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\u201cPrologue\u201d is actually the final track on Kamasi Washington\u2019s coming album, \u201cFearless Movement,\u201d and it\u2019s dense and bustling. Double time drumming, frenetic percussion and hyperactive keyboard counterpoint roil around a melody that rises resolutely over descending chords, while breakneck solos from Dontae Winslow on trumpet and Washington on saxophone exult in sheer agility and emotional peaks. JON PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Shabazz Palaces \u2014 Ishmael Butler from Digable Planets \u2014 sets up a sci-fi scenario in \u201cTake Me to Your Leader\u201d from his album due March 29, \u201cExotic Birds of Prey.\u201d He and a guest rapper, Lavarr the Starr, have to convince a powerful, mysterious queen that \u201cour race deserves to survive.\u201d Amid blipping electronics and slow-pulsing bass, with voices warped by echoes and effects, they set out a strategy of gifts, philosophizing, seduction and \u201ca steady-bumping beat she can freak with.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n
A decade-long friendship somehow turns into an ecstatic romance in \u201cOff the Walls\u201d by Salt Cathedral, the duo of Juliana Ronderos and Nicolas Losada. \u201cGetting along wasn\u2019t our strong suit\/but I\u2019m happy that we saw it through,\u201d Ronderos sings in a track that melds hovering electronics, crisp programmed beats, Afropop-tinged guitar curlicues and Ronderos\u2019s multitracked vocals into sheer bliss: \u201cFeeling like I never did before.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n
\u201cAct II: Date @ 8\u201d by 4batz is clearly indebted to music coming from Toronto in the early 2010s, when Drake and the Weeknd were collectively laying the bricks to remake the sound of pop. And so that slow, sensual, saccharinely off-kilter down-tempo R&B hit \u2014 which has run rampant through TikTok and elsewhere over the for the past couple of months \u2014 getting an old-fashioned Drake-remix bump is a full-circle moment. It\u2019s also a student-teacher convention: 4batz\u2019s rendering of an infatuation has an edge of titillation, while Drake\u2019s is calm and collected. JON CARAMANICA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Somewhere between a hymn and a sea chantey, \u201cAll in Good Time\u201d \u2014 from Iron & Wine\u2019s album due April 26, \u201cLight Verse\u201d \u2014 has Sam Beam\u2019s earnest tenor and Fiona Apple\u2019s huskiest alto trading lines about togetherness, estrangement, shared memories and lessons learned: \u201cYou wore my ring until it didn\u2019t fit,\u201d Apple observes. Piano chords ring and strings swell as the song\u2019s two ex-partners harmonize to find, if not reconciliation, a mature sense of resignation. PARELES<\/p>\n
The Canadian folk singer Mustafa<\/a>\u2019s specialty is isolation and longing, rendering them with beauty and, somehow, without anxiety. On \u201cImaan,\u201d the first single from a forthcoming album, the subject is about how two star-crossed people attempt to find ways to connect when faith (and maybe other things) demand that they don\u2019t: \u201cYou say praying isn\u2019t easy\/And all the ways you need me are from God\/And all the ways you reach him are flawed.\u201d It\u2019s about the tension between the carnal and the spiritual, but more simply, about two people who are talking right past each other, because the price of talking directly to<\/em> each other may be far too high. CARAMANICA<\/p>\n Still a provocateur at 81, the wry Southern soul veteran Swamp Dogg plans to release \u201cBlackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St.,\u201d an album that has him backed by bluegrass virtuosos like Sierra Hull on mandolin, Noam Pikelny on banjo and Billy Contreras on fiddle. \u201cMess Under That Dress\u201d bounces along as Swamp Dogg sings about a woman who\u2019s so sultry, she even has the undertaker worried. \u201cYou\u2019re bad for business,\u201d he frets. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna raise the dead.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the early days of corridos tumbados<\/a>, a generation gap grew between the young performers injecting regional Mexican music with new rhythms and attitude \u2014 and gaining widespread attention \u2014 and the older musicians who had been plugging away for years finding success within the scene but going largely unheard elsewhere. Those walls have, thankfully, been dissolving, as evinced by this vibrant collaboration between Fuerza Regida, one of the pioneer bands of the last decade, and Eden Mu\u00f1oz, the former frontman of the long-running and extremely popular band Calibre 50. It\u2019s a tag-team of chest-thumping bravado \u2014 not against each other, but together. CARAMANICA<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a goddess onstage, human when we\u2019re alone,\u201d the ever-poised Icelandic pop-jazz crooner Laufey sings in \u201cGoddess,\u201d envisioning a post-show hookup. The tune is an old-fashioned, acoustic piano waltz with a sudden, grandiose buildup. Like many of Laufey\u2019s songs, it pinpoints a decidedly contemporary tension, between perfect image and earthly reality. PARELES<\/p>\nSwamp Dogg, \u2018Mess Under That Dress<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Laufey, \u2018Goddess<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Moor Mother featuring Alya Al Sultani, \u2018All the Money<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n