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The playlist
Hear tracks by Perfume Genius, Lucy Dacus, Bartees Strange and others.
By Jon Pareles
Every Friday, New York Times pop critics take a look at the week’s biggest new songs. Listen to the playlist on Spotify here (or our profile: nytimes) and on Apple Music here, and subscribe to The Amplifier, a twice-weekly curator of new and old songs.
The saxophonist Marshall Allen, 100 years old, has long carried on the legacy of Sun Ra, the Afrofuturist visionary who claimed to be from Saturn; he has maintained the communal big band, the Arkestra, since Ra’s death in 1993. “New Dawn” is the title track from the first album that names Allen as a leader — a debut at 100! — and it’s deep in Ra’s era-melting ethos. It’s a leisurely, jazz-chorded ballad, composed by Allen, with lyrics by Knoel Scott that urge, “Arise and seek / Hear spirit speak.” Neneh Cherry sings with fond composure over sustained strings and a rustling rhythm section, and Allen’s alto saxophone solo scurries down polytonal paths, still frisky.
Two New Orleans mainstays, singer Irma Thomas and the Galactic organization, have teamed up for an album due in April, “Audience With the Queen. ” Their first single, “Lady Liberty,” recalls the socially conscious funk of Allen Toussaint songs like “Yes We Can Can,” with Thomas declaring: “It’s time to shuffle the cards we’ve been dealt and set ourselves free/ If you don’t do it Whatever, you know nothing is going to change. The brass and bass line struts; the words stoop for a long siege.
Consolation is not simple in the unwavering soul ballad “Cry Bathrough”. On her deep viola, Sunny War sings that she only wishes the best for a friend in trouble, but she also knows that “pain is real” and that it is mandatory to “feel what you feel. “Linked to the chorus through a kind and harmonic voice by Valerie June, the song transmits empathy rather than false joy.
Pressures, insecurities, questioning, and a deep preference for acceptance come together on “Wants Needs” by indie-rock songwriter Bartees Strange. Her upcoming album, “Horror,” has a wonderful pop pro on board: producer Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Sabrina Carpenter). But “Wants Needs” harbors a nervous undercurrent, from its frenetic electric guitar opening to a hole in the beat mid-song to a direct admission to listeners: “I want you too. ”
Perfume Genius — the songwriter Mike Hadreas — juxtaposes opportunity and anxiety, isolation and exploration, in “It’s a Mirror.” He wonders, “What do you get from the stretching horizon?” He knows “My whole life is open just outside the door.” But he also sees “holy terror” when he looks in a mirror. The song is an expansive folk-rock march that’s full of ups and downs, leaving it an open question whether he’ll open that door.
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