NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 23: Brandi Carlile, Blood Orange, Magdalena Bay, more

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

It’s a week of surprises as we update our running list of the year’s best music, with a mix of songs that refuse to be any one thing. Plus, singer Brandi Carlile drops a stunning, stadium-sized rock anthem.NPR Music editor Sheldon Pearce joins host Robin Hilton.Featured artists and songs:1. Brandi Carlile: “Church & State,” from ‘Returning to Myself’2. Hannah Frances: “The Space Between (feat. Daniel Rossen),” from ‘Nested in Tangles’3. Kelly Moran: “Don’t Trust Mirrors,” from ‘Don’t Trust Mirrors’4. Blood Orange: “The Last of England,” from ‘Essex Honey’5. Magdalena Bay: “Second Sleep” (single)Weekly reset: A family of bears rummage through a forest on an autumn afternoon.Enjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind 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

So I was talking with Paul McCartney. Your close personal friend? My close personal friend, Paul McCartney. No, honestly, I've been thinking about a conversation I did have with him in an interview that we did years ago, where we were talking about how there are so many Beatles songs that are made up of several different songs. Right. You know, like they change so many times and changed so completely that they're like a half a dozen different songs all stitched together. You know, a day in the life. happiness is a warm gun.

Even McCartney's solo stuff, like band on the run, like a bunch of different songs all stitched together. That was such a novel thing for a long time. And I wanted to talk with them. Like, just like, how does your brain go in so many different directions in a single song? But I've been thinking about it because I hear that sort of unpredictable musical adventure in so much music now. It is so common, particularly in the stuff that we're going to play at it.

day. Yeah, you know, I definitely agree. I hear that across the internet soundscapes. Yeah. People just sort of tinkering with all sorts of ideas, maybe as a result of just like having a broader listening base and appreciating more music. There is a sort of different kind of thing happening from the first artist I want to play who keeps surprising us. The decorated alt-country singer-songwriter Brandy Carlisle. Yeah. She's got a new album out. It's called returning to myself and the final single from it is like Brandy. It's nothing like you've heard from Brandy Carlisle before. It's called Church and State.

I don't think I've heard anything even close to this from her before. Yeah. This is like an 80s muscle car, top down, just burning down the highway, full throttle, rock. We know that she can do a lot of different things. Her music has encompassed Americana, Folk, even. like streaks of blues and like pop rock before. Yeah, yeah. But this is like full on power pop,

a little punkish even. Like there's real to the muscle car analogy, there is an engine revving at full capacity on this song. I mean, it's very different from the defining Carlisle songs, like the story or the joke or even right on time. I'm not sure I've ever heard her at like full throat. Like those, the we believes in this song, the Imagine If We Could, she is really like milking every note.

And it's really, really invigorating. I wonder if you hear this. But when I was listening, I kept getting serious 80s rock vibe, like almost like 80s era heart or even like Bon Jovi. Like there's this, I don't know, this sort of shimmery epic feel to the guitar. Even that sort of spoken word thing coming through the megaphone. Yeah.

It all sounded like that big stadium-sized mega rock of the 80s. Absolutely. And she's harnessing that energy towards this like righteous indignation. Like this is a song about rebellion against tyranny. It's a song about standing up to dictatorship. And it is like really leaning into the force of that with every note. I wonder if part of it is that she's channeling a uniquely American idea with a uniquely American sound. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds right on.

I'm like, there are ideas about we, the people, like being the voice of the American nation. And you can sort of feel that rooted in like a classic rock and roll ideal, anti-establishment standing for the crowd. and the people in it. Well, that's incredible. Brandy Carlyle, Church and State, from the album, Returning to Myself, I want to play something that is pretty wildly different.

