\n<\/p>\n
The rising pop artist Sabrina Carpenter scored a hit with the breathily sung disco throwback \u201cFeather,\u201d<\/a> but she seems poised for an even bigger smash. Enter \u201cEspresso,\u201d a cheeky, summery tune that just might have the juice to propel her to the next level. Atop a mid-tempo beat that lightly recalls the muffled retro-funk of \u201cSay So,\u201d<\/a> the song that made Doja Cat a star, Carpenter plays the unbothered temptress with winking humor: \u201cSay you can\u2019t sleep, baby I know, that\u2019s that me, espresso.\u201d Make it a double and get ready to hear this one everywhere. LINDSAY ZOLADZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cI\u2019m Back,\u201d girl in red \u2014 the Norwegian songwriter Marie Ulven Ringheim \u2014 defies the cycles of depression. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I wanna die,\u201d she whisper-sings. \u201cAt least not now\/I love being alive.\u201d Quasi-Baroque keyboard arpeggios pace a track that holds back, recognizes that \u201cTime doesn\u2019t stop for a sad little girl\u201d and surges as she decides, \u201cThis time I think I\u2019m found.\u201d One-syllable words; deep breakthroughs. JON PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A highlight from the singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers<\/a>\u2019s loose and casually confident third album, \u201cDon\u2019t Forget Me,\u201d \u201cThe Kill\u201d is a soft-rock breakup song that switches perspective halfway through, assigning mutual responsibility for a near-miss relationship\u2019s demise. \u201cWe were both so difficult,\u201d Rogers sings soulfully, \u201cbut so invincible.\u201d ZOLADZ<\/p>\n Lizz Wright promises sanctuary, consolation and strength in \u201cSparrow\u201d from her new album \u201cShadow.\u201d Folky guitar and fiddle and a quietly insistent six-beat rhythm support Wright\u2019s benevolent, ever resolute voice as she calls on a lover to return. With Angelique Kidjo singing incantatory lines in the background, summoning African roots, Wright recalls stormy, fearful times and vows, \u201cWe gonna rise up singing.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n Margo Guryan\u2019s 1968 album of gently psychedelic chamber-pop, \u201cTake a Picture,\u201d was rediscovered in the early 2000s by pop crate-diggers like Beck and Cornelius and more recently on TikTok. In the 1950s, Guryan was immersed in jazz, writing lyrics for tunes like Ornette Coleman\u2019s \u201cLonely Woman\u201d and getting her own songs recorded by Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte and Astrud Gilberto; she went on to write the intricate Top 40 hit \u201cSunday Mornin\u2019\u201d<\/a> for Spanky and Our Gang. A new boxed set, \u201cWords and Music,\u201d unveils 16 previously unreleased tracks including \u201cMoon Ride\u201d from 1956, which the jazz singer Chris Connor recorded in 1958. It\u2019s an easy-swinging shuffle with a cheerfully dissonant flute playing alongside Guryan. She recounts a \u201chair-raising, nail-biting, frightening flight\u201d where she\u2019s captured by moon men, shoots her ray gun and escapes across the \u201cuneven cheese-covered ground\u201d \u2014 all with diffident 1950s cool and a hint of a wink in her voice. PARELES<\/p>\n Trey Anastasio sings as a genial voice of God in \u201cEvolve,\u201d which will be the title track of Phish\u2019s first studio album since 2020. The tune is from Phish\u2019s countryish side, lilting behind a deity who\u2019s having second thoughts about the results of creation: \u201cA million little things to solve\/Or not \u2014 I\u2019ll let them all evolve.\u201d Phish fans have already heard one version of \u201cEvolve\u201d on Anastasio\u2019s 2020 album, \u201cLonely Trip,\u201d<\/a> and lately the band has been playing it on tour. The studio version has changed key and grown a bit too formal, adding vocal harmonies and a string section. No doubt it will loosen up at concerts, still evolving. PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The politically minded South African group Phelimuncasi, from Durban, collaborated in a Ugandan studio with Jesse Hackett, Gorillaz\u2019s longtime keyboardist who sometimes records as Metal Preyers, on the new album \u201cIzigqinamba\u201d (\u201cThe Rules\u201d). Its opener, \u201cGidigidi ka Makhelwane,\u201d is a rhythm-forward track that syncopates briskly chanted, matter-of-fact female and male vocals from Phelimuncasi\u2019s Malathon, Makan Nana and Khera amid hissing beatbox sounds, deep log-drum beats and \u2014 out of nowhere \u2014 an occasional church bell: serious but definitely skewed. PARELES<\/p>\n The Brazilian singer and songwriter Bruno Berle, and his musical collaborator batata boy, merge airborne ballad crooning and surreal electronics in \u201cAcorda e Vem\u201d (\u201cAwaken and Come\u201d) from Berle\u2019s album, \u201cNo Reino dos Afetos 2\u201d (\u201cIn the Kingdom of Emotions 2\u201d). His voice is an androgynous tenor further stretched by Auto-Tune; his plea, over two recurring, disembodied chords, is to \u201cRecover the magic\/Recover what dissolved in emotions and tears.\u201d PARELES<\/p>\n Phosphorescent \u2014 the songwriter Matthew Houck \u2014 laments a rift that\u2019s grown irreparable in the careworn folk-rock of \u201cFences.\u201d With a trudging beat and hovering pedal-steel guitar, he mingles apology, disbelief and complaint: \u201cYou thought I might not see that you were way wrong.\u201d The chorus \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re building fences\u201d \u2014 brings consoling harmonies to what he knows he must accept. PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Chilean jazz saxophonist Melissa Aldana pays tribute to Wayne Shorter with a ballad very much in his style: seemingly tentative but moving ahead, harmonically complex but tenderly songlike. That melody emerges as her quintet wafts abstract ideas around her \u2014 skittering piano runs, little guitar patterns, distant electronics \u2014 that still, somehow, coalesce. PARELES<\/p>\n One of the primary collaborators behind Andr\u00e9 3000\u2019s instrumental album, \u201cNew Blue Sun,\u201d<\/a> was Carlos Ni\u00f1o, who has recorded extensively with his own fluid assemblages of \u201cfriends.\u201d Ni\u00f1o\u2019s album due May 24, \u201cPlacenta,\u201d reflects on the birth of his second child, now 1 year old, and like \u201cNew Blue Sun\u201d it invokes drone, ambient and ritual music. \u201cLove to All the Doulas\u201d moves in misty, long-breathed arcs, with the hornlike tones of Nate Mercereau\u2019s guitar synthesizer feeling out a melody among beatless percussion and tremulous strings, creating a lingering hush of anticipation. PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nLizz Wright featuring Angelique Kidjo, \u2018Sparrow<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Margo Guryan, \u2018Moon Ride<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Phish, \u2018Evolve<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bruno Berle, \u2018Acorda e Vem<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Phosphorescent, \u2018Fences<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Carlos Ni\u00f1o & Friends, \u2018Love to All Doulas!<\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n