NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Sept. 27

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

As NPR Music's Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Ann Powers discuss on this week's episode, there's a thread of loss running through some of the most notable, thrilling albums out on September 27. From the self-titled, posthumous album by the Scottish electronic producer SOPHIE to the harsh, alien sounds created by Alan Sparhawk on White Roses, My God, his first solo album following the death of his wife Mimi Parker, who was also his musical partner for decades in the great band Low, tributes to loved ones lost and voices from the beyond abound. Plus: The star-studded debut album from Toronto poet and songwriter Mustafa, an adventurous bluegrass album (emphasis on grass) by roots champ Billy Strings, reliably adventurous R&B from Bilal and another posthumous release, the final release from the beloved electronic act Broadcast.Feedback, questions, comments or any suggestions always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A quick heads up, this podcast contains explicit language. Also, we got hit with a few surprises this week. Right as we were sitting down to record, we learned there would be a new Lady Gaga album out today. You'll hear us reacting to that news in a minute. Then later came another surprise. The posthumous album by Sophie, our lead segment on this episode, was released early. By the time you're hearing this, it'll already have been out for a day or two, which, of course, we had no way of knowing when we taped.

All right. Our editor says that should set everything straight. Here's the show. Well, Doud. Let's pull back the curtain for a second. Okay. It's not Friday. It's Tuesday, right?

Well, when you and I are speaking, it's true. It's Tuesday. Sorry to spoil the magic for everybody. We just heard, just as we were coming into the studio, that one Stephanie Germanata, i.e. Lady Gaga. is releasing a new album. On Friday, that would be the day most people are listening to this. How does this make you feel, David? Well, I have two things to say about it right away,

and they're both sympathetic. One is being Harley Quinn, just dressing up as Harley Quinn and embodying that character, probably about as much fun as you can have. So why wouldn't you milk it? And that's what she's doing. This record is called Harlequin, and it is a companion album to the album that actually comes out a week later that is the actual soundtrack to Joker, folia de, the sequel to Todd Phillips Joker from 2019. It's a companion album, i.e., it's like extras coming out before the actual thing?

Sure, it's, you know, the way that Beyonce's the gift was to the Lion King soundtrack. Right, right, exactly. How does this make you feel, actually? Enough about me, because I know you've got feelings. Honestly, irritated, okay? And it's not about Lady Gaga. I love Lady Gaga, actually. I remain a huge fan. And I'm excited. Okay, am I excited to see her as Harley Quinn? I am excited to see her, even though, like, I actually have absolutely no desire to see another movie about the Joker. But I'm just a huge fan of her. So I'm into seeing her interpretation of this iconic. role. But this is something that we suffer through as music writers. This whole sudden drop, like surprise drop thing, is it really necessary? I mean, it's 2024. We do not need any more surprises.

The world gives us enough surprises already. That's just my feeling. I feel like there's a pendulum swing to it, right? You know, you go through periods where it's only surprise drops and then people get burned out on it. And so you start to see something more in the vein of traditional rollouts. And then that starts to feel stale and the surprises start popping back up again. Give me the old, the stale, the, you know, weeks that I can ponder something and change my opinion about it. I'm generally of the opinion that there's too much Joker in the world. I will say, I think Gaga looks awesome in the trailer for this movie. She is styled impeccably. Yes, and I mean, when people are listening to this, it will be Friday, so y'all are probably already listening.

Dear listeners, you probably already have an opinion about this album. But looking at the track listing, it does appear to be standards, you know, the kinds of songs that Gaga first explored in her work with Tony Bennett. And she's really great at that, you know? I mean, I want to hear her version of World on a String. I think she could kill it, you know. I'm all for more. Gaga sings the whoever songbook. I love that idea. Sure. I mean, this is a universe where three Wall Street bros sing send in the clowns before a vigilante shoots them to death in the subway. So who knows? Oh my God. But it's, yeah, it's, no, it's, it's obviously, it's familiar territory for her.

So I don't know. Let her have fun. I'm happy for you, Gaga. I'm happy you've added another recording. baby-tier discography. We're moving on and we're going to talk about some of the other really exciting releases that were not sudden drops that we've had some time to think about. Let's get into it. All right. Hey, everybody. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music here to talk about the best and most discussion-worthy albums coming out today, September 27th. I'm Dawood Tyler Amin, here with Anne Powers, a friend. Hello? Coming up on today's show, new music from Billy Strings, Alan Sparhawk, Bilal, and some thoughts on how we process music that is tied inextricably to loss.

