; then a string arrangement leads somewhere entirely unexpected.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
What Happened 25 Years Ago
Björk, ‘Pagan Poetry’
Björk released her fifth solo album, “Vespertine,” on Aug. 27, 2001. Expecting many listeners to hear the album as MP3 files, she chose instrumentation that would survive compression: the high, plinking sounds of a harp and custom-made plexiglass music boxes, playing countermelodies that suggest Asian music. As Björk sings about warily falling in love, her voice rises from breathy and tentative to an earthy growl. Suddenly everything falls away and Björk, unaccompanied, sings, “I love him,” soon joined by backup Björks concurring, “She loves him.” It’s love as a rapturous, uncertain leap into the unknown.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The post 9 Songs We’re Talking About appeared first on New York Times.
