NPR Music - Weezer, Colin Stetson, Jlin, Meredith Monk more

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

On this week’s show, Weezer gives the people what they want, plus a breathless “dirt dance” from saxophonist Colin Stetson and bagpiper Brìghde Chaimbeul, the scruffy cello-pop of yeemz, works by composer and vocalist Meredith Monk, electronic artist Jlin and more.  NPR Music’s Tom Huizenga joins host Robin Hilton as we share our picks for the best new songs of the week.Leave us a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] artists and songs:(00:00) Intro(00:51) Weezer: “C.E.O.”(08:24) Colin Stetson, Brìghde Chaimbeul: “Dirt dance”(18:16) slimdan: “Let’s Start A Cult!”(25:09) Phaedra Ensemble: “Phantom Strings” (Meredith Monk)(31:43) yeemz: “Brace for Impact” (single)(37:36) PUBLIQuartet: “Baobab” (Jlin)Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See 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

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from NPR Music and the NPR Music podcast where you'll find out all about the best new songs, albums, conversations about whatever's happening in the vast wondrous world of music. NPR music also where you will find the reviews and musings from writer, producer, frustrated genius, princely scribe. There you go. You're getting closer. Tom Hisinga. Hey, Robin. So, Tom, every other week or so on the show, we like to update our running list of the year's best new songs, and that's what we're doing on this episode. Mm-hmm. I know you brought some stuff.

I actually don't know what it is yet, and I have some stuff I'm pretty excited about. Should I just kick things off? Yeah, it's your show. You've got the prerogative. It's my deal here. It's your deal. Well, anyone who listens to the show knows that I ride or die for Weezer, the band Weezer. And I get no end of grief from people for this.

I mean, well, I don't know. Have you spent any time with Weiser? Are you a Weaser fan or ever even really listened to them? Not really. No. Do you know any of them, like, do you listen to the early stuff? Not really. Okay.

I mean, this is 90s, right? No, I mean, that's kind of your area. I've got a big hole in the 90s because I was mainly, in the 90s I was listening to mostly classical music and conhonto music because I lived in the South West of the United States then. Okay. Well, yes, the 90s, but I mean, they have not stopped putting out records for the past 30. That's how the tiny dust.

Yes. So they're still making great music. And the long and the short of it is, very classic story for bands like this that have been around a long time. They put out their first couple of records, they were amazing, legions of fans. But then as they continued to put out records, those fans soured and were like, they suck now, I only like the early stuff. I couldn't disagree more. I think they've continued to put out lots of great music.

But this is a narrative that the band is very much aware of. And they've addressed it off and on on different songs. Like their next record is going to be called We Don't Suck. We don't Suck, actually. No, we're good. You leave Weezer alone. That's the little sub-title. That's the blurb.

Yeah. But in all of the different ways that they've addressed this over the years, I don't think they've ever done it as directly or as well as they do on this new song that they just dropped. It's a song called CEO. Okay. And I'll play it here, and we can talk about it afterwards, but anyone who knows the band's debut album, the Blue album from 1994, will immediately recognize this new song, CEO, as a direct homage to one of their most popular songs of that era, a song called Undone or The Sweater Song.

Crinking out another 90s jam I wish I could do something new But nobody wants to hear that They just want the classics Can't blame them really Something special about your early I got it Stop complain

You know I was just a kid from Connecticut Alone in my room Playing with a task game 688 I guess those days I was happy to bring my skating

I can't help it man I just love that power chords that Yeah nice guitar solo in there I mean I love this sound so much So if you probably I guess you don't know the song

Undone No The sweater song So begins very much the same way With the sort of Slower Yeah this picked You know

Guitar line With that dead pan, slacker narration at the top, and then, of course, it erupts into this power rock stadium-filling anthem. Very, very similar. What he's reflecting on couldn't be more on the nose and obvious lamenting the fact that, you know, I just want to play some new stuff, but I guess got to give the people what they want. Well, for me, I'll be honest with you that I just really have little patience for songs that are very meta like this. Oh, yeah. However, this I can take a little bit easier because it's so tongue-in-cheek, it's so much fun.