Speaking of which, today's first album is, you could say, the cause for some solemn celebration. I know that's a little bit of an oxymoron. It's the final album, as far as we know, by the Scottish electronic producer Sophie, who died unexpectedly in 2021 after a brief but really potent career that in many ways was kind of just getting started. This is a big one, Ann, where do you want to jump in? Yeah, well, it's, it is a big one, and it's a big one for me. I'm a huge fan of Sophie's work. I absolutely loved her one other solo album that came out in 2018, Oil of Every Pearls Uninsides. Just to share a little background on Sophie for anyone listening who might not know, Sophie was a revolutionary producer,

a musician who argued for a fully synthetic approach to music making. That was what was so exciting about her music is that she was looking for new sounds, not trying to replicate traditional instrumentation in her work and really pioneering. She also was a trans woman and a pioneer of expressing gender expression through her voice, through her performances, just a really, really crucial. artist. Tragically, in 2021, she was living in Greece and one late night, early morning, climbed up on her balcony to better see the moon and fell and died, was killed in that accident. So we lost this incredibly powerful force. This album, Sophie, is the final work, the final complete

album work from her. It was completed by her siblings, Benny and Emily Long. using sort of the foundational tracks, which were pretty far along, I think. I think so, yeah. What they brought in were a lot of vocalists to either redo vocals. They'd already recorded or add vocals, I think, to some tracks, and, you know, shape the album, polish it,

bring the sculpture to life out of the marble. And I was skeptical at first the first time I listened to it. I think my expectations were very high. But this album, after several listens, I think it's quite a profound Final Testament from Sophie. I mean, it's a strange feeling because on a posthumous album that is the artist's Final Testament, to have the voices you hear be, in large part, somebody else's, is, you know, it's a little disorienting. But this record starts in sort of a distant, scary place. And it feels like sort of a soft intro to me.

It's kind of like the way that a lot of art films have an opening scene that's like not directly related to the main story at all, but it does have a thematic connection upon a second viewing. A lot of the Sophie stuff that we've come to know is here. There are threatening, you know, aggressive sounds. There's a real reverence for sounds that would be ordinarily thought of as like cheap or ugly. that have been sort of elevated to beauty here. There's a track early on called Plunging Asymptote, which to me feels like kind of a distillation of her relationship with pop music.

Punding asymptote against a white noise more torturous than silence. The invocation of this idea of an asymptote, it's this mathematical idea where there's a curve that approaches a certain value but never reaches it. It just sort of stretches on and on by infinitely decreasing increments. And Sophie's tastes were so innately weird that she was probably never going to make the leap to sort of full-on straight-ahead pop music that's designed from the start to be as popular as possible. But part of the thrill of her career was watching her use the tools that she had and the taste that she had fostered to kind of approximate a pop sound.

The difference between the target and the result was kind of where the magic happened. I like the way that John Perelis described the structure of the album in his big feature in the New York Times where he says it traces a four-part arc. So it starts, as you said, from this kind of like almost like horror movie soundtrack place and sounds very much like the Sophie that I love, that challenging cyber body horror Sophie that's so great, you know, and body love,

but love this new creature that's totally synthetic. So it starts there and then it kind of moves into basically like dance pop, you know? And that's the part I struggled with. But then, as John says, it moves into hardbeats, some techno beats, and then finally ends in, again, a kind of abstract place. So I think the siblings did a very good job. I don't know. Benny Long says has said in interviews that he and Sophie discussed the track listing a lot. So I'm going to believe this was Sophie's vision, too.

But I think they've done a very good job of making this almost like a, I mean, not like a biopic. but in a way it does tell, just as Oil of Every Pearls on Inside's revealed Sophie as a full being, you know, as a voice, as a visionary. This kind of does tell Sophie's life story in a sort of abstract way. Yeah, no, it is a story for sure. To me, the most compelling stuff is that stuff right in the middle that sort of embodies most vividly the tension between the ugly side of pop. and the pop side of pop. Interesting, like a song like Exilarate or something like that?

Yes, for sure. Exilarate has, that is a straight up pop song in a lot of ways, but there are still some weirdo touches. There is a particular, like, squelchy synth sound that happens when the chords change, that I can imagine an old-school, you know, cigar-chomping record executive demanding be taken out. I spend all my moments

Caught in the middle Up way too high Under the water Testing my love Trying to be stable Why I got my Something that kept ringing in my head Was the Neptunes

The sort of like early 2000s Work of the Neptunes It's a little bit of a stretch There's nothing here that's as remotely Traditionally hooky or catchy As a Neptune's production But I do think That at her best

Like she was onto something similar to what they were doing in the early 2000s with stuff like, you know, I'm a slave for you, the Britney song and milkshake. You know, these were pop songs with a sort of anti-pop ethos to their construction where they didn't give you. But I have to interrupt you though and say, I think you're going a little bit too far because while, yes, these are pop songs, I don't think, I don't know. I just feel Sophie's commitment to that goal that I talked about when I interested. introduce the record, the goal of making something wholly new that doesn't refer back. Now, everything refers back. It's impossible to make fully new music. I believe everything is still operating some way in relationship to the usual scales and rhythms

and the structures of songs, you know. But I still feel like this album sounds like the future more than it harkens back to anything in the past. Oh, I agree with you. I it's more a parallel thought thing to me where it's I guess the thing about you know those older songs that I'm talking about is they had a little bit of daring in not giving you exactly what you want. They feel really kind of skeletal. A lot of the middle frequencies are kind of scooped out. You go a long time without hearing anything that you'd positively identify as chords.

