Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.
Radiohead, ‘Ill Wind’
“Ill Wind” was a postscript to Radiohead’s 2016 album, “A Moon Shaped Pool,” released on a bonus disc but not, until now, to streaming services. Its very few lyrics counsel isolation and detachment for fear of provoking that “ill wind.” They’re set to one of Radiohead’s morose bossa novas, at first akin to “Knives Out”: a nest of minor-key counterpoint on guitar and bass. But then more layers arrive, fluty sounds and buzzy ones, swallowing the song before prettily fading out. What seemed like a sanctuary was a trap.
— JON PARELES
Khalid featuring Kane Brown, ‘Saturday Nights Remix’
Halsey featuring Juice WRLD, ‘Without Me’
More seemingly left field but in fact totally harmonious cross-genre collaborations in 2019, please. The young country star Kane Brown brings an earthy sincerity to Khalid’s soothing delivery of angst on this remix of “Saturday Nights,” and Juice WRLD drizzles his melodically sweet melancholy on Halsey’s impressively stern scold “Without Me.”
— JON CARAMANICA
Adia Victoria, ‘Different Kind of Love’
Adia Victoria, a songwriter from South Carolina who’s now based in Nashville, Tennessee, offers a terse taxonomy of breakups in “Different Kind of Love,” from her second album due next month. “Some of them I knew it best to hesitate/ Some I’ve never seen again,” she notes. The setting seems retro at first: a hypnotic rockabilly shuffle with a hefty backbeat and plenty of reverb on the guitar, soon to be punched up by a saxophone section. But it’s not back-to-basics. Extra guitars and other, more elusive sounds thicken the mix, as Victoria gets around to a classic, nonnegotiable demand: “Tell me, who do you love?”
— JON PARELES
Potty Mouth, ‘22’
The pop-punk trio Potty Mouth, three women who have been working together since their teens, confronts aging with a galloping punk-rock beat in — really, this is not a high number — “22.” Abby Weems sings, “Oh, 22 — I still do what I used to do.” And why not? Their speed and passion haven’t faded.
— JON PARELES
Priests, ‘The Seduction of Kansas’
Ex Hex, ‘Cosmic Cave’
Two Washington, D.C., trios that aren’t afraid to think and rock at the same time are returning this spring: Ex Hex’s “It’s Real” is due March 22 and Priests’ “The Seduction of Kansas” will be released on April 5. Priests’ title track is like a semiotics class set to an arty dance beat: Singer Katie Alice Greer flings around signifiers of American culture — Superman, Dorothy, Applebee’s — before repeating a vow that teeters between genuine and controlling: “It’s true, I’m the one that loves you.” Ex Hex, led by Helium and Wild Flag’s Mary Timony, start off with a surfy bop that glances back to the Ramones’ interpretation of girl-group pop. Their lips aren’t sealed.
— CARYN GANZ
Lana Del Rey, ‘Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have — But I Have It’
A stark stunner from Lana Del Rey, narrating as someone who’s “24/7 Sylvia Plath/ Writing in blood on your walls/ 'Cause the ink in my pen don’t look good in my pad.” The arrangement is minimal piano, haunting as an empty, dark cave. And Del Rey spins into deliciously morbid, almost absurdist lyrics: “Hello, it’s the most famous woman you know on the iPad/ Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say, ‘Hi, Dad.'”
— JON CARAMANICA
Sam Smith and Normani, ‘Dancing With a Stranger’
A random rebound hookup: That’s the premise of “Dancing with a Stranger.” It isn’t much of a duet; it’s more like a pair of solos telling parallel stories. “Look what you made me do/ I’m with somebody new,” Sam Smith and Normani sing together, while they head off to separate trysts.
— JON PARELES
Gesaffelstein featuring the Weeknd, ‘Lost in the Fire’
The Weeknd is back to his louche ways on “Lost in the Fire,” the second single from “Hyperion,” the forthcoming album by the gloomy French electro-house producer Gesaffelstein. The mood is overcast 1980s Miami, and the singing blends empathy with eroticism. No one is better than the Weeknd at underscoring the trauma common to both.
— JON CARAMANICA
Gary Clark Jr., ‘This Land’
The Texas bluesman Gary Clark Jr. announces that he’s “paranoid and pissed-off” as he charges into the title song of his coming album, “This Land,” declaring that he’s bought himself 50 acres “right in the middle of Trump country” and is braced for racist neighbors: “I see you looking out your window/ Can’t wait to call the police on me.” All the tones are confrontational and raw: a distorted bass line, Clark’s not-always-in-tune lead guitar, his gruff voice, an underlying blues-meets-reggae riff. The video imagery invokes slavery, lynchings, Confederate flags and cross-burning bonfires. “I’m America’s son,” he taunts. “This is where I come from.”
— JON PARELES
Stella Donnelly, ‘Old Man’
Here is the #MeToo movement in action, simultaneously methodical and melodic. The midtempo folk-rock behind Stella Donnelly’s voice doesn’t telegraph her fury, but she’s reading a self-defense manual and preparing to execute painful moves against someone — married, prosperous, powerful — who is acting inappropriately. “Are you scared of me old man,” she sings, “or are you scared of what I’ll do?”
— JON PARELES
Kassa Overall featuring Judi Jackson, ‘Who’s on the Playlist’
Kassa Overall’s new album — the irreverently titled “Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz” — attests to the diverse musical identity of this drummer, producer and rapper. It’s one of the few genuine-sounding, full-scope amalgams of contemporary hip-hop and jazz to surface in recent years. On “Who’s on the Playlist,” as pianist Sullivan Fortner traces the chords to Miles Davis and Bill Evans’ “Blue in Green,” Overall, 36, daubs his snare drum with brushes, then adds a splatter of electronic percussion. He starts the track with a mumbly, ironic Master P quote before cracking a window into his heart on a verse that grows tensile and urgent before stopping up short. Judi Jackson, a young British jazz singer, shows that the interdisciplinary spirit is contagious — or at least, generational: She sings in an Erykah Badu purr for most of the song, then rattles off a cold rap verse.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Tomas Nordmark, ‘Human’
“Human,” an electronic instrumental by Swedish composer Tomas Nordmark, has a meditative, nearly ambient foundation: sustained, consonant tones like distant horns. But the foreground is jittery, full of unpredictable, glassy tones that briefly hover, then disappear. Mood: inscrutable.
— JON PARELES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.