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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.
FKA twigs, ‘Perfect Stranger’
Collaborating with a consortium of electronic producers — Koreless, Stargate, Ojivolta and Stuart Price — FKA twigs makes the case for an anonymous hookup in “Perfect Stranger”: “I’d rather know nothing than all the lies / Just give me the person you are tonight,” she urges. The ticking, pumping track is neater and poppier than most FKA twigs songs, yet her high, whispery voice reveals the anxiety behind the offer.
Cymande, ‘Chasing an Empty Dream’
The British funk band Cymande was formed in 1971 by Caribbean musicians in London, broke up in 1974 after releasing three albums, and regrouped in 2014, long after being sampled for hip-hop from the Fugees, Wu-Tang Clan and De La Soul. “Chasing an Empty Dream,” from an album due in January, rekindles socially conscious 1970s R&B, with a conga-driven Afro-Caribbean groove, swooping disco strings, pointed horn arrangements and a call for music to reclaim a purpose beyond materialism. “Everybody chasing fame, with no message for the young to hold onto,” the lyrics warn. As Cymande urges listeners to heed the lessons of “yesterday,” the music embodies them.
Kelly Lee Owens, ‘Love You Got’
Kelly Lee Owens couldn’t be more direct: “I wanna feel the love you got,” she sings in this track from her new album, “Dreamstate.” Around her, the electronic production — by Owens with Phil von Bach Scully — ascends from a muffled thump to a brisk big-room trance buildup. Owens layers on airy vocals as she savors “wanting pure euphoria” and seems to find it.
Wizkid featuring Brent Faiyaz, ‘Piece of My Heart’
Afrobeats meshes smoothly with R&B in this collaboration by Wizkid, from Nigeria, and Brent Faiyaz, born in Maryland. It’s actually a medley of two distinct songs — each with its own understated beat, minor-key vamp and curlicued guitar hook — that try to juggle connection and autonomy. In the first half, Wizkid sings eagerly about lust while Faiyaz croons, “You’ve got a piece of my heart” but adds, “I can’t let you have too much / then I won’t have enough.” Midway through, they suddenly switch to feeling the pressure of high-flying international careers that leave partners lonely. “Every other day another time zone,” Wizkid sings; “Sometimes I might be a bad version of me,” Faiyaz confesses. For two minutes, they have regrets.
Bonzie, ‘The Point of No Return’
Bonzie, the songwriter Nina Ferraro, sings warily and knowingly about allowing herself to trust someone in “The Point of No Return” from her new self-produced album, “When I Found the Trap Door.” It’s approach-avoid-approach as the chords and melody rise, pull back but then climb again, hesitant but propelled by flamenco-tinged guitar and handclaps. Eventually she admits, “You are the only thing I’m sure of,” and reaches “the point of no reserve,” with electronic echoes suggesting an open path ahead.
Haley Heynderickx, ‘Gemini’
Self-acceptance is always a work in progress. In “Gemini,” a preview of her November album “Seed of a Seed,” Haley Heynderickx meets a doppelgänger, “the former one of me.” That starts her thinking about all her mistakes, shortcomings, suppressed feelings and “all the texts that I’ve avoided / All the persons I’ve annoyed.” But her double also leads her to appreciate small pleasures and to see things in proportion. The track starts in stark close-up — just voice and single guitar notes — but expands with a string section and a folk-rock band as the revelations develop and the singer gets closer to peace of mind.
Dawes, ‘Surprise!’
The Los Angeles band Dawes is now down to its core members: the singer, guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith and his brother, the drummer Griffin Goldsmith. Its new album is titled “Oh Brother.” Like most of the album’s songs, “Surprise!” copes with a midlife realization that “no one’s dreams come true” — as a performer, as a partner, as a grown-up. In a resigned, compassionate voice over measured, subdued guitar chords and a quietly resolute beat, Taylor Goldsmith advises, “You have to muddle through it/If you wanna make it out alive.”
MC5 featuring Tom Morello, ‘Heavy Lifting’
In the 1960s, the Detroit band MC5 honed psychedelic, rebellious hard rock into a cornerstone of punk. This year MC5 gets inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s decades too late; the band’s last two surviving members, the guitarist and songwriter Wayne Kramer and the drummer Dennis Thompson, died earlier this year. But in 2022, Kramer announced he was reviving the MC5 name, half a century later, for a final album with all-star help: the producer Bob Ezrin and guests including Slash, Tom Morello, Vernon Reid and, on two tracks, Thompson’s drums. The title track, “Heavy Lifting,” features Morello sharing a steamroller riff and Brad Brooks singing a final defiant declaration: “Take what I want, though the world’s resisting.”
The Necks, ‘Bleed’ (excerpt)
The Necks have been making music out of nearly nothing since they formed in 1987. Chris Abrahams on piano, Lloyd Swanton on bass and Tony Buck on percussion and occasional electric guitar build their rapt, suspended-time group improvisations from the most minimal elements. Their new album, “Bleed,” is one continuous 42-minute piece, and this 10-minute excerpt explores, in microscopic detail, what can be made from — and heard within — one or two sustained notes in different octaves, flickers and rumbles of percussion, the resonances caught by close miking and some glimmers of electronic processing. It’s a stretch of reticent but intense concentration.
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