A lot of the chords are just sort of implied by the bass and by the melody. That's true. And where I see the connection with Sophie is forcing you to lean forward and fill in the gaps in order to feel satisfied. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And I would just say, I still think that this album connects with people like Holly Herndon as well, with artists who are really out there on the cutting edge of art music, you know, and thinking about what it means to be embodied at a time when embodiment is changing.

you know. I mean, that I think is what draws me to Sophie's music. We're living in a world where we are all becoming cyborgs. There's more open awareness of how people transform their own bodies. This is part of the beautiful way in which Sophie expressed her trans identity through vocal manipulation, through trying to create a space where that body could exist, you know. And so maybe I'm clinging a little bit to that, and that's why I'm resisting, like, the Brittany comparison. Although I can see what you're saying, but I'm just saying. Let Sophie stand on her own.

I think she does stand on her own. No, for sure. That is Sophie by Sophie. What do we have next? I want to take us to a record by the artist Mustafa. It is called Dunya, which roughly translates. in Arabic to the world in all its flaws. This is a Sudanese Canadian artist.

He's also been known as Mustafa the Poet. Came up in Toronto's poetry scene, although more recently he's been working as like a pop songwriter. He's worked for the weekend and for Justin Bieber. His 2021 record when smoke rises was one of those weird sort of out-of-the-box success stories where you had a relatively unknown artist kind of coming out of nowhere with a record that really quickly resonated

with a lot of people. And it was sort of a dedication to his friend, Smoke Dog, who was a rapper and singer, a friend of his, who was part of Halal Gang, this crew of hip-hop artists from the Regent Park area of Toronto and who was killed in a shooting in 2018. Dunya is a little bit of an all-star affair.

Aaron Desner is here, Rosalia, Clara, Nicolae, Nicholas Jarre, Jid, Daniel Caesar. There's some creative direction on the visuals by Rami Youssef. And yet, it feels very much like Mustafa's show. Those guests are used in extremely subtle ways, and their presence is always secondary, and they're there to kind of serve the mood that the album is creating

rather than the other way around. So I want to start with a song called Name of God. Both are Azoresh. There's high and I'm crying. You're trying to forget, but it hits me every time. You pray next to me. The right hand holds your left sleeve. Turning our heads gently, because when it ends we find.

There is a quality to his vocal style that is difficult to me to describe. It's sort of low and breathy. I can't think of who it reminds me of. But it is the opposite. Bonavir. Sorry. Oh, that's good. No, I like that a lot.

It's sort of the opposite of what you'd expect from, say, somebody who was raised in theater or even, honestly, somebody who is raised in poetry. I imagine poetry slams is a place where you have to project to the back of the room and you have to sort of, you know, hammer emphasis on certain words. And this is not that sort of hyper-articulate. vibe. It's a little recessed. The sounds are a little rounded, and it asks you to kind of lean forward and listen rather than projecting to meet you where you are. I don't know. What do you think of that? I agree with you that the sound isn't what you'd expect from someone, you know, who started as like a poet on the poetry spoken word scene or whatever. I do think there's a strong connection between Musaf's vocals and Arabic music. It's not as wailing as rye music or someone like Cheb Mami or something

like that. But the inflections very much remind me of Arabic music. So I'm interested in how Musafas music reaches across and back to his inheritance, you know? Yeah. Well, it does so in a few explicit ways. That song, Name of God, ends with one of a couple of interludes where he speaks in Arabic to other Arabic speakers. He's putting that code switching kind of right out in the open. The song, I'll Go Anywhere, features the Ood, really prominent. there is, I mean, let's just look at it, a song called Gaza is calling, which is gorgeous. It is. It is.

It is. It is. It's tough for me to crack the story of the main part of this song. I'm sort of curious to hear what you think about it. Well, it's definitely more abstract than most, you know, I don't know if we would call it a protest song, but it is a lamentation, as are most of the songs on this record. I will say I am sort of blown away by the choice near the end of that song to break into, after going along as a sort of quiet folk ballad, this sort of glitchy electronic beat,

it slips into double time. I have no knowledge of the intent behind it, but it really reminded me of the effect of flipping through TV channels that are covering war and bombings and military violence. There's something about that context collapse that happens when you see that many images that quickly for that long. The individuals underneath it kind of become abstracted. The song itself does seem to be about a lost friend, companion, relative, someone who possibly is in Gaza or...

Or a refugee, somebody who has family there and can't get back. But who's also now lost. So, I mean, also that discontinuity that the way the end of the song kind of like turns static and discontinuous is also another way of telling the story of lives disrupted. It's not just what, you know, turning channels on a TV. This is, I think Musafa's songs are always about the way that global events, colonialism, imperialism, affect him and his people, his friends, his family on a very, very personal level. Yeah. Why don't we finish with Hope is a Knife, the song that features Clero, who is kind of

produced it, right? She produced it. Yeah. She plays the roads, you know, the electric piano. She sings backup on it. It's basically a duet. I've always felt a little held at a distance by Clero's songwriting. I like it.

It's very pretty, but I've always felt like I don't totally know how to find my way into it. She sounds great here. And having her voice be paired with a voice that is tonally distinct, but where there seems to be a real mutual understanding of one another's strong suits just gives me a totally new way to hear it. That is Dunya by Mustafa. Up next, another heavy one, but I really was deeply affected by this record. It is the new album by Alan Sparhawk of Lowe, and it is called White Roses, My God. And there's a little bit of backstory that we should get into here, but before we do that, I just want to hear a little bit of the opening track, get still, because I think it scared the heck out of both of us. Yes.

