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New York Times
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Pulp, Stereolab and Turnstile Return: Hear 10 New Songs
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs. Pulp, 'Spike Island' 'This time I'll get it right,' Jarvis Cocker vows on 'Spike Island' from 'More,' the first album since 2001 by Pulp, the 1990s Britpop standard bearers. Due in June, the new album grew out of songwriting spurred by a Pulp reunion tour that started in 2023. The band has reclaimed its old glam-rock swagger, backed by strings, and Cocker is just self-conscious enough: 'I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,' he sings. True to Britpop, the song's chorus ('Spike Island come alive') is a British rock self-reference, to an annoying D.J.'s exhortations at a 1990 Stones Roses concert. And in an equally self-conscious video, Cocker prompts A.I. to make Pulp's 1995 album cover photos 'come alive,' with hilariously suboptimal results. Stereolab, 'Aerial Troubles' After 15 years between albums, Stereolab has completed a new one: 'Instant Holograms on Metal Film,' due May 23. Its first single, 'Aerial Troubles,' has the band sounding like its old self, imperturbably setting out patterns within patterns while the lyrics critique late capitalism. 'An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption — systemic,' they sing in call-and-response. 'We can't eat our way out of it.' Synthesizers buzz and drums tick steadily as Stereolab calmly anticipates 'the new yet null future / That holds the prospect for greater wisdom.' Turnstile, 'Never Enough' From its beginnings more than a decade ago, Turnstile thoroughly established its hardcore bona fides without ever ruling out melody, allowing its music room to expand. 'Never Enough,' which will be the title song of Turnstile's first album since 2021, sets its succinct lyrics in two very different ways. Its intro and outro use stately, billowing, organ-like chords. But its middle section is a fortress of punk-grunge guitars and barreling drums. It crests into a singalong-friendly refrain — 'It's never enough love' — before the track dissolves back into a rich keyboard haze. Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes, 'Day One' A couple struggles against self-doubt and depression and tries to reconcile in 'Day One' from 'Sable, Fable,' Bon Iver's cathartic new album. 'It got bad enough I thought that I would leave,' Justin Vernon moans. Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) advises, 'You may have to toughen up while unlearning that lie.' Together, they sing, 'I don't know who I am without you.' While the chords and tempo come from gospel, the production is fractured and glitchy, questioning its own comforts. Valerie June, 'Endless Tree' Constant bad news on TV? Pervasive isolation and hopelessness? In 'Endless Tree,' from her new album 'Owls, Omens and Oracles,' Valerie June recognizes dire times — she's not naïve — and preaches hope, community spirit and 'getting the courage to do something small' anyway. 'If you're on the couch and you're feeling alone / May you feel moved after hearing this song,' she urges. An increasingly frantic orchestra and chorus join her, revealing some tension behind the positive thinking. Galactic and Irma Thomas, 'People' 'Keep on holding on,' Irma Thomas insists in 'People,' a hardheaded, horn-pumped song from the album she made with the stalwart New Orleans band Galactic, 'Audience With the Queen.' Thomas, 84, has been recording since she was a teenager, and her voice is undiminished — and more than convincing — when she sings, 'I might have stumbled and fell a few times / But I'm strong as a woman could be.' Daughter of Swords, 'Talk to You' 'Talk to You' is the outlier on 'Alex,' the new album by Daughter of Swords, a.k.a. the songwriter Alex Sauser-Monnig. Most of the album is hand-played indie-rock, but 'Talk to You' is a mostly electronic lark, driven by handclaps and whimsical samples. She's skeptical about 'falling for a person like a person's gonna solve anything.' And for her chorus, she sings, 'I really wanna talk to you / I really wanna know what you — ' and lets a funny noise finish the line. Rauw Alejandro, 'Carita Linda' A traditional Afro-Puerto Rican rhythm, the bomba, is the foundation of Rauw Alejandro's 'Carita Linda' ('Pretty Face'), a love song that muses, 'Why don't we go live in a little house on the sand?' The track surrounds the drumming with surreal layers of electronics, strings, vocals and an occasional sea gull cry, but the song stays close to its roots. Youssou N'dour, 'Tout pour Briller' On his new album, 'Eclairer le Monde — Light the World,' the Senegalese superstar Youssou N'dour merged his longtime African guitarist and percussionists with American musicians gathered by his producer, the bassist Michael League from Snarky Puppy. In 'Tout pour Briller,' N'dour calls for self-realization — 'We all have within us everything to shine' — amid rapid-fire drumming, jazzy keyboards, close-harmony choral vocals and a distorted kora solo. The sleek backdrop only makes N'dour's voice leap out more. Ches Smith, Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman and Nick Dunston, 'Ready Beat' The beat of 'Ready Beat' — mostly 5/4, but with a shifty feel — comes from both physical and electronic drums deployed by the percussionist Ches Smith in ever-changing ways. In this track from his coming album 'Clone Row,' he leads a group with two guitarists (Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman) and Nick Dunston on bass; he also introduces one of the zigzagging contrapuntal themes on vibraphone. The group wrangles nearly all the way through in noisy contrary motion, but almost converges on a shared riff near the end. Then, ingeniously, parts drop out so that the end of the track can easily loop into a repeat play.
