Illustration by Bijou Karman
Fame and its power centers become alienating in “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” Lana Del Rey’s follow-up to the epic “Norman Fucking Rockwell!,” from 2019. Again largely produced with Jack Antonoff, “Chemtrails” finds refuge in small towns, in leaving the big city behind. After years of making coastal pop wafting with nostalgia—for old Hollywood, for the cosmopolitan beatnik scene, for Mustangs, horse races, and other such Yankee status symbols—Del Rey now pushes toward the heartland, and her visions of Americana begin to overlap with the musical tradition. On “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” she coos about going back to Arkansas and experiencing backwater romance along the Bible Belt. Over hushed, isolated piano and soft guitar riffs with folk overtones (and a Joni Mitchell cover), one of the more prescient songwriters of our time retreats to a personal hamlet of her own making.
— Sheldon PearceAllie Crow Buckley: “Moonlit and Devious”
In 2019, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter Allie Crow Buckley introduced herself with “So Romantic,” an EP featuring five new compositions and, as an encore, a rendition of the Black Sabbath ballad “Changes.” Like the original, Buckley’s version laments a romantic bust-up through haunted vocals that stand apart from the spare instrumentation. On the title track of her full-length début, “Moonlit and Devious,” Buckley supplies what feels like a retort. Echoing the Black Sabbath recording, the musician sounds as if she is singing from the bottom of a well, only this work seems a song of cheer—she recounts a long-distance romance in tones bordering on the lascivious. “Being good in your absence / I sink my teeth into the bit,” Buckley sings, defying the gothic church organ rumbling beneath her. The song encapsulates an album of incongruities, its instinctive brooding tempered by a California lightness.
— Jay RuttenbergDr. Lonnie Smith: “Breathe”
Dr. Lonnie Smith is among a number of very adept and very funky organ players who followed in the wake of Jimmy Smith, a man who basically put the Hammond organ on the musical map. A respectable career followed Lonnie Smith’s emergence, in the mid-sixties, and by the millennium he’d been taken up by a new generation hungry for his authentically soulful keyboard work. On “Breathe,” Smith shares space with supporting horn players and his fine guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg, but his slithery organ runs have the last word. Smith’s takes on Timmy Thomas’s “Why Can’t We Live Together” and Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” feature droll readings by Iggy Pop—just the kind of goofy notion you might expect from a man who has adopted a doctoral designation and dons a trademark turban because, well, he feels like it.
— Steve FuttermanGoing In
The Bunker New York, the production banner of the Brooklyn d.j. Bryan Kasenic, has put on the sharpest electronic-music streams of the pandemic, often hosting long, engrossing sets from spinners such as Mike Servito and Patrick Russell. To christen the Bunker’s new sub-label, Going In, which specializes in slow-winding ambient music, Kasenic has enlisted more than forty performers for a two-day streaming celebration. (The event is free, but donations are encouraged.) Many sets are live, not d.j.’d, and several—including those of the techno giant Anthony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and the acclaimed jazz vocalist Christina Wheeler—will be fully improvised.
— Michaelangelo MatosLost Girls: “Menneskekollektivet”
“In the beginning, there is sound,” Jenny Hval declares in the opening moments of “Menneskekollektivet,” the début album from her duo Lost Girls. The Oslo musician speaks in the elegantly accented deadpan of dystopian science-fiction narrators. A keyboard drones serenely alongside her voice, courtesy of Lost Girls’ other half, Håvard Volden. As the song stretches out, a beat creeps up behind Hval until, unshackled, she lets out a croon, transforming from a Laurie Anderson-smitten spoken-word artist into a disco diva. Much of the album dwells in the little-explored gap between these realms. That a record blessed with the title “Menneskekollektivet”—and starring a vocalist who has published novels in Norwegian—is dominated by English may seem a missed opportunity, yet it remains an absorbing display of this genuinely uncanny pair, dancing in a remote corner they’ve carved out for themselves.
— Jay RuttenbergMarcus Strickland
Those who only know Marcus Strickland’s music through his most recent recording, “People of the Sun”—an elaborate studio concoction replete with singers, pop-song forms, spoken-word passages, and enough sonic production to downplay the leader’s instrumental flair—may be startled by just how much horn this man can play. Employing a trim trio powered by his brother, E.J., on drums, Strickland molds this live stream at Bar Bayeux into a demonstration of unabashed vigor, unleashing from his saxophones and bass clarinet when he pounces upon the bandstand.
— Steve FuttermanNeil Young: “Young Shakespeare”
No, the title isn’t a declaration of the artist’s greatness—this live recording, from January, 1971, took place at the American Shakespeare Theatre, in Stratford, Connecticut. The performances aren’t declarative, either; Young was in a contemplative mood, and songs that he has typically performed with a rugged spark, including “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Ohio,” are given tender treatments here. But the performance is hardly sombre: he cracks the audience up while introducing “Journey Through the Past.” And the range of the material, traversing six early albums, makes it a decent place for a Young novice to begin.
— Michaelangelo MatosPaloma Mami: “Sueños de Dalí”
Illustration by Mokshini
The twenty-one-year-old Chilean-American singer Paloma Castillo, who performs under the name Paloma Mami, exudes a laid-back coolness on even her most kinetic singles, among them the jolting Diplo collaboration “QueLoQue,” from 2020. Castillo sinks deeper into smooth nonchalance on her lithe new album, “Sueños de Dalí,” each song a relaxed, low-key blend of R. & B. and light dembow rhythms. She weaves in and out of Spanish and English lyrics, never drawing too much attention to the project’s bilingualism, and stays limber on the slightly harder-hitting beats of “I Love Her” and “Traumada.” Throughout the record’s ten-song arc, Castillo remains composed and unruffled, proving herself to be a young artist guided by self-possession.
— Julyssa LopezTune-Yards: “sketchy”
Although Tune-Yards has never been worried about sounding messy, unbridled, and even a little unhinged, “sketchy” is among the group’s most liberated albums, loose at the joints and intense with movement. Inspired by recent books on using creativity for racial healing, the project builds on a growing interest in dismantling systems of control and oppression—a subject also explored on the band’s 2018 album, “I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life.” Such themes make “sketchy” a challenging listen: the singer and musician Merrill Garbus howls and chants over tangles of vibrating synths and jarring transitions, unafraid to grate and shock the nerves. But there’s delight in all the noise, akin to a child happily banging on pots and pans and unlocking a sense of freedom.
— Julyssa Lopez
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