Basically, you and I had the same reaction, which is, oh, wait, did I hit play on the Sophie record by accident? I literally thought they sent me the wrong stream. I'm not kidding. So Alan Sparhawk, his partner in life and music for 30 years, was his wife, Mimi Parker. She played drums in low. They had a career that moved through a lot of different styles of music. They were, you know, synonymous with the thing that became called Slowcore, although I don't know how they ever felt about that. Mimi Parker became ill in the early 2020s. She died of ovarian cancer in November 2022.

And it should be noted, I think, that they continued to tour and record, even as she was going through chemotherapy and made some of their best music at that time. That album, Hey What,'s very powerful. Yeah, Hay What from 2021 is a record that I have a real special relationship with because I had been sort of a casual fan of theirs,

I had never heard anything quite like what they did with this. They took songs that sounded like them, but they added these layers of distortion and white noise in ways that sometimes totally obscured the texture of their instruments and their voices. I mean, it's interesting. We were talking about Sophie and how creating these distorted, hard, synthesized sounds

could reflect someone's experience of gender dysphoria and coming into their identity is, their gendered identity. And I feel like with Lowe, with that record, what it was, it's not just about Mimi's cancer, but there is a way in which the experience of illness or mortality stains that record. And they found a way to express that, which was remarkable. Yeah. So what's happening on this record,

which is Alan Sparhawks' first solo release since losing Mimi, is it's obviously a new extreme in terms of the lengths to which he went to sort of stretch and distort the music that he was making. I want to play a little bit of a song called I Made This Beat, which feels like the purest distillation of this phenomenon to me. This beat, I made this beat, I made this beat, I made this beat, I made this beat, I made this beat, I made this beat. This is a song that repeats the title, ad nauseum. Yes. And is sort of manic in its insistence. And the thing that hit me about it is that it feels very much the way that creative practice in the aftermath

of loss feels because for a lot of people, I think it becomes a means to prove to yourself that you still exist. You know, you're doing something to sort of leave a record that exists outside yourself. And the vocal manipulation adds an interesting layer to that because he doesn't sound like himself here, but in a way that kind of makes sense because you may need to exist, but you don't necessarily want to feel like yourself in that moment. You may need to get back inside of your body. when you're grieving, your body might not be the most fun place to be.

Right? So being able to assume a different voice may be a way to sort of temporarily resolve that contradiction. I want to push back a little about completely reading this album as simply a testament about grief. Certainly it is that. But the only reason I'm pushing back is something I, a factoid I ran across while listening to this album, was that both of Alan and Mimi's kids, Cyrus and Hollis, are on this album. they're in their early 20s. And I read somewhere that how this project kind of started or how this vein of making music started for him

was he was like walking through their music room or a shared space where they all had instruments. And he's like, oh, look, there's a synthesizer that my kids brought in. And so aside from the intense, obvious backstory, there is also the story of someone who's played guitar-based music for his entire life, finding new technology. And I like that he bears the device so much. And this doesn't feel like a very smooth or polished album to me at all. He really retains the

amateurism of it in the best way, in the absolutely best way. Yeah. I think a lot of the process was at least semi-improvised. But I hear what you're saying. I think it's both. I mean, a thing that I thought about a lot, and we'll talk about this a little bit more later in the show, is that, you know, if I could have somehow heard this record totally divorced from its context, knowing nothing about the artist and his circumstances, if I would hear it the same way, kind of an unanswerable question.

Yeah. There is something very mantra-like about it, something that wouldn't land in the same way if it was performed more conventionally with just, you know, like an acoustic guitar or a piano and a bare voice. I do think the content and the form feel sort of smeared together in a way that's sort of hard to pull apart and consider separately.

Well, but it's not the only context in which to view the work because all of Lowe's work also touches on religion, theology, I mean, Sparhawks-Mormon faith, and touches on the subject of death in a sense, you know? I mean, the subject of what is beyond, what is beyond this mortal coil. That is a theme that runs through their entire discography. So in that way, this is not simply a representation of a huge break, a huge tragic discontinuity, but it's also very continuous with the work they've made before, the work they made as a band. I'll be very curious to listen to this record in a year or more, separated even further from, you know, the understanding of everywhere that it came from, and see how I connect to it. Because there are themes here executed

lyrically and also just in form that do feel kind of universal. The song feels something is another one of those ones that just repeats the same phrase over and over again with slight variations in the wording and in the melody. And it feels like a process of trial and error. Like

you know, when you're again in sort of a dissociative state and you're looking for ways to feel connected again, it's that feeling of sort of scanning the radio dial for the sound or the word or whatever else that's going to make you feel that way.

That is White Rose is My God by Alan Sparhawk. We have much more to share with you, including some happy music, I swear, after the break. Well, a friend with wheat is a damn good friend of mine. I said a friend with wheat is a damn good friend of mine. Well, Daird, does that sound like bluegrass to you? That's my question.