And it's got some great, you know, crunchy, fuzz-up bass and a nice rocking guitar solo. Yeah. This is fun. This is not taking itself too seriously like some others do. Does this make you want to go back and listen to any other Weezer? Because I'll put a playlist together for you, man. Yeah, you know, we'll get to that later. Okay, well, I'm kind of with you to some extent because I have noticed a really.

real trend lately, especially it feels like artists writing about fame. Oh my God. Just the struggle of fame and how their life is upended. And artists I love doing it too. You know, it's just like, and I've grown a little tired of that. But yeah, this song to me, very, very ironic. I do think it's interesting. I had this moment where I was listening to it. I was like, this is my favorite weezer right here. I love this sound so much. And then I thought, oh, he's giving me exactly what I want while lamenting the fact that he's got to give me exactly what I want. But I do like the band's whole catalog, I think. I love this band. So many of their albums are self-titled. And then they just are identified by the color of the album. So like they had the blue album, the red album. There was the

green album. This one is the gold album. And the song again is called CEO. This album from Weezer is out. August 21st, this is their ninth album in just the past. six or seven years. Wow. I mean, yeah, they're cranking it out. They're giving the people what they want. Given the people what they want. Whether they like it or not.

Well, maybe we should keep the energy up. Okay. Actually, it's breathless high energy. And it's a new track from the circular breathing saxophonist. Colin Stetson. Yes. And, you know, he's. this big bruising, bald-headed guy

who looks like a wrestler who actually used to be a wrestler. Oh, I didn't know that. I had no idea that. And he's played with LCD sound system, Tom Waits, Bonnie Verre, Lou Reed, you name it. This time he's teamed up with this young Scottish piper

and her name is Breja Heimbel. And they've got a new record coming out called All the Light in the World, September 11th. This track is called Dirt Dance. and... I love it already. I'll just tell you that Colin is playing the F. Metsosoprano saxophone.

That's a whole step above a standard alto. And that Breja is playing the Scottish small pipes. These are kind of like the diminutive cousin to the better known Highland pipes. So those are those big black ones that you see at funerals and special occasions and stuff like that. These are teeny in comparison. And together, they just produce this magnificent pulsing wall of wind. Thank you. We throw hyperbole around a lot on the show, but that is genuinely breathtaking.

Literally. Just breathtaking. The longer it goes on, the more amazing it gets. I mean, yeah, so he's doing circular breathing. He never stops playing. Right. And the airs, yeah. Right.

And, of course, Piper's, they don't have to worry about that because it's a bellows-based thing. So they can go on forever, too. And this combination is just, right. I mean, it's like a Celtic reel on steroids. I mean, it's like it's a cardio workout just listening to it. For him to do that for even a few bars is kind of mind-blowing to me. But to do it for over six minutes straight. And I love that like three quarters away through, she comes in with the melody and then he's just going on and on and on with these arpeggiated notes that are just interlocking.

They're like birds taking off above her melody. It's just the music itself is so aloft, vibrating, you know, like, I don't know. It's like this ball of atoms that are like continually subdividing and just like hovering in the air. Yeah. There's really nothing like it. Yeah. It felt almost celestial in a way that all the different images that were coming to mind. One of them was stars flickering on and off and supernovas erupting and then collapsing back on themselves and everything in constant motion and at light speed.

And we should just say what we were just listening to. It's called Dirt Dance. Colin Stetson is the saxophonist with Breedja Heimbel as the small pipes Scottish Piper. and the record is all the light in the world coming out September 11th. And she is just amazing. She's playing like at lightning speed, it seems. And she's taking her very traditional small Scottish pipes into a lot of otherworldly territory.

Well, I have one that I thought when I first heard it was also very breathless, almost like a relentlessly catchy earworm of a song. but after hearing the Colin Stets, and maybe this isn't as breathless as I thought it was, but it's a discovery for me, an artist that goes by the name Slim Dan. Best I can tell, he's written songs and done a lot of stuff with other artists

like Carly Ray Jepson and Diplo, Sasha Alex Sloan. Okay. But for the past few years, he's been putting out his own work under his own name. He has a new album coming out. Slim Dan has a new album coming out later this fall called,

Focus group. Focus group. And when I first heard this lead-off single from it, I thought, you know, is this just kind of goofy? Is it just too whimsical? Hmm. But the more I listened to it, the more it got its hooks into me. But see what you think.

The song from Slim Dan is called Let's Start a Cult. Once you started, you can't say it. And I know that I made you feel sad. And you should never be that You despise me Once we get to talking like that We can never go back Every second that we spend

And think about it Been doing something So let's start a cult where everything's chill And we can move past us out to the hills Come on, I'll go clean, we'll live off the fish Without even trying We'll finally get rich the way For us

Good stuff and pain. And they should always do that. They should always do them. Every second that we spend, die for all. Let's start a call. You hear it, right? I mean, it's a little goofy.

