What a happy relief that two of the most intriguing, progressive and madly loved pop stars of the past five years have collaborated for the first time on a song that may confuse all expectations. “Lo Vas A Olvidar” by Billie Eilish and Rosalía is something different from a pop hit, which does not mean it will not be popular. Instead, it takes what stars of this magnitude are expected to do – join marketing forces and maximize accessibility – and question, extend, unveil and remodel. This is a spacious and unrestricted meditation. It rolls like a slightly unpredictable weather system: low fog, thunder, gusts of indifferent wind. The vocals are delivered with haunted reverb. Eilish sings most of his verses in Spanish. None of the singers are in a hurry. It is, in the most literal sense, a mood. JON CARAMANICA
Weezer, ‘All My Favorite Songs’
The most recent sonic aspect of the Weezer is retro. “All My Favorite Songs” is from the next album from the band “OK Human”, announced as fully analog with the group supported by a 38-member orchestra and referring to the orchestral pop of the late 1960s and early 1970s. powerful chords, there is a muscular cello section; violins and trumpet take on the solo guitar lines. But Weezer is still easily recognizable in this song, from his strong half-beat to a pure Weezer attitude: “All my favorite songs are slow and sad / All my favorite people drive me crazy”, sings Rivers Cuomo. JON PARELES
Lilhuddy, ’21st Century Vampire’
Resign yourself to the fait accompli that is the arrival of TikTok’s alpha figure Chase Hudson (also known as Lil Huddy, and now, Lilhuddy) to pop music. Her debut single “21st Century Vampire” and her video represent an intersection of perfectly crowdsourced (and aesthetically empty) trends: pop-punk, almost gothic, eboy, post-Eilish melancholy. It is a rebellious pop cosplay by numbers and ineffective. If that assessment is too long, try this: Listen to Marilyn Manson once. CARAMANICA
BRS Kash featuring Mulatto, ‘Kash App’
In “Kash App”, rapper BRS Kash from Atlanta is concerned with a particular woman’s wobble with a quick fervor reminiscent of New Orleans classics like 504 Boyz’s “Wobble Wobble” and Lil’s “Drop It Like It Hot” Wayne (instead of VIC’s laid-back Atlanta hit “Wobble”). He is equated indelicacy-for-indelicacy by Mulatto, who claims authority in the second half of the song and makes it clear that the first half was mere fantasy. “Kash App” is another dirty entry for BRS Kash, which broke out last year with “Throat Baby (Go Baby)”. A surprisingly affectionate ode to profoundly obscene intimacy, it has a new remix, with its libertine companions DaBaby and City Girls, which is one of the first candidates for the most bipolent song title of 2021. CARAMANICA
J. Hoard, an exuberantly talented young singer and songwriter who treats affirmation as an art form, has left bread crumbs throughout the New York City scene, collaborating with jazz, rock, soul and electronic music artists. It shines brightly on two separate singles released this week by different artists. In “Real Lovin ‘”, written on the day Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, Hoard insists on the connection (“Feeling something / To heal someone / To really love”), grazing melistically in a King Klavé beat. like Stevie Wonder and J. Dilla. “Find Light” was written last year with Simon Dufour and Aaron Day, when they were doing a tribute show to Dilla. A recurring jazzy chord progression seems to be taken from a 90s R&B cassette, but the message is all accumulated: “We are more than heroes, even angels / Because living is not easy, we are still going on.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Camilo, ‘Ropa Cara’
Designer brands have been vocal hooks for decades in hip-hop, but Colombian singer Camilo, with a leprechaun voice, gives an astute twist to the trick in “Ropa Caro” (“Expensive Clothes”). As he tells it – as the beat changes from reggaeton to a Cuban son – he has a girlfriend with many followers on social media, and she wants him in more chic clothes. He cannot buy them, but that does not mean that he cannot list them in a choir. PARELES
Goat Girl, ‘Badibaba’
Expressive vocals, a tangle of guitars and synthesizers, an energetic beat and an apparently cheerful chorus topped by the meaningless syllables “Badi badi ba ba” disguise the lyrics about the costs of ignoring the environment: “Stick it somewhere we won’t see / Turn around our mess in rubble ”, sing the members of Goat Girl. But before the trail ends, there are consequences. PARELES
Sheer Mag, ‘Crushed Velvet’
Philly Sheer Mag punks mix DIY ethos with a huge arena-ready sound. The approach helped them build a cult following that includes Bernie Sanders – or at least any known Sanders campaign team member who played Sheer Mag’s “Expect the Bayonet” at one of her 2019 presidential rallies. The vampire single ” Crushed Velvet, “from the soundtrack to the newly released Hulu original” The Ultimate Playlist of Noise “, is the first we’ve heard from them since their 2019 album” A Distant Call “. In the classic Sheer Mag style, however, it sounds more like something from the “Dazed and Confused” soundtrack: lightning riffs, cavernous percussion and the howling of Tina Halladay’s rock star. Perhaps it is what Bernie, mitigated and killed, would have liked to hear at the opening. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Carm with Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, ‘Already Gone’
Carm – also known as CJ Camerieri – plays the trumpet and horn on yMusic, the contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he also supported Paul Simon and Bon Iver. His solo album, “Carm”, includes collaborations with Sufjan Stevens, Justin Vernon, Mouse on Mars, Shara Nova (from My Brightest Diamond) and, in this song, members of Yo La Tengo. On nervously pulsating keyboards, he multiplies into a three-dimensional set of metals, with thick chords and counterpoint tendrils, while Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan sing in haunted whispers about “still being nowhere / not yet there / already gone”
Deb Never, ‘Someone Else’
The basic opening of Deb Some’s “Someone Else” – a beat programmed with clicks, a poorly tuned guitar and his reticent voice – is quite misleading. She is preemptively jealous; “I don’t want you to fall in love with someone else,” she sings about chords with Beatles accents. As your concerns increase, so does your support; she joined more voices, much more robust guitars and an eventful double breakbeat before falling back into her low-fi reverie, as if everything was just a pop mirage. PARELES
Patricia Brennan, ‘Episodes’
The image on the cover of “Maquishti” – the debut solo album by the vibraphonist and Mexican marimba player Patricia Brennan – prepares you for the tangled tranquility of your music. It is a photograph of barren tree branches against a gray sky that has been cut and refracted, creating an image that collapses at various focal points. Brennan recorded the album on her own, improvising with focus and moderation, leaving plenty of cloudless space around her notes and sometimes using effects to create echoes or layers of electronic sound. Throughout the album, your ear is often guided to a comforting pocket of melody or something similar to a pattern, with Brennan’s vibrations resonating against a background of absolute silence. Then, the pattern evaporates and you find yourself entangled in a new web, listening from a different angle. RUSSONELLO
Jon Mueller, ‘Welcome’
Jon Mueller, a Wisconsin musician who collaborated with Justin Vernon on the Volcano Choir group, creates mysterious, cavernous and sometimes hair-raising moments in the extended pieces of drones in “Family Secret”. He used gongs, cymbals, bells, singing bowls and other, much less identifiable sources for music that suggests gaping, unfathomable voids and distant threats. PARELES