By Lindsay Zoladz
Dear listeners,
I have a constantly replenishing playlist on my phone called “Thursday Nights and Friday Mornings.” It’s named for the time I do some of my most focused new-music listening, in preparation for the publication of the Playlist, a weekly feature that I compile with my colleagues Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica.* Each Friday, we recommend a handful of songs released in the past week, a task that helps me stay on top of all (well, most) of the new music that comes out in a given week, and often the Jons’ picks point me toward what I missed.
Every few weeks, I’ll be sending out an Amplifier digest of recent Playlist highlights. Today, we’ve got a mix of some possibly familiar names (Lucinda Williams; Feist; Tyler, the Creator) and hopefully some new ones, too.
Listen along here on Spotify as you read.
1. Jess Williamson: “Hunter”
This is one of my favorite new songs right now. It’s from the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson, whose music I’ve been following since her haunting 2014 debut, “Native State.” Last year, she teamed up with a fellow musician from the South, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, and formed a country duo called Plains. Williamson’s contributions to Plains’ excellent record “I Walked With You a Ways” felt like a step forward for her as a songwriter, and I hear that growth on “Hunter,” the first single from her next solo album, “Time Ain’t Accidental,” out in June. It’s a bittersweet song about the spiritually exhausting process of looking for love, but on the chorus Williamson sounds hopeful and replenished, reminding herself, “I want a mirror, not a piece of glass.” (Listen on YouTube)
2. Bully: “Days Move Slow”
My former colleague at Vulture Jesse David Fox once compared an early song from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy power-pop band Bully to “Sugarhigh,” the fictional alt-rock hit that Renée Zellweger’s character sings at the end of “Empire Records” — and now I will never un-hear that similarity as long as I live. (It’s definitely a compliment.) I interviewed Bognanno over video chat in August 2020, and I remember a very sweet dog named Mezzi dozing behind her. (A dog lover myself, I always ask my interview subjects about their pups. Always.) Sadly, Mezzi has since passed on, but “Days Move Slow,” from the forthcoming Bully album “Lucky for You,” is both an ode to her memory and a chronicle of Bognanno trying to propel herself out of the muck of grief. That probably makes it sound like a downer, but the song has a resilient, upbeat energy about it — sort of like an excitable canine. Rest in power, Mezzi! (Listen on YouTube)
3. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro: “Beso”
Some couples announce their engagement with a ring pic on Instagram. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, two of the brightest Spanish-language stars in the current pop firmament, hinted at theirs in a music video. Their sweet and sultry duet “Beso” is a highlight from their recently released collaborative EP, “RR” — and proof of their musical chemistry. (Listen on YouTube)
4. Tyler, the Creator: “Sorry Not Sorry”
Fun fact: In 2021, only two albums made appearances on all three of our critics’ Top 10 lists — Olivia Rodrigo’s head-turning debut “Sour” and Tyler, the Creator’s sprawling rap odyssey “Call Me if You Get Lost.” Last week, Tyler released an expanded edition featuring a few new tracks, including this one, the gregarious “Sorry Not Sorry.” I really like this song’s Jekyll-and-Hyde energy, as a repentant Tyler apologizes for a number of personal and professional slights and then, occasionally, a brasher version of himself takes it right back: “Sorry to the fans who say I changed — ’cause I did.” (Listen on YouTube)
5. Mahalia: “Terms and Conditions”
I’m a total mark for any song that mines and cleverly updates the sounds of Y2K pop or “TRL”-era R&B. (See also: The entire output of the young British girl group Flo.) “Terms and Conditions,” from the 24-year-old singer Mahalia, does just that. It’s giving me hints of Mya, Destiny’s Child and a whole lot of J. Lo’s glimmering millennial time capsule “If You Had My Love.” But it’s also got a contemporary twist, as Mahalia tells a potential suitor what she won’t tolerate (“If you look at her, consider bridges burned”), flipping the dry language of contractual agreements into something confident, fun and flirty. (Listen on YouTube)
6. Lucinda Chua featuring yeule: “Something Other Than Years”
Like the Mahalia song, I have my colleague Jon Pareles to thank for this next Playlist pick, from the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua. “Something Other Than Years” is a sparse, hypnotic duet with the Singaporean musician yeule, which finds Chua pleading in a glassy voice, “Show me how to live this life,” a request that seems to be answered by yeule’s celestial melody. Jon describes the rest of Chua’s new album “Yian” as a collection of “meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings.” (Listen on YouTube)
7. Feist: “Borrow Trouble”
I love it when Feist — an artist often associated with calm and quietude — lets loose and makes a ruckus, as she does on this stomping tune from her upcoming album, “Multitudes.” Wait for her primal screams at the very end! (Listen on YouTube)
Two Lucindas in a single playlist? Better believe it. The country-rock legend Lucinda Williams’s voice has sounded defiant since at least the 1980s, but since recovering from a 2020 stroke, her survivor’s rasp has taken on a whole new gravitas. “New York Comeback” — from the upcoming album “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart” — has Williams’s characteristic grit and lack of sentiment (“No one’s brought the curtain down,” she sings wrly, “maybe you should stick around”) but there’s something poignant about hearing Amplifier fave Bruce Springsteen (along with his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa) singing backing vocals to support her as if he’s just one more rock ’n’ roll lifer nodding to another. (Listen on YouTube)
These are my terms and conditions,
Lindsay
*If the grammatically correct plural of “attorney general” is indeed “attorneys general,” maybe I should say “Jons Pareles and Caramanica.”
The Amplifier Playlist
Listen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.
“8 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track list
Track 1: Jess Williamson, “Hunter”
Track 2: Bully, “Days Move Slow”
Track 3: Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, “Beso”
Track 4: Tyler, the Creator, “Sorry Not Sorry”
Track 5: Mahalia, “Terms and Conditions”
Track 6: Lucinda Chua featuring yeule, “Something Other Than Years”
Track 7: Feist, “Borrow Trouble”
Track 8: Lucinda Williams, “New York Comeback”
Bonus Tracks
A few of you have written in to ask if we archive previous Amplifier playlists on Spotify. We do! The easiest way to find them is through our account page, where we also archive all the weekly Friday Playlists, too.
And speaking of reader emails: Special thanks to Sharon Smith for — after I mentioned that Bob Dylan won his first Grammy nearly two decades into his career, for his 1979 song “Gotta Serve Somebody” — directing me to this blistering performance of Dylan playing the song live at the 1980 Grammys. (Kris Kristofferson, as you’ll see, was loving it.) Apparently the producers asked him to cut the song down to three or four minutes; he played for six and a half. Classic Bob!
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