Rising pop star Sabrina Carpenter found success with “Feather,” a sweeping disco throwback, but she seems ready for an even bigger splash. Enter “Espresso,” a cheeky summer tune that might have the power to push her to the next level.The mid-tempo beat recalls the deep, retro funk of “Say So,” the song that made Doja Cat a star, and Carpenter plays the carefree seductress with winking humor: “Say you can’t sleep, Baby, I know, this is me, make it double, get ready to hear this voice everywhere.
In “I’m Back,” the girl in red—Norwegian songwriter Marie Ulven Lindheim—defies the cycle of melancholy. “I don’t want to die,” she crooned. “At least not now/I like being alive.” Quasi-baroque keyboard arpeggios pace a depressing track, recognizing that “time won’t stop for a sad little girl” and surging as she decides, “ This time I think I’ve been discovered.” Monosyllable; depth breakthrough.Jon Pareles
One of the highlights of singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers’ third album, Don’t Forget Me, is “The Kill,” a soft-rock breakup song that switches perspective midway through for a nearly-missed Relationships distribute shared responsibilities. “We’re all hard,” Rogers sang soulfully, “and yet so invincible.” Zolaz
Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo collaborate on “Sparrow”
Lizz Wright promises shelter, comfort and strength on “Sparrow,” from her new album Shadow. Acoustic guitar and violin and a quiet, insistent six-beat rhythm underpin Wright’s kind, determined voice, calling for a lover to return.Angelique Kidjo sang a mantra in the background, evoking African roots, and Wright recalled storms, terrible times and vowed, “We’re going to sing.” Pareles
Magogurian “A Trip to the Moon”
Margo Guryan’s 1968 album Take a Picture is a gently psychedelic chamber pop that was rediscovered in the early 2000s by pop aficionados like Beck and Cornelius, and more recently on TikTok. In the 1950s, Guryan immersed herself in jazz, writing lyrics for songs such as Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” and recording her own songs by Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte and Astrud Gilberto; she went on to write complex compositions for Spanky and Our Gang Top 40 hit “Sunday Mornin'”. The new box set, Words and Music, features 16 previously unreleased tracks, including 1956’s “Moon Ride,” recorded in 1958 by jazz singer Chris Connor. There are cheerful dissonant flutes playing along with the Guryan. She recounted a “creepy, nail-biting, terrifying flight” in which she was grabbed by moonmen, shot with a ray gun and escaped across “uneven cheese-covered ground” – all while carrying 20 1950s aloofness and a hint of wink.pareles
Phishing, “evolution”
Trey Anastasio sings the gracious voice of God on “Evolve,” which will be the title track from Phish’s first studio album since 2020. The God Behind the Result: “A million little things to fix/or not to fix – I’ll make them all evolve.” Phish fans have already heard a version of “Evolve” on Anastasio’s 2020 album Lonely Trip, The band has been playing it on tour recently. The studio version changed the tone and became a little too formal, adding backing vocals and a string section. There is no doubt that it will be relaxed in concert and is still evolving.pareles
Phelimuncasi, the politically minded South African band from Durban, teamed up in a Ugandan studio with Gorillaz’s long-time keyboardist Jesse Hackett, who sometimes records as Metal Preyers, to create their new album Izigqinamba. The Rules”). Its opener “Gidigidi ka Makhelwane” is a rhythm-forward song, syncopated over hissing beatbox sounds, deep acoustic drum rhythms, and light, matter-of-fact male and female vocals from Phelimuncasi’s Malathon, Makan Nana and Khera .pareles
Bruno Burley “Wake Up”
Brazilian singer and composer Bruno Berle and his musical partner batata boy on Berle’s album “No Reino dos Afetos 2” (“In the Kingdom of Emotions 2”). His voice is an androgynous tenor, further elongated by Auto-Tune.His request is made through two recurring, disembodied chords, “Restore the magic/Restore what is dissolved in emotion and tears.” Pareles
Phosphorescent “fence”
“Phosphorescence” – written by songwriter Matthew Houck – laments the irreparable cracks that have appeared in the weathered folk-rock of “Fences”. Over heavy beats and swirling pedal steel guitar, he mixes apologies, doubts and complaints: “You thought I couldn’t possibly see that you were wrong.” The chorus – “You’re building a fence” – is something he knows What one has to accept brings a comforting harmony.pareles
Chilean jazz saxophonist Melissa Aldana pays homage to Wayne Shorter with a ballad that’s very much in his style: tentative but ever-forward, harmonically complex but Tender as song. Melodies emerge as her quintet floats abstract ideas around her—jumping piano, little guitar patterns, distant electronics—but somehow the ideas still come together.pareles
Carlos Nino and Friends, “Love all doulas!”
Carlos Niño was one of the main collaborators on André 3000’s instrumental album “New Blue Sun” and he recorded extensively with his itinerant group of “friends”. Niño’s album “Placenta,” due out on May 24, reflects on the birth of his second child, now 1, and like “New Blue Sun,” it references drone, ambient and ritual music. “Love to All the Doulas” moves in a hazy, long arc, the trumpet-like tones of Nate Mercereau’s guitar synth picking up the melody over beatless percussion and trembling strings, creating a lingering The quietness of expectation that doesn’t go away.pareles
