\n<\/p>\n
Alice Coltrane\u2019s concert at Carnegie Hall, recorded in 1971 but only released in full this month, gathered force like a typhoon, and is well worth experiencing as a whole. Its serene opening was \u201cJourney in Satchidananda,\u201d a modal meditation with the flute and saxophones of Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp enfolded in her cascading harp arpeggios. Later in the concert, she switched to piano and led her group \u2014 which also included two drummers and two bassists \u2014 in a squall of free jazz that \u201cJourney in Satchidananda\u201d doesn\u2019t begin to foreshadow. JON PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Ani DiFranco<\/a>\u2019s next album, due in May, was produced by BJ Burton, who has come up with studio abstractions for Bon Iver and Low. Two songs released in advance, \u201cThe Thing at Hand\u201d and \u201cNew Bible,\u201d are starkly unadorned musical close-ups. In \u201cThe Thing at Hand,\u201d DiFranco embraces living completely in the moment, beyond identity or premeditation. The melody is bluesy; the minimal accompaniment is from frayed-edged keyboards, distant bell tones and near the end, when DiFranco insists, \u201cI defy being defined,\u201d just a raw, barely tuned guitar, proclaiming a bare-bones intimacy. PARELES<\/p>\n In \u201cFlea,\u201d St. Vincent \u2014 Annie Clark \u2014 wrings everything from her insect simile. \u201cWhen you start to itch and scratch and scream\/Once I\u2019m in you can\u2019t get rid of me.\u201d With her guitar abetted by Dave Grohl on drums and Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass, she revels in a parasite\u2019s point of view \u2014 \u201cAll I see is meat\u201d \u2014 as she bears down on a fuzzed-out stoner-rock riff and allows a few psychedelic tangents, without ever relinquishing her prey. PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Camila Cabello embraces the surreal, compressed aesthetic of hyperpop on \u201cI Luv It.\u201d She sings with breathy eagerness about the delusional, hormonal, reality-defying aspects of early infatuation; sometimes her phrases are digitally chopped up and looped. She\u2019s backed by a hurrying electronic pulse and a stop-start syncopated thump. Near the end of a brief track, her mating call is answered by a semi-intelligible rap from the professionally blurry Playboi Carti. PARELES<\/p>\n Disorientation suffuses \u201cRoses\u201d by the singer, cellist and producer Jordan Hamilton. \u201cI done been through the whole damn town trying to keep up with my thoughts\/Still I\u2019m running,\u201d he sings with bemused nonchalance. The song sets up staggered, minimalistic layers of cellos, keyboards, percussion and vocals, and it ends with him still suspended in his self-constructed limbo. PARELES<\/p>\n Less verbose bands may be content to pair \u201cmoon\u201d with \u201cJune,\u201d but on the latest single from \u201cOnly God Was Above Us,\u201d Ezra Koenig offers a quintessentially Vampire Weekend<\/a> take on a familiar rhyme scheme, pairing a semi-obscure cultural reference with crooned romanticism. \u201cMary Boone, Mary Boone, I hope you feel like loving someone soon,\u201d he sings, name-checking a once-powerful art dealer who recently served a prison sentence for tax fraud. The song itself is a kind of musical mosaic, combining floating atmospherics that recall the band\u2019s \u201cModern Vampires of the City\u201d with breakbeats and a lush, heavenly choir. Boone, for her part, has reacted<\/a> to the song with confusion (\u201cWhy did they do that? Does this mean I\u2019m a vampire?\u201d) that eventually gave way to shrugging acceptance: \u201cWhy not?\u201d LINDSAY ZOLADZ<\/p>\n Which comes first, the lyrics or the music? For the Grateful Dead\u2019s \u201cU.S. Blues,\u201d which opened the band\u2019s 1974 album \u201cFrom the Mars Hotel,\u201d the answer to that old songwriter query was clearly the music. An expanded 50th-anniversary reissue of the album will include this demo version of \u201cWave That Flag.\u201d It\u2019s Jerry Garcia alone \u2014 multitracked on lead and rhythm guitars, vocal and maracas \u2014 yet he simulates Dead\u2019s improvisational give-and-take. \u201cWave That Flag\u201d has the recognizable tune and the chorus of \u201cU.S. Blues,\u201d but only a handful of the verse lyrics. The rest are rhyming three-word phrases: \u201cRide the train, count your change\/Sit up straight, bewail your fate.\u201d By the time the song turned into \u201cU.S. Blues,\u201d clearly Garcia and the lyricist Robert Hunter<\/a> had started thinking harder about the political implications of the three words, \u201cWave that flag.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n In \u201cRed Cloud,\u201d Marina Allen imagines a primordial, free-associative Nebraska, the state where her grandparents lived. \u201cI am warped, I am wrapped, as I warble my song\/As I wobble my gait to the edge of the Great Plain in Red Cloud,\u201d she sings over two chords that sway like a porch swing, at times topped by twin violins. Her voice sounds just barely awake, equally ready for hardship and wonderment. PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSt. Vincent, \u2018Flea<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Jordan Hamilton, \u2018Roses<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Vampire Weekend, \u2018Mary Boone<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Grateful Dead, \u2018Wave That Flag<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Marina Allen, \u2018Red Cloud<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n