Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.
BTS featuring Halsey, ‘Boy With Luv’BTS, ‘Make It Right’
Long before the English-speaking pop mainstream took real notice, BTS were already global pop stars. The successes the K-pop outfit have had in this country happened largely without worrying about how it might or might not fit in. On its new release, “Map of the Soul: Persona,” it showcases its highest-profile collaborations to date in a way that preserves its core strengths. The shimmering “Boy With Luv” features Halsey — but more importantly, it features Halsey singing in Korean, exactly the sort of bilingual exchange that’s all too rare. And “Make It Right” is in part written by Ed Sheeran. It has some of his signature soft-soul gestures, but BTS renders them with complexity. The least comfortable collaborations are the ones in which the balance of power is wildly uneven, where one party badly needs something from the other. But all you hear on these songs is mutual respect.
— JON CARAMANICA
Steve Lacy, ‘N Side’
The first new song in two years from Steve Lacy — who plays in the space-soul outfit the Internet and has collaborated with Blood Orange, Vampire Weekend and others — is a narcotically mellow inversion of casually strutting 1970s R&B.; On the one hand, it’s about yearning, with Lacy’s vocals aquatically damp; but on the other, Lacy is far too at ease — far too chill — to really break a sweat.
— JON CARAMANICA
Omar Apollo, ‘So Good’
“So Good” is elegantly rendered, built-by-hand disco from Omar Apollo, one of several strong songs from his impressive new EP, “Friends.” For the past two years, he’s been releasing songs that were sharp but felt tentative, as if he was worried about overstepping boundaries. But on “Friends,” he moves toward the upbeat and joyful, and sounds more free than ever.
— JON CARAMANICA
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis featuring Sounds of Blackness, ’Til I Found You’
Lead singers with Sounds of Blackness — Ann Nesby, Big Jim Wright and Lauren Evans — spill over one another with overlapping gospel praise in “Til I Found You,” the first single from a new collection by producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with various collaborators. The track is built on an easygoing beat and rippling guitar lines, but the singers turn it into an urgent competition to extol the comforts of faith.
— JON PARELES
Yeasayer, ‘Let Me Listen in on You’
“I can make your dreams come true/if you let me listen in on you,” Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder sings, as if he’s Alexa or Siri or some present or near-future authoritarian state. That’s the sweet chorus; the verses are far more paranoid, with no more comfort to offer than, “Don’t look so guilty, you’ve got nothing to hide.” In a lilt with an electronic pulse — glancing back at the Cars — Yeasayer pinpoints where the promise of convenience meets the threat of constant surveillance.
— JON PARELES
Geko x French Montana x Ay Em, ‘New Money’
This exuberant romp about the upsides of getting rich quick is effective and fun, but it’s more intriguing for the performers it brings together, a union of singer-rappers of North African heritage: Geko, born in Manchester, England, is of Libyan and Algerian descent; Ay Em, from London, of Egyptian and Moroccan heritage; and French Montana, who grew up in the Bronx but was born in Morocco. Each has a particular take on the blurry line between rapping and melody. To be fair, French Montana mostly phones in his mumbles, but Geko and Ay Em make for a winning tag team. Geko, a strong rapper, sings with a light touch, and Ay Em provides aural and spiritual ballast: “I just did my prayer, then you know it’s back to business.”
— JON CARAMANICA
Courtney Barnett, ‘Everybody Here Hates You’
In Courtney Barnett’s latest two-chord stomp — well, three in the chorus — she’s even blunter than usual about self-doubt and alienation: “I feel stupid, I feel useless, I feel insane,” she begins. But as she finds a defensive posture — “We’re gonna tell everyone it’s OK,” she sings with a laugh — the band cranks up, organ and tambourine pile on and voices join her for a rowdy singalong. She may be insecure and alienated, but she’s far from alone.
— JON PARELES
Blake Shelton, ‘God’s Country’
With tolling chimes, a growly high-drama vocal, a minor-mode melody, a verse about death and an arena-scale drumbeat, “God’s Country” verges on goth metal, with only a little bit of slide guitar and devout lyrics to qualify it as country. It’s Blake Shelton’s latest paean to rural life, a song about hardworking, churchgoing farmers that’s not cozy and nostalgic, but grimly fatalistic.
— JON PARELES
Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan, ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’
Guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan released their first duets album two years ago, a collection of performances that smoldered like warm coals and bespoke an easygoing, simpatico new partnership. Now they’re back with “Epistrophy,” an entire album of covers. It closes with this rendition of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” honoring the old Sinatra ballad’s melancholy theme but still animated by Frisell’s ebullient warmth. And all the while there is Morgan’s virtuoso flexibility; he’s as responsive as he is grounded and firm.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, ‘In Memory’s Prism’
With Abrams, a veteran bassist affiliated with Chicago’s broad-minded experimental jazz community, it makes less sense to speak of tracks than to talk about stories. Each of the four lengthy performances on his new album with Natural Information Society unfolds slowly and consequentially, with a sense of abstract narrative. On the nearly 24-minute “In Memory’s Prism,” Abrams keeps the underlying bass line — played on the guembri, and indebted to North African music — almost unchanged while the harmony and instrumentation slowly shift above. (At various times, there’s harmonium and trumpet and autoharp and bass clarinet in there, to name a few.) It all has the implacable momentum of migration, or the feeling of a big new idea just coming into being. At the very least, it will put your mind in a place of peaceful wandering; by the end, you’re likely to wind up deep in your own imagination, remembering or inventing a story of your own.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Josephine Wiggs, ‘Time Does Not Bring Relief’
If this track is any indication, Josephine Wiggs’ solo album due May 17, “We Fall,” is a far cry from her stint as a founder and bassist in the Breeders. “Time Does Not Bring Relief” is a droney, Minimalist instrumental built on echoing piano figures, a major chord with a recurring dissonance, quiet glitchy sounds and fleeting appearances from string-section lines and a drumbeat. It’s meditative, while it hints at unresolved tensions.
— JON PARELES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.