\n<\/p>\n
The memorably wistful title track from the new Zach Bryan<\/a> EP \u2014 which arrives just a few weeks after his most recent album<\/a> \u2014 is a collaboration with Bon Iver, which means a couple of very pointed things. First, Bryan is making kin with fellow roots-adjacent cult heroes. Though he has become wildly successful improbably quickly, Bryan still fancies himself outside of the mainstream, stubbornly stomping to his own drum. That parallels the story of Bon Iver\u2019s Justin Vernon, who likely could fill arenas if he was interested. Both singers are vividly emotional, too, building whole houses upon sadness. Where the two acts diverge is in tone \u2014 Bryan sings with raspy jabs, and Vernon buries himself behind echo and fog. Bryan is such a force, though, that he pulls Vernon in his direction on this song; when the two sing in harmony, Vernon sounds as if he\u2019s chasing after Bryan ever so slightly, following his bark with moon-aimed howls. A lament followed by a hug. JON CARAMANICA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On her latest single, the warm, synth-pop tune \u201cInto Your Room,\u201d the English singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone<\/a> oscillates between sincere yearning and wry, self-deprecating humor: \u201cYou\u2019re the center of this universe, my sorry ass revolves around you,\u201d she sings, begging forgiveness from someone she\u2019s mistreated. There\u2019s a casually tossed-off, conversational appeal to her lyrics and delivery, but when the chorus surges, she\u2019s suddenly leading with her heart. LINDSAY ZOLADZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Following the lusty thrill of his summertime single \u201cRush,\u201d<\/a> Troye Sivan starts catching feelings on \u201cGet Me Started,\u201d the second song released from his forthcoming album \u201cSomething to Give Each Other.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s got the personality, not even gravity could ever hold him down,\u201d Sivan<\/a> sings atop an insistent, club-ready beat, aglow with the agony and ecstasy of a new crush. ZOLADZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A disarmingly refined pop-punk debut single from Landon Barker \u2014 the son of Travis Barker, who plays drums here, and whose label is putting out the song. That teen-angst pop-punk became the de facto sonic landing place for the first wave of TikTok superstar pretty boys was about finding the safest available package of rebellion (and one that largely skirted issues of race). Barker is perhaps that movement\u2019s third wave, following early adopters like Jaden Hossler and Chase Hudson, and then the mainstream carpetbagging of Machine Gun Kelly. Which is to say there is a lot to emulate \u2014 the blueprint is loud and easy to follow. It hardly almost matters who\u2019s coloring in between the lines. CARAMANICA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cStick it to the man,\u201d Shakira advises, in English, at the beginning of \u201cEl Jefe\u201d (\u201cThe Man\u201d or \u201cThe Boss\u201d), a brisk polka-ska hybrid that teams Shakira \u2014 the paragon of Pan-American crossover \u2014 with Fuerza Regida, a regional Mexican band from California. Backed by crisply syncopated guitars and horns, the song is a worker\u2019s gripe, in Spanish, about a grueling, underpaid, dead-end job with a lousy boss; \u201cI arrive on foot, him in a Mercedes,\u201d growls Fuerza Regida\u2019s lead singer, Jes\u00fas Ortiz Paz. It\u2019s peppy class warfare. JON PARELES<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Byron Messia\u2019s breakout single, \u201cTalibans,\u201d is one of the year\u2019s defining reggae songs, so saccharine you might miss its tough talk. Messia has a sweet voice that gets feistier the more clipped his singing becomes, and on his boastful new single \u201cMad Dawgs,\u201d he comes almost all the way around to blustery, trading in much of his considered honeyed singing for a choppier rhythm more in key with the chest-puffing lyrics. CARAMANICA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The goth crooner Chelsea Wolfe conjures a thick atmosphere on \u201cDusk,\u201d her first new solo track since composing the score for Ti West\u2019s 2022 slasher flick \u201cX.\u201d Produced by David Andrew Sitek of TV on the Radio, \u201cDusk\u201d is centered around a slow, methodical beat, murky guitar chords and Wolfe\u2019s breathy, eerie voice. \u201cI will go through fire to get to you,\u201d she sings with a haunting determination. ZOLADZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Laurel Halo has a gift for the hallucinatory. \u201cAtlas,\u201d her first new album in five years, is a submersion into abstract imagination, resembling a head-spinning dream that shifts between epochs, story lines and locations. The Los Angeles-based conceptualist has explored Detroit techno, musique concr\u00e8te and even left-field pop in the past, and was recently appointed<\/a> to the faculty of Composition and Experimental Sound Practices at CalArts. But \u201cAtlas\u201d traces a new path, slithering between the textures of jazz, ambient and classical. On the highlight \u201cSick Eros,\u201d a bass trembles and creaks, beats shiver and gurgle, synths groan and swell. There\u2019s a Hitchcockian foreboding \u2014 a sense that someone is about to open a shadowy door and never return, or trip over an edge that will lead to oblivion. Discordant strings ache and decay, stretching over waves of vibration. By the song\u2019s end, you can almost picture yourself at the Dead Marshes<\/a> in the \u201cLord of the Rings,\u201d gazing upon the corpses floating in the swamp, their spirits emerging from the water with a ghoulish menace. ISABELIA HERRERA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A sense of peace is immanent to the music of Colleen, but especially the work she\u2019s been making since putting aside her viola da gamba in 2017 and adopting an all-electronics approach, centered on modular synthesizers. Her new double LP, \u201cLe Jour et la Nuit du R\u00e9el,\u201d is a time-flattening work of minimalism, created with just a monophonic synth (that is, playing one note at a time) and two delay units. Toward the center of the album, the first of three short movements in \u201cBe Without Being Seen\u201d introduces a quizzical pattern of arpeggiated chords, and simply lets it hang in the air. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Listeners to Immanuel Wilkins will recognize Micah Thomas\u2019s piano playing almost immediately: the elastic-band rhythmic tension and snap, the gloriously spilled-out harmonic delivery, his imaginatively redistributed roles for the left and right hands. Thomas is both the binding agent and the stirrer of chaos in Wilkins\u2019s quartet<\/a>, which for the past few years has been the most praised<\/a> young band in jazz. On \u201cEros,\u201d from Thomas\u2019s new trio album, \u201cReveal,\u201d the bassist Dean Torrey and the drummer Kayvon Gordon cooperate at cross-purposes, a six-beat flow emerging beneath a web of syncopation. Let the drums guide the rhythm of your body; then see how it changes when you let the bass. Then find Thomas within that combination, absorbing it all. RUSSONELLO<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n