It sounds like something. I don't know if it's blue grass. Grass for sure. Good point. The blue grass, you know, that's a very rare strain. You can only get it in certain parts of Mexico, deep in the, deep, deep in the Yucatan. One of those places where you need to say a password to get into the back room. Exactly.

Exactly. So that was morbid for me. It's from Highway Prayers. new album from the always adventurous young bluegrass king, Billy Strings. This is a guy who's really transformed bluegrass in the 21st century. This is his fourth studio album. He's also put out a live album. He's a huge touring sensation, big star in the Roots Americana Bluegrass folk world. And Billy Strings always tries new things. I mean, he is, he's an artist who loves to absorb different influences and really like live outside the box.

But on this record, he paired with a producer who's famous for doing that. John Bryan. Of course, John Brian, you know, first gained his legendary status by working with Fiona Apple and Amy Mann. He's done a lot of film scores for movies like Magnolia and Lady Bird. I Heart Hawk Abies. Yeah, and he's kind of just like this Willy Wonka-esque studio Wizard out of L.A. So for Billy Strings, who even as the most adventurous force in bluegrass music, is still in bluegrass music, one of the most conservative scenes out there to pair with John Bryan is an event in and of itself.

And Highway Prayers really delivers in that way. Here's the thing about a Billy Strings record. It gives you everything. I mean, this is what he does, even in his live performances, he goes everywhere. last album renewal had 16 tracks on it. This one has 20 tracks on it. And this record doesn't disappoint. I mean, it goes all over the place. I wonder, I would as someone who, I don't think of you as like a super bluegrass guy. No. What did you, I mean, what did you think about this, this kaleidoscopic effort? I mean, I think I processed it in terms of the references that I recognized, or at least the

things that reminded me of references that are a little bit more in my world. The song called Gilles, the lily where I think I hear a little Elliot Smith in the cadences of it, something about the shape of the melodies. It's sort of the ways that those like Beatles-esque harmony moments are sort of dispensed very economically for maximum impact. Also catch and release. I love that one. Oh my God. This is the other side of morbid for me. This is what happens if you're not careful.

Yeah, right. So as a shot in chaser for a song, a weed anthem whose beat is literally constructed from the sound of a lighter flicking and bong water bubbling, you have this story about a run-in with the law, but it's kind of like an Alice's restaurant kind of tale, where it's told with this very sort of casual slowness and times out the punchlines so they land at sort of unexpected intervals. I can see him really playing audiences like a fiddle when he does this one. live. As it were, he's not a fiddled player though. Right. But, but... So we're cruising somewhere near Livingston.

I had some herb in my bowl and I lit it again. I was jabbered at the jaw and crimson in the eye. And the way to Dale Hollow, I was floating like a butterfly. Then I got stung by a bee. Had to squeeze the mustard, Uncle, then he said, wow. Then I saw the lights flashed, and my heart sank down. And the man strolled up with a real nice queen. And I rolled down my window and he smelled my weed.

I mean, to me, that is in that, kind of like Bobby Bear, Roger Miller tradition of classic country storytelling. And that's one thing I like about Billy. He can do straight up instrumental... He has a totally amazing band. And on

this record, you know, there are plenty of just straight up instrumental bluegrass breakdowns that if that's what you're looking for, you're going to find it. But then there are these kind of like contemporary rock-ish songs like you mentioned.

there are also these country classics. And then I want to single out a song that I absolutely love. It's called My Alice. And that to me is, that's like a murder ballad, you know. And it's something, that song, it's such a great updating of this form that runs through all of bluegrass music, all of folk music. But the story he tells him this song, just listen to it a little bit. It has class consciousness.

is it takes the story in a different place. And that's what I love about Billy Strings. He's totally tradition-minded, but he also is always thinking, how does this work in the 21st century? He does that so well. And John Bryan proves to be a great companion for him in that. Now, John St. Paul is a well-known man

of wealth in his skyscraper palace. He likes his old Cadillac prep for long drives. I don't like how it looks at it. It seems like together they basically made it a challenge to see how many aspects of traditional bluegrass they could remove or change and still have it be recognizable. Does that feel fair? Oh yeah, totally. Well, not remove.

I don't think remove. I think more like just see it with new eyes, you know, put it in the 21st century. And I shouldn't say he's alone in that. I mean, you know, back in the 70s and 80s, new grass artists like, Vince Gill, for example, change the form. There's always people change in the form of bluegrass. But Billy is our leader at this time. Yeah.

Also, he's got a great sense of humor. Maybe before we say goodbye to Billy, we should just hear a tiny little bit of the final track on this, which is a beautiful Southern gospel song called Richard Petty, named after an immortal stock car race champion. Now one of these days, I'll wake up, tired of the life I'm living and feel inspired to get off my eyes. That's going to be on my way.

