Jason Isbell's Bare-Bones Breakup Tune, and 7 More New Songs
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.
Jason Isbell's new album, 'Foxes in the Snow,' is decisively unadorned: just Isbell singing over his acoustic guitar. It arrives following his divorce from Amanda Shires, who has her own songwriting career and was a member of his band. Over bare-bones fingerpicking in 'Eileen,' Isbell sings about separation, regrets, self-deception and how 'It ended like it always ends / Somebody crying on the phone.' He contends, 'Eileen, you should've seen this coming sooner,' but adds, almost fondly, 'You thought the truth was just a rumor, but that's your way.' It's not about blame — it's about getting through.
The virtuoso string-band supergroup I'm With Her — Sarah Jarosz, Aiofe O'Donovan and Sara Watkins — has reconvened with the intimately ambitious 'Ancient Light.' The verses are in a gently disorienting 7/4; the instruments mix acoustic and electric, juxtaposing fiddle tune and math-rock; the lyrics lean into the metaphysical. As the song begins, Jarosz sings, 'Better get out of the way / Gonna figure out what I wanna say / I been a long time comin',' and it only gets more cosmic from there.
Will Toledo's band Car Seat Headrest has announced its first album since 2020, 'The Scholars,' and it's a full-scale rock opera. The first single, 'Gethsemane,' is an 11-minute suite that ponders faith, morality, creativity, free will and love as the music unfurls with stretches of kraut-rock keyboard minimalism and roaring power chords that echo the Who's 'Tommy.' Toledo sings, 'A series of simple patterns slowly build themselves into another song / I don't know how it happened,' but the structure is ironclad.
Sarah Tudzin — the songwriter and producer behind Illuminati Hotties — cranks up distorted guitars and harnesses quiet-LOUD grunge dynamics in '777,' a song that nearly explodes with joyful anticipation. 'I wanna figure you out,' she declares, but she's already sure that she's won any gamble: 'You're my spade / lucky 777.' All the noise doesn't hide the pop song within.
'I want your head on a stake / I want your head on a platter,' sing the Ophelias, an indie-rock band from Cincinnati, turning 'I' into a peal of vocal harmony. 'Salome' adapts an incident from the Bible into a seething, churning, implacable crescendo of guitars, drums and voices, calmly announcing, 'The knife sways heavy in my hand.'
Yaeji, a New York City musician with Korean roots, and her co-producer E. Wata transmute a hand-clapping game into a mutating electronic beat in 'Pondeggi.' She chant-sings cryptically about the truth versus disinformation: 'Watch where you're going, head distraction / Keep, keep scrolling till you're rolling in passive.' There's a warning under the nonchalant surface.
'You make me erotic like 1990s salsa,' the Argentine songwriter Nathy Peluso exults in 'Erotika,' and she revives the style to prove her point. Piano, percussion and a swaggering horn session help her seduce a partner — and herself.
The electronic composer Lyra Pramuk sets things swirling in 'Vega,' an assemblage of electronic and vocal loops that gets more menacing as it goes. A pulse gathers into a fitful beat; wordless sounds float in stereo; glitches and bleeps slice through. And eventually, Pramuk intones, 'Tell me your name' and 'Tell me your story.' Is this an acquaintanceship or an interrogation?
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