EGN NEWS DESK
“I like you, it’s ruining my life,” Taylor Swift and a subdued Post Malone sing to one another, filled with breathy remorse, in “Fortnight,” the tune that opens Swift’s new double album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” They’re each obsessing over a short however unforgettable affair, despite the fact that each of the tune’s narrators at the moment are married — and, to make issues worse, neighbors. “Your spouse waters flowers, I wanna kill her,” Swift notes. The music is a measured march with vocal harmonies wafting by digital areas the place the recriminations can smolder.
Greg Gonzalez, the songwriter behind Cigarettes After Sex, units decadent, morbid, sex-and-drugs situations to plush, slow-motion retro-rock that David Lynch would possibly respect. In “Dark Vacay” he’s taking tablets, “sipping Château Lafite Rothschild” and listening “to the final message that you just left/Then the voice from the suicide hotline.” He’s calm, even a bit self-satisfied, as he invitations somebody to “Feel it throughout you/Crash and fall.”
Arooj Aftab, ‘Raat Ki Rani’
The association is basically acoustic, but there’s nearly a trip-hop undertow to “Raat Ki Rani” (Urdu for “Queen of the Night”) by Arooj Aftab, the Grammy-winning, culture-fusing Pakistani singer who’s now primarily based in New York City. One piano notice repeats all through; Asian percussion provides deep, deliberate syncopation, and Maeve Gilchrist’s harp swirls between verses. Aftab sings about attract and longing in a long-breathed melody suffused with melancholy poise.
Claire Rousay, ‘Lover’s Spit Plays within the Background’
Most of Claire Rousay’s discography has been wordless ambient music, filled with ephemeral, edge-of-perception sounds. But her new album, “Sentiment,” is nominally a set of pop songs, with melodies and lyrics. It’s pop at its most fragile, attenuated and surreal. “Lover’s Spit Plays within the Background” — named for a Broken Social Scene tune — is a ballad of lonely self-assessment, set to delicate guitar choosing, cello drone tones and eerie reverberations. “For probably the most half I hate me too,” Rousay sings, together with her voice electronically filtered, alienated even from herself.
The guitarist and songwriter Ben Seretan has a catalog that encompasses songs and instrumentals, quiet ambient tracks and blaring rock. “New Air,” from his coming album “Allora,” presents yet another side. Recorded in 2019 with a power-trio lineup of guitar, bass and drums, it’s a jammy, droney, eight-minute tune that circles again to the chorus “We breathe new air for the primary time.” It hints at kraut-rock and psychedelia, eases again for an occasional vocal and builds to pummeling, skirling peaks.
Yannis & the Yaw that includes Tony Allen, ‘Walk Through Fire’
In 2016, Yannis Philippakis, the guitarist and lead singer from Foals, seized an opportunity to file in Paris with a band led by Tony Allen, the drummer who pioneered Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat and died in 2020. Now he has gotten round to ending 5 songs for an EP, “Lagos Paris London,” due August 30. “Walk Through Fire” rides a crackling, ever-surprising Allen beat — there’s no telling the place a fast little drumroll will erupt — and more and more distorted guitar riffs, whereas Philippakis summons the apocalyptic tone of Jim Morrison, howling, “The metropolis burns whereas it says my title.”
Lucy Rose, ‘Light as Grass’
Self-doubt offers approach to decided hope in “Light as Grass” by the English songwriter Lucy Rose. She wonders whether or not another person can ever perceive her; she’s prepared to take the prospect. The construction matches the thought course of. For a lot of the tune, she performs blunt piano chords that map a tough, fluctuating meter. But as she reaches the refrain — “I noticed you” — all that uncertainty is swept right into a waltz.
Richard Thompson has been writing steely, stoic British trad-rock songs because the Nineteen Sixties. His newest, “Freeze,” is from his subsequent album, “Ship to Shore.” With rumbling drums, a crisp mandolin and temporary, probing solos from Thompson’s electrical guitar, the tune jigs its method by usually bleak Thompson predicaments — “Another day and not using a dream/Without a hope, and not using a scheme” — for characters frozen at a second of resolution.
Loma, ‘How It Starts’
Dusty piano arpeggios carry “How It Starts” by the off-again, on-again trio Loma, whose members overcame profession and geographical separations to file a brand new album, “How Will I Live Without a Body?” The tune itself suggests a tentative however inevitable reunion: “This is the way it begins to maneuver once more,” Emily Cross sings, as Jonathan Meiburg (from Shearwater) and Dan Duszynski construct an association behind her, gathering heft as they reconvene.
Latrala, ‘Uptown’
Kenny Wollesen — a percussionist who has performed with Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Bill Frisell, John Zorn and lots of others — leads Latrala, a jazz quintet laced with electronics. “Uptown,” from an album due May 3, revolves round a two-chord vamp that’s layered with a number of little vibraphone motifs and melodies, typically flipped backward. Meanwhile guitar and saxophone wrangle on the sidelines. It’s a meditation that simmers with inside drama.