One of these days I'll wake up steady and ready to go like Richard Petty. I'm going to wake up and change my ways. One of these days. One of these days. That is Highway Prayers by Billy Strings. And listening to this next record, kind of wish I owned a lava lamp. That feels like the appropriate way to experience it. I love this because Balal is kind of like.

like a human lava lamp. Yeah. So tell me what Bilal's been up to. So this record is called Adjust Brightness. It's by the Neo-Soul, so R&B electronic artist, Belal. And I thought we should just listen to maybe one of his songs to start out so we can get a little flavor of his voice because I think Bilal just has one of the most interesting singing voices in R&B,

just purely his voice. So let's listen to a little bit of Tell Me. So if you can get to the voice amidst all the effects and diffuse incensey mood setting on that record, you can hear that unique sound of his singing. I first fell for Bilal back in the 90s when he was a pioneer in the Neo-Soul movement, particularly in New York. He was always one of the most far-out characters in a scene that also included people like Carl Hancock Rocks and Saul Williams and Joy,

Greg Tate and his band Bert Sugar Orchestra. And his peers in the Soul Quarians. Yes, yes, oh yes. Crew that hung around Electric Lady Studios, Q-Tip and J. Dilla, all of them. Totally. And Bilal is like the secret guy that everybody loves. He's the secret sauce, you know.

He's the one that only the true heads know about, right? Yeah. Big star in New York City. He hasn't recorded very many albums. This is only his six albums since 2000. 2001 and is first since 2015. And his albums are always very unexpected. And this one, which he made, I think he started the project like in the COVID years,

he was listening to a lot of A-Fex twin and electronic artists. And I love this quote from him describing what this album is. He said, let's make some shit that is going to confuse the damn computer. It's just so funny. I like that. because he wanted to combine very abstract electronics with kind of classic R&B, you know, love man lyrics and just crooning. And the songs are strange, you know, some of them are almost feel like they're not songs.

They drift in and out, you know, but at the core is still this like soulfulness, I think. Something feels sort of inherently Afro-Futurist to the proceedings to me. And I don't know if I can fully back that up. I don't totally know how to lay out the bullet points that make that point for me. But the opening track, the title track, Adjust Brightness, it has a synth that sounds like a computer beeping, sort of what, you know, people thought computers in the future would sound like in the 1950s or 60s. Right, right, right. There's a choir that gives things this sort of sense of ceremony, but maybe,

an unfamiliar kind of ceremony. There's just all of these things that make it feel like it isn't taking place in the world we know. When we were talking the other day, I sensed a little bit of hesitancy from you. Like, I just can't, I don't know if I can go there. And I don't know if you are still feeling that way about this record?

Well, I'll tell you the track where I kind of locked in. There is a song called Ever-Changing Normal, spelled with a bunch of the vowels taken out. Right. may be assuming too much, but you mentioned COVID. I processed this as a quarantine song. Yeah, yes, I think that's true. But one about how the new normal, that phrase that we heard bandied about a lot in 2020 and 2021,

this idea of a new reality that the COVID era portended, never really arrived decisively. It's more just that, you know, the world has been kind of shifting dramatically around us every day since. all of that started. And the song feels like it's tapping into just, you know, the disorientation of that, understanding that as the normal, that it's not a static thing that arrives and stays that way. It's a moving target.

Well, I'm glad you locked in with that song and got into it in the way you're talking about because I think that's my general advice for listening to this record is play it more than once, play it several times, and play it in a context where you can really sort of sit down with it, even though it has a kind of an environmental ambience quality, you know, it definitely has that. But at its heart, it's still, you know, powerful storytelling. And the being that is belal, this thoughtful, magical being, shines through when you give a little bit more attention.

And sometimes the stories are, like, simple. Like, I love the song, Lay Around, for example, which is, like, kind of just like, hey, baby, let's lay around and recharge a little bit, you know? Yeah. And it's the combo of this experimentation with those heartfelt stories that I love about this record. Yeah. Also just pretty immaculately recorded. The song, The Story, which has Robert Glasper on it, it's him and Robert Glasper and the band just going off.

And it sounds incredible. That is Adjust Brightness by Bilal. As always, there is much more music out today than we can possibly go into in depth. In your streaming apps and local record stores today, you will also see new releases from Luke Bryan, pale waves, Efterclang, Trace Mountains, an EPE from Serge Tankian of System of a Down. Rahim Redcar, formerly known as Christine in the Queens, has a new album. And what's on your list? Very excited that one of my favorite retro rockers, Jady McPherson, is back after several years with a fresh new album called Night Owls. It's so good if you like that kind of rockability, early rock and roll sound with a lot of twists. Naima Bach, who is a really interesting, kind of chamber poppy experimental musician, has a beautiful new record out called Below a Massive Dark Land. The Great Mickey Guyton, one of our very best here in National.

and mainstream country, comes back with a genre-defying album, House on Fire. And finally, my fascination this summer, I really love Tommy Richmond. What can I say? Of all the new, like, you know, phenoms who emerged this summer and who continue to emerge from TikTok, this guy, I love Million Dollar Baby, I love the roller rink, kind of like play that funky music, white boy vibe he puts out. And he has his debut album, Coyote. It's hardly his debut recording. He's released a lot of stuff before this, but I just think this is really fun music.