Have you heard this new album from the singer Hannah Francis? I have not. Oh, it is incredible. It's called Nested and Tangle. The whole album is really a study in constant shifts and unpredictable turns

like we were talking about at the top of the show, you know, not just across the album from song, the song, but within a single song. A little bit of jazz, a little bit of classical, a little bit of folk in it,

a little bit of lots of different things. The song I want to play from it is called The Space Between, and it features Daniel Rosson from the band Grizzly Bear. He does a little bit of everything on it. He sings, plays cello, piano. He does some of the percussion. And again, the song is called

The Space Between. A sequence of grievances turned to grace in the boat Just as fast as love like shadows change holds the way, holds a child bone as the bride. Just in that last two minutes alone, I mean, how many shifts, sonic like evolutions does that song take? I mean, like chamber pop, psych folk. The found sounds of nature there at the end.

Field recording stuff. art rock. It gets a little jazzy there. For sure. There's some sacks like other tracks on this album. You can hear a little bit of the Grizzly Bear influence

on this song in particular. But I mean, just there's really like an almost like spell binding meld of all these little minute shifts that occur throughout it. It is such a nuanced take on so many

things that it ends up becoming its own thing, which is just like a really special, special occurrence. Yeah, spellbinding is a great word for it. And it is very subtle, especially on this track. I think this is one of the tamer cuts, honestly, as far as all the wild shifts go. Right. Like if you listen to the opening cut on the album, it really goes in some wildly different directions. But, yeah, she's incredible.

I don't know how I missed last year's album. It was called Keeper of the Shepherd, which she says was kind of all about her father in the complicated relationship she had with him and coming to terms with his death. This album, Nested in Tangle, is about her mother then. Okay. But honestly, I'm not sure how much you really need to know all of that or know any of the context because there's just so much to get lost in while listening to this album, both in the words and in the sounds, it invites multiple listens and invites deep listens.

And I think you're going to, you know, and it's just rewarding every single time. It's really, really beautiful. So Hannah Francis, the album, Nested in Tangle, and that song was called The Space Between. All right, a reminder that we will have your weekly reset at the end of the show. Keep an ear out for that. You know, you hear all those lovely birds

at the end of the Hannah Francis. That's what the weekly reset is. Just a sort of ambient moment to reconfigure your day, your week. That's coming up at the end of the show. Also, if you enjoy the show, share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Music or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Where do you want to go next, Shelton?

In keeping with a theme, I want to go with one of my favorite composers and multi-instrumentalists, Kelly Moran, whose music spans classical and electronic sounds. She has a new album out. It's called Don't Trust Mirrors, and I want to listen to the title track,

which features her work records label mate, Bibio. I've been thinking how we need to do another episode with songs to calm the nerves. I've been hearing a lot of great new stuff this year that would fit well in that mix. This is certainly one of them, which is interesting, though, because there's so much metallic clattering and dissonance in this song, but it's still so calming. Yeah, well, Moran has dedicated much of her career to prepared piano, which is where you put objects between or on the strings of your piano and completely sort of

alter the sound of it. Right. Moran said that the record is about, like, the experience of observing yourself through distortion, reflection, and the slow work of piecing yourself back together again. And I think this cut really embodies that. I mean, you can hear all the fracturing spinning out in different directions to your point about its metallic nature. It's a bit tinny.

There are sort of bells and chimes, like glistening off on the horizon. Yeah. I mean, in keeping with the mirrors metaphor or theme, there's a lot of reflecting going. A lot of reflections and reflections off of reflections and delay and echo and everything. And all the tinkling sounds, I guess maybe that's partly Bibio. I'm not really sure. I've watched some live performances of Kelly Moran, and she can get just about all of that on her own, you know, with a single piano, a prepared piano. in real time.

So I'm not entirely sure exactly what's happening on that song. But, you know, I have heard a lot of prepared piano over the years, and I think it's very hard to come up with something that feels new in that space. Because, I mean, okay, you've dumped a box of ping pong balls in there or paper clips. Like, there's only so many things to jump in piano or do the strings, and you kind of end up getting a lot of the same sounds. But yeah, I don't know. I think she's come up with something really distinctive here, you know.