It's kind of super playful. Yeah, I mean, it could, as it opens it, as a pianist, you know that might ring a bell. It just sounds like these repeating exercises, like maybe a little Clementi things or whatever that you have to. work out. It sounded, to me, there was a very, you know, a childlike vibe to it, like this, just the energy of the music. I could hear it on Sesame Street or something like that. But also this childlike truth in the lyrics, you know, let's start a cult is kind of a, the word

cult has been bandied about a lot these days and usually in a pejorative connotation. But if you read the lyrics here, let's start a cult where everything's chill and we can move past this out to the hills. Come on, I'll go clean. We'll live off the fish without even trying. We'll finally get rich the way God intended for us. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, again, very tongue and cheek, the whole song. Such an earworm, though, to me. It kind of reminded me maybe the more McCartney side of the Beatles. It even has that applause at the end, like at the end of Bungalow Bill, you know. I just, I kept thinking it's, you know, going to go into why my guitar gently weeps. But love the interplay of the piano with the the electronics are just just perfectly placed in there it's like he's

grabbed you by the hand and he's just sprinting through a field of flowers with you saying let's go well you were practically doing that here in the studio yes i was i was trying to get you going but no you were you were just very deeply listening yes to the song i wondered if this song reminded you of of anything specific no the first thing it reminded me of with something um You know, like I said earlier, like really childlike, something that would not be out of order on a kid's show. Hmm. This is what I thought you were going to say. Oh, uh-huh. That would be the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Correct. Music for a found harmonium. Yeah. I think they bring, he brings Slim Dan brings a harmonium in at some point in the second half. And it has this sort of pattern.

Right. Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, I thought of this immediately and I thought, oh, Tom's going to. Well, I love this song. I know it very well. So very excited for this new album called Focus Group from Slim Dan. I've only just started digging into some of the stuff that he's put out, but really love what I've heard so far. This album from Slim Dan is out October 9th. Well, you know, since you played that little interlocking part

from Penguin Cafe Orchestra of the Harmonium, I think we should go next to this album called, realms from the Fadre ensemble. They're from the UK and they're playing all instrumental music by Meredith Monk. Okay. Meredith Monk, if you don't know her,

she's 83 now, the interdisciplinary artists, probably best known for her kind of extended vocal techniques, but over the last 60 years or so, she's just created this amazing body of work as a composer, a pianist, a filmmaker, a choreographer, a dancer,

director, and a singer, but this is all instrumental music of Meredith Monk, and the name of the piece is called string songs, and this track is called Phantom Strings. I'm going to be.

And so I'm going to I'm going to and and the and the and the I'm going to

I'm going to I'm and a and the and

And so on the I'm going to And so I'm going to I'm going and I'm going and

I'm and I'm We're going to be. And so it's a I'm going to I'm

I'm I'm I'm the . I'm going to be bork. I'm going to be.

I'm saying. And so, I'm going to be. And so. And the The The We're going to be the

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. That's breathless in its own way, too. Very, very, very restless. and kind of twitchy, but still something kind of chill about it, too. You know what I like about it is that, you know, Meredith Monk is all about singing.

And we should say that what we just heard was a piece called Phantom Strings by Meredith Monk from a larger suite of pieces called string songs played by the Fadra ensemble. But Monk is all about singing and breath. And I just love how breathy those, what she asks and what she gets from the Fadra players, the strings are very, Kind of brushed. Breathy and partly how they're recorded, but partly it has to do with bow pressure on the strings. But I don't know, but you, I can actually, like, hear a small chorus actually singing this,

you know, and all the parts kind of interlocking, you know, every little part that's dependent on the other parts for the kind of melodic contour of the piece. But I just love that. And, you know, how she put this song, together was that she sang it into it. She sang all the parts into a tape recorder, even the low cello notes,

and then she arranged it for a string quartet from there. Yeah. It's interesting because I'm always trying to picture, when I hear a piece like this, I'm picturing the notes on the paper and thinking, I don't know if I could keep up with this pattern just reading it and playing it. This is the kind of thing that I could only play sort of,

it's almost like, what is it, a laitoric, you know, like, where it's this sort of almost randomness to it, and that's the only way that I could follow it. Yeah, but here it's just like this, like a clock, you know, where all these pieces interlocking and you can't miss time something or it falls apart. Yeah.

So Fadra Ensemble, I'm not familiar with them, but that is P-H-A-E-D-R-A. That's right. Fadra Ensemble. And that is out September 18th. Very nice. All right, Tom, I think we both have one more thing that we're going to play.