It is kind of weirdly experimental, but also it's like cotton candy to me. I just love it. Let's hear a little track from it called Letterman. After the break, the last word from the beloved British band broadcast and a few words on music as a vehicle for grief. That's coming up after this. And there's another notable album out this week.

that we've been listening to a bit. And the reason we didn't include it in our main roundup is that it actually comes out tomorrow, September 28th, which is the birthday of Trish Keenan, the singer of the English band broadcast. Trish Keenan died in early 2011, and since then, her bandmate and partner, James Cargill, has been managing the task of collecting and sharing

the remaining music that they may. made together. This is a collection that represents a sort of year-long process of kind of clearing the decks on that project and gathering the fruits of that collaboration for what they're saying is the last time. It is called Distant Call, collected demos 2000 to 2006. Let's listen to a little bit of Color Me In. I am gray still on the page. You'll color me in. Just an outline, sketchy but fine or color me in if green is chasing the hills all for miles if blue is pursuing the sky

see if the red of your heart doesn't mind where you begin to color me in so this collection like most of what's been released since Trish's death is unfinished material It is demos and voice memos and otherwise, you know, private recordings. You can hear, if you listen through the album, a lot of them end with fadeouts. You can hear coughing and throat clearing. Fans of this band were already kind of a small and obsessive group before we lost Trish Keenan.

And the intimacy of this posthumous work has only kind of intensified that. But the thing is, we all have versions of this, right? I mean, I think for me, Elliot Smith was the first musician death that I remember taking really personally. Like, not the first big one of my generation, but by the time he died, I was an active, you know, self-aware music consumer, buying records with my own money, money from my college library job that I probably should have been saving for food. And I remember coming home from a class one day and my roommate telling me, and we both just sat there. And so, you know, the experience from then on was just, you know, taking the posthumous works that were released and filtering them all through that moment of sitting on the couch with my college roommate and trying to understand the magnitude of what it just happened.

I had an experience like that, but with someone who greatly inspired Elliot Smith, John Lennon. When I was in high school, John Lennon was killed. I was literally sitting with my friend, Roger, Van Osten, shout out Roger, in my room. He had just brought over from the record store he worked at the green vinyl single to Happy Christmas War is Over, which had been issued. We were sitting there listening to John Lennon when we found out he had been shot, which was a crazy experience. But then think about Season of Glass, the record that came out that Yoko put out after John died. and even double fantasy, how that record hit different after John had been killed. It's fascinating really to think about how as fans, as listeners, we stitch narratives on top of music,

we infuse our own emotions into every record we listen to and transform that. And these stories of loss, these posthumous releases, are partly shaped. Their narratives are partly shaped by our own. own parisocial grief for these artists. Yeah. What do you think in a moment like that that a listener like you or me is actually mourning? Yeah, it's a great question. Oh my God. You know, 99.99.9 repeating percent of these cases, like, we didn't know these people. We didn't know anything about them. Right. You know, we may have certain parasocial ideas that we've projected onto them. But we understand them entirely through their vision and, you know, and their recorded catalog.

Right. And so, you know, you can say that you're mourning the loss of that future potential, you know, the stories that they have left to tell. I'd certainly remember feeling that way about Adam Schlesinger when he passed early. Oh, so true. Yeah. I mean, it was one of those things where it was just like, that's just an unbelievably smart, prolific songwriter who seemed beloved by absolutely everybody who collaborated with and probably

would have kept working until like his 80s and beyond. Yeah, completely. I mean, I think potential is a major thing that we mourn when we mourn an artist. I think in certain cases, like you mentioned Elliot Smith, listening to the music of an artist who left us too soon becomes a way of defining grief and defining loss, especially maybe for listeners who haven't necessarily gone through their own losses yet. I'm thinking of young listeners who maybe haven't lost a loved one in their life. I was just reading this great new book by Vanessa Villarreal. She's talking in this essay about Selena and Kirk Cobain, how she discovered Kirk Cobain shortly after he died. So for her as a teenager, or this was a way to think about grief in general.

One of the early assignments that I remember having at NPR Music as a production assistant was writing the web page for an interview on weekends on all things considered with Glenn Campbell, Glenn Campbell, the rhinestone cowboy. Oh, yeah, love Glenn. Who, you know, had a pretty prolific and varied music career. He was in the wrecking crew. He was a beach boy for a little while. And he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and knew.

that he was kind of looking at the end, made this record called Ghost on the Canvas, where he was effectively kind of writing his own eulogy. I mean, this is the other wild part of this, is that sometimes, you know, people are snatched away from us suddenly. Sometimes people, you know, get basically a warning that, you know, like this could be a rap at any moment, and they choose to address that artistically. But anyway, Glenn Campbell had this amazing song on that record called Any Trouble, where he says, don't go to any trouble for me. You know I won't be here long. And that's a case where

it's the family also kind of like help shape that record and that project. So it's, you're experiencing the grief of that family as they, you know, maybe soon losing their loved one who is also an artist beloved by many people. I mean, there's also cases where you discover an artist who died young many years after they died young. Yeah. This is where I bring up my eternal flame Nick Drake. I'm a huge Nick Drake fan. I initially got into his music in the early 80s. So Nick Drake, of course, English folk musician died at 26 of an overdose of antidepressants. And his music is extremely melancholic. But it's really hard to even approach Nick Drake's very small body of work without thinking about his death and like how his very melancholy music sort of presages his death.