I mean, it's in the way that she's not only prepared the piano, but the way that she is choosing to interact with the way that she's prepared. Because as you say, all those things you put in the strings end up sort of playing on their own and you have to react to what they're doing. Yeah. Interaction feels like the key to her. her experience with the prepared piano. And that's where you get, like, the real artistry that comes in a song like this. So that's the title cut to the album, Don't Trust Mears from Kelly Moran, that is out now.

I want to play something from the latest Blood Orange album, Dev Hines. It's an album called Essex Honey. It came out at the very end of August. It's his first album as Blood Orange in a minute. It's been about seven years since he put out a full-length album. This is another really ambitious, almost sprawling album. It takes a lot of chances both sonically and thematically. It's an album, you know, in part about growing up in Essex, but it's also about grief.

Dev Hines lost his mother a couple years ago, and this song that I want to play is a reflection on her and that loss. It's called The Last of England. And I'll just note that the song opens with this home recording, the Dev Hines made. And it's of his mother and his sister and him at Christmas. And it was a couple of months just before his mom passed away. to be tapping into grief. This song. This song just so perfectly straddles both grief and like a celebration of life all at the same time. You know, it's like it's a heartbreaking song but then also kind of a euphoric song.

Yeah, you think you know exactly what this song is doing. When it starts, it feels like a kind of really beautiful elegy sitting in the memory of being with his mother one of the last times that he was able to see her. And then it erupts into like drum and bass and you're like, it can't just be sadness, right? Yeah. It's too propulsive. And you recognize in that moment that grief is also tangled up with joy. all the honor of knowing somebody, getting to spend time with them, having their memory and being able to carry it forward, being able to represent them in the future. And it feels like such

a beautiful merger of the pain of sitting in that grief, but also the grace of knowing that it was an honor to have been in the presence of that person at all. Yeah. I lost my parents. in recent years, and there's some lines in this song that really, really hit me, including the opening one when he says nothing more to do than leave. Yeah. You know, I've been in that moment. I've been in that moment where you're at the hospital, you've lost someone, and it feels like there should be more, right?

You know, like, well, okay, well, now what do we do? Well, you know, what's next? This can't just be it, right? But the truth is, and you have this moment where you realize, well, I guess there's really nothing for me to do but leave and go home and go on with my life. He does this a lot on this album where he captures these really, really big moments and big feelings with just the most plain spoken reflections. Yeah. And then he surrounds these super plain spoken reflections. You know, they're very direct.

They're very unambiguous like that. And then he surrounds it with all this incredible music. I mean, what's really beautiful about some of these moments is that they're often in conflict, right? He says that early in the song that there's nothing else to do but leave. But then later in the song, he said he notes all the things we had to do. Yeah. Something else that's clear when you get to the end of the song

is that he does not leave. Yeah. He has sat with her in that room after she's passed away because he says at some point, time has made it seem like we can talk. but then they take you away. Yeah. So he's been sitting there with her in that silence in the room,

and it begins to feel like, well, maybe we could just strike up a conversation again, and then they come and take her away. Wow, what an incredible song, but an absolutely incredible song. Just amazing. Yeah. So that's from Blood Orange from his new album,

Essex Honey, the song The Last of England. All right, Sheldon, I know you've got one more song that you want to take us out on. Yeah, in keeping with our broader things, theme of artists who just seem to be navigating a lot of different sounds all at once. I'm going to go out on my favorite kitchen sink act, the experimental pop duo of Magdalena Bay. I mean, so much of their music is like very shifty and distorted, dreamy and surreal, a bit uncanny. This song feels like it checks all of those boxes.

They used to be a Prague rock band, and I think you can hear that in this one. I don't know their music really well. You know, I guess I was thinking maybe almost kind of dance pop is what I was expecting from them. And honestly, when this song starts off, I was thinking like, okay, yeah, this is kind of what I've spent. But it does not stay there very long. I'm like, what is happening? Incredible song. I mean, it gets huge.

Yeah. Yeah. Great one to go out on from Magdalena Bay, the single Second Sleep. Thanks as always, Sheldon. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.