The Independent
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
On SABLE, fABLE, it's cool to hear Bon Iver having fun at last
Despite opening this album with the admission that 'I have been afraid of changing', indie-folk miserablist Justin Vernon really gets his groove on with SABLE, fABLE, his fifth album with Bon Iver. After all the years of circling his lo-fi anxiety, it's lovely to hear him break out of the log cabin of his own head and breathe in the wholesome wonders of the outside world. Although he's spoken of making 'radiant pop music', his version of that (with the help of producer Jim-E Stack) is to brighten his earthy, acoustic landscapes with synths and drum pads. It's not dissimilar to what Sufjan Stevens likes to do when finding the silver linings in his own clouds. Single 'Everything is Peaceful Love' finds him exalting the ordinary world. 'Damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now!' he sings, falsetto notes reaching skywards over the slinky, sexy, soulful roll of electro-acoustic fusion. You can almost feel the soft, supple rubber of the 80s-style drum pads flexing beneath Ben Lester's easy-going pedal steel solo. Explaining his new philosophy in a Spotify interview with Lil Yachty, Vernon said: 'Somebody came into my life and rearranged it.' As a consequence he 'started to repair the past', quit smoking and realised that 'maybe I shouldn't put true love on a pedestal, maybe I should put it down here where it is'. To set the mood, the album opens with the three 'heavy' songs that appeared on the SABLE EP. It's a 12-minute triptych of 3am self-reckonings. Vernon is competing with the man in the mirror over the flute and trumpet of 'THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS'. Over the solo man 'n' guitar lament of 'S P E Y S I D E' he acknowledges that he 'can't make good' on the pain he's caused others. The pressure begins to alleviate with the warm piano, stretched steel and golden sax of 'AWARDS SEASON', a song reaching for hope but still somewhat stuck in the circular thinking loops of internal rhymes. The upper-case pressure in the song titles gives way to a gentle embrace of lower case across the next nine tracks. Vernon cedes the mic to Kacy Hill, Sean Carey, Jenn Wasner on 'Short Story', allowing the trio to hail 'Oh the vibrance! The sun in my eyes!' before some sour candy synths slide us onto 'Everything is Peaceful Love'. There's a likeable hint of upmarket Eighties dad rock (think of Bruce Hornsby's work with Peter Gabriel's So era) to 'Walk Home' and 'Day One' (feat Dijon and Flock of Dimes) with its earnest delivery, car stereo flooding bass, piano chords and pitched up vocal and hook. Country radio geetar and click track mellow things out on 'From' while a Prince-indebted R&B horn section and layered backing vocals (that sound like the singers are swaying in tube dresses) snakes its way though 'I'll be There'. The track builds to a motivational hymn to keeping 'the sad s*** off your phone' and getting 'your fine ass on the road'. A cool-headed Danielle Haim joins the party over the crunchy electric riff of 'If Only I Could Wait' before the jazzy keyboard of 'There's a Rhythm' finds Vernon asking 'Can I really still complain?' before deciding the best plan is to 'get tall and walk away'. Apparently, he's launching this record in LA by participating in a basketball tournament (sending fans into a frenzy of speculation about which other introspective musos might turn out to surprise us by proving themselves hoop-shooting aces). It's cool to hear Vernon choosing fun at last. It's a decision that's opened up a whole new court for his melodies to play in. A slam dunk.