I also think that's unfair, Diard. Like, I don't think an artist should be reduced to their death. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, in Nick Drake's case, I think it was sort of doubled down upon via the ways that he was sort of rediscovered and celebrated anew in the mainstream. I'm thinking about, you know, in the early 2000s, you've got, I mean, there's the Volkswagen commercial. But also, the appearance of his music in the Royal Tenenbaum's. Oh, I guess so. sort of a book end to a story about a character surviving a suicide attempt. Yeah, that's a great point. I was so deep into my Nick Drake fandom by then that I don't even think of that stuff. But you're right. I mean, it's how I discovered him.

And most people discovered him in the early 2000. But see, that gets into the ethics of like how artists, posthumous reputations are formed through marketing, through repackaging, you know. I mean, the very story of his life was shaped by these things completely removed from anything he would have ever even imagined while he was alive. Another case of that, I think, is Chris Bell, who is kind of like the American Nick Drake. He was in Big Star with Alex Chilton and released a very, very tiny bit of solo work, including the amazing song, I Am the Cosmos, which maybe we should. here just a tiny bit of. That song, I Am the Cosmos, one of the greatest expressions of like, you know,

existential, I don't know, self-loathing, or, it's like a beautiful anthem of self-loathing. That song stands as his final testimony in a way, and he did write songs about suicidal ideation, but

Chris Bell died in a car accident. Like, he died, you know, he ran into a pole accidentally. And so to make a about his death through the kind of lens of his posthumous releases, it's a bit unfair. It is, but it's hard, right? I mean, once somebody dies and dies and dies young or dies otherwise tragically, that becomes part of their mythology. And anybody coming to them after that point is going to have no choice, but to experience them a little bit that way, unless, you know, they're raised in, you know, some kind of like family that doesn't believe in, you know, media or

whatever and they, you know, and they just, they haven't been able to experience the sort of extra musical context around them. And I'm so curious, I'd love to have a conversation with a seventh grader in a T-Poc t-shirt and just discover, you know, how that music made their way to them, how that face, how, you know, his, him as a piece of iconography made made their way to them. Because it's, I mean, it's totally different from, you and I have vivid sense memories of, you know, Kurt Loder or whoever it was announcing on MTV News that he had been. shot. Dude, I remember when Tupac was a member of the digital underground crew, okay? It's like, I saw his rise. So, I mean, I don't know. It gets, it gets so complicated when you're talking about

Tupac or Biggie, these kind of hip-hop legends who were shot down in their prime, literally. Yeah. They were murdered. So at the same time, their music does seem to signal something, you know, I mean, Biggie had an album called Ready to Die, right? You know? So, again, we're building these stories from evidence, from real materials. But we have to look at our own biases, I think, when we're, I don't know, maybe I'm just in that mood. You know, maybe I'm just in that mood of like, can we rethink, can we think of these artists in a different way rather than just painting them in these blue tones, you know? How can we find joy in this new release from broadcast? I'm with you.

I mean, sometimes it's, it can be tough. in a world where, you know, Tupac holograms exist. I mean, I find no joy. I find no joy in the, in the Tupac hologram, none whatsoever. That's a whole other conversation, I suppose. But then there are cases where, like the Alan Sparhock record we were talking about today, where we're experiencing a bandmate's grief for that artist. And that's similar with, obviously, with the broadcast project, too. And that's a whole other thing. That's not about building a narrative from a distance. That's about, And you brought it the Glenn Campbell example. I think this is a bit like that with the family.

I'm thankful to these artists who give us these gifts of their grief. I mean, because expressions of grief, that is a gift. We all are going to go through loss like this. We all have, most of us have gone through really painful loss already in our lives. And I am always grateful. I'm grateful to Alan Sparhawk for making that crazy-ass record with the weird-ass sense. that, like, show that sometimes grief completely dissembles you, you know? Yes.

And I'm grateful to artists who hold the flame for those they love who are lost, because we all have to do that in our lives. Yeah. No, it's probably the most honest connection you can have to an artist who's passed. Yes, absolutely. Well, in that spirit, speaking of soldiering on, one artist that's been on my mind is TV on the radio. They lost their basis, Gerard's.

Smith, barely a week after the release of their fourth album, Nine Types of Light. And they put out one more record after that and then kind of disappeared for a while. I mean, they've been gone for basically a decade. But they will be back on the road this fall to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut. So why don't we end with a little bit of halfway home from their record, Dear Science? Thank you, Diud, because I love TV on the radio. Thanks for bringing this there. That is it for this week's new music Friday. On our radar next week, new albums from Leon Bridges, Yasmin Williams, Caribou, and the rest of the cast of Joker Folia Doe. And maybe a little Gaga too, right? Gaga. Ula-la. Never too much Gaga.

In the meantime, you can send your feedback on today's episode to all songs at npr.org. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash music newsletes. And remember, you can get this show sponsor-free and support our work by joining NPR Music Plus. Go to plus.npr.org slash NPR Music, research for NPR Music and Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. Our editor is Jacob Gans. I'm Daiute Tyler Amin.

I'm Ann Powers. Come back next week for more new music Friday. Until then, happy listening.