And I've got one more discovery for me. This is an artist known as Y-E-E-E-M-Z. Totally, totally new for me. New to me, too. She is a classically trained cellist. But the music she makes leans more toward pop with maybe a little touch of jazz in it, kind of like Levei, maybe a little Regina Spector in there.

Honestly, I don't know a ton about her yet, but I'm really loving this new song that she just dropped. It's a single called Brace for Impact. Kind of wanted you to stay, but I'm scared you'll figure me out. I'll have nothing left to say. There'll be nothing left to talk about. Not selling my bar. And I guess it goes to waste.

I'll have nothing left to bargain. So I'll monetize the frackles on my face. Giant shadows Tiny terrors I see the end It's miles away But I don't know how Love for the fall

World is crumb Bad news are so God disaster Pride for giant shadows Time My mistake It doesn't come out If I'd safe

Light of the flag Yeah so much Going on in this song that I love But let's start with that drop First of all Yeah that's great Right after the first chorus When it really

When you have to brace for impact because this opens up, kaboom. Yeah. You know, immediately arresting because it all sounds kind of broken, the percussion, the bass, kind of a little grit to it. She could have played it totally straight, you know, nice, clean bass sound, clean drums. Just a little scuzzy, though, and cracked the way she does that. And it's done in part by her detuning the cello. Okay.

So it creates more of a buzzing sound when she plays the song. Right. And you notice that it's recorded way up close. So you're getting a lot of nice cello mechanics sound, which I really like a lot. So I saw a video of her playing this song and was really surprised to see that she has the cello on her lap playing it like a guitar. That's horizontal. And I'm not sure. I've seen a cellist do that. Well, for one thing, a cello is awfully big to be just, you know, ergonomically, it's difficult. Yeah. And she's got it laid across her lap, detail. tuned, a song all about the ways that we self-sabotage by imagining worst-case scenarios. This is a message to Tom Hisinga because I'm a little bit of a worry wart.

Are you? Yeah, and like, got to plan everything ahead and got to, you know, be careful about how many risks you take because what if this is going to happen and what if that's going to happen? Interesting. And this song, you know, tells you to kind of get rid of that idea, those ideas. She has that great line. emotional disaster prepper. Are you, are you an emotional disaster prepper, Tom? A little bit, yeah. My wife and I were just talking about how we manage anxiety. And she's, she's like you. She's, she's got to plan everything out. And if anything changes, it's not good. And I manage anxiety by doing

the exact opposite, which is just, well, whatever happens, I'll roll with it. Whatever comes up, I'll roll with it. And that's how my wife is. So we make a good couple because I, I learn from her to just kind of not like, it says hearing the lyrics, guard myself from simple pleasures. So I'm trying to learn to live in the moment more. Wow. You know, and not be worried about what's coming around the next corner. If you get it figured out.

I'll let you know. Let me know. Yeah, it might be a while. So just a one-off single for now from Yeams, the song, Brace for Impact. But Tom, you've got one more you want to play. I do. And it's from the new album by the Public Quartet. They're based in New York.

They are a string quartet that, speaking of taking risks, they love, they're fearless. They love to take risks. They love to improvise. They're into jazz and they're kind of on the fringes of classical music. Really good, solid quartet that's been around for a while. And on their record that came out earlier this month called Rhythm Nation, they have a track that they commissioned. Rhythm Nation, Rhythm Nation? Yes.

Like Janner Jackson Rhythm Nation? Inspired by Janet Jackson, indeed. But they have a track on the record from the electronic music Magus Jalen. Yeah. Gerilyn Patton of Gary Indiana. And she's really known for taking inspiration from kind of these high octane beats that have inspired her from the footwork dance and music kind of underground style from Chicago. But she's really made not only made that all her own, but she's in recent years kind of moving. moved away into the fringes of classical music and has been collaborating with Third Coast percussion,

Kronus Quartet. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2023. So this track is called Baobab, and it's titled after the distinctive-looking African tree, Bobab Tree, which is found primarily in Africa. And there's an African influence here, especially African drumming. And I love how the piece begins. it's like someone opening up a creaky treasure box of like slithering groove-laden surprises. The interesting thing about this piece is that Jalen asked the members of the public quartet to do some improvising.

They sent that to her on tape. She sampled that and out of that, she created this amazing kind of percussive blueprint, like a landscape that then the public quartet adds another layer of improvisation over that live. So it's a piece for string quartet and tape. Tom Heisinga, always a great hang. Thanks so much. Oh, thanks for having you, Robin. It's always fun. And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music.