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.
Pulp, ‘Spike Island’
“This time I’ll get it right,” Jarvis Cocker vows on “Spike Island” from “More,” the first album since 2001 by Pulp, the 1990s Britpop standard bearers. Due in June, the new album grew out of songwriting spurred by a Pulp reunion tour that started in 2023. The band has reclaimed its old glam-rock swagger, backed by strings, and Cocker is just self-conscious enough: “I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,” he sings. True to Britpop, the song’s chorus (“Spike Island come alive”) is a British rock self-reference, to an annoying D.J.’s exhortations at a 1990 Stones Roses concert. And in an equally self-conscious video, Cocker prompts A.I. to make Pulp’s 1995 album cover photos “come alive,” with hilariously suboptimal results.
Stereolab, ‘Aerial Troubles’
After 15 years between albums, Stereolab has completed a new one: “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” due May 23. Its first single, “Aerial Troubles,” has the band sounding like its old self, imperturbably setting out patterns within patterns while the lyrics critique late capitalism. “An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption — systemic,” they sing in call-and-response. “We can’t eat our way out of it.” Synthesizers buzz and drums tick steadily as Stereolab calmly anticipates “the new yet undefined future / That holds the prospect for greater wisdom.”
Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’
From its beginnings more than a decade ago, Turnstile thoroughly established its hardcore bona fides without ever ruling out melody, allowing its music room to expand. “Never Enough,” which will be the title song of Turnstile’s first album since 2021, sets its succinct lyrics in two very different ways. Its intro and outro use stately, billowing, organ-like chords. But its middle section is a fortress of punk-grunge guitars and barreling drums. It crests into a singalong-friendly refrain — “It’s never enough love” — before the track dissolves back into a rich keyboard haze.
Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes, ‘Day One’
A couple struggles against self-doubt and depression and tries to reconcile in “Day One” from “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s cathartic new album. “It got bad enough I thought that I would leave,” Justin Vernon moans. Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) advises, “You may have to toughen up while unlearning that lie.” Together, they sing, “I don’t know who I am without you.” While the chords and tempo come from gospel, the production is fractured and glitchy, questioning its own comforts.
Valerie June, ‘Endless Tree’
Constant bad news on TV? Pervasive isolation and hopelessness? In “Endless Tree,” from her new album “Owls, Omens and Oracles,” Valerie June recognizes dire times — she’s not naïve — and preaches hope, community spirit and “getting the courage to do something small” anyway. “If you’re on the couch and you’re feeling alone / May you feel moved after hearing this song,” she urges. An increasingly frantic orchestra and chorus join her, revealing some tension behind the positive thinking.
Galactic and Irma Thomas, ‘People’
“Keep on holding on,” Irma Thomas insists in “People,” a hardheaded, horn-pumped song from the album she made with the stalwart New Orleans band Galactic, “Audience With the Queen.” Thomas, 84, has been recording since she was a teenager, and her voice is undiminished — and more than convincing — when she sings, “I might have stumbled and fell a few times / But I’m strong as a woman could be.”
Daughter of Swords, ‘Talk to You’
“Talk to You” is the outlier on “Alex,” the new album by Daughter of Swords, a.k.a. the songwriter Alex Sauser-Monnig. Most of the album is hand-played indie-rock, but “Talk to You” is a mostly electronic lark, driven by handclaps and whimsical samples. She’s skeptical about “falling for a person like a person’s gonna solve anything.” And for her chorus, she sings, “I really wanna talk to you / I really wanna know what you — “ and lets a funny noise finish the line.
Rauw Alejandro, ‘Carita Linda’
A traditional Afro-Puerto Rican rhythm, the bomba, is the foundation of Rauw Alejandro’s “Carita Linda” (“Pretty Face”), a love song that muses, “Why don’t we go live in a little house on the sand?” The track surrounds the drumming with surreal layers of electronics, strings, vocals and an occasional sea gull cry, but the song stays close to its roots.
Youssou N’dour, ‘Tout pour Briller’
On his new album, “Eclairer le Monde — Light the World,” the Senegalese superstar Youssou N’dour merged his longtime African guitarist and percussionists with American musicians gathered by his producer, the bassist Michael League from Snarky Puppy. In “Tout pour Briller,” N’dour calls for self-realization — “We all have within us everything to shine” — amid rapid-fire drumming, jazzy keyboards, close-harmony choral vocals and a distorted kora solo. The sleek backdrop only makes N’dour’s voice leap out more.
Ches Smith, Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman and Nick Dunston, ‘Ready Beat’
The beat of “Ready Beat” — mostly 5/4, but with a shifty feel — comes from both physical and electronic drums deployed by the percussionist Ches Smith in ever-changing ways. In this track from his coming album “Clone Row,” he leads a group with two guitarists (Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman) and Nick Dunston on bass; he also introduces one of the zigzagging contrapuntal themes on vibraphone. The group wrangles nearly all the way through in noisy contrary motion, but almost converges on a shared riff near the end. Then, ingeniously, parts drop out so that the end of the track can easily loop into a repeat play.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice.
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