Beyoncé’s Dance-Floor Salvation and 12 more new songs

The first track from Beyoncé’s July 29 album, “Renaissance,” has a club-like house beat and an attitude that equates defiant self-determination with redemption. She and her co-producers, Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, work two chords and a four-on-the-floor thump into a constantly changing song. They tasted yelled advice – ‘Let go of your anger! Release your mind! Release your job! Let go of time!” — from “Explode” by New Orleans bounce rapper Big Freedia. Beyoncé extrapolates from there: joining the Great Resignation, “building my own foundation,” insisting on love and self-love, facing every obstacle with the promise that “You won’t break my soul.” When she invokes the soul, a gospel choir arrives to affirm her inner strength, as if anyone could doubt it. JON PARELES

A sort of living cartoon character in his own right, the charismatic bassist Thundercat fits perfectly into the Gorillaz universe – so much so that it’s almost surprising that he’s never collaborated with them. Thundercat’s lingering bassline and backing vocals add a funky jolt to the group’s “Cracker Island,” a sleek and summery jam that happens to be about… a made-up cult? Fortunately, the tune doesn’t get bogged down by anything too conceptual, inviting the listener to just stay in its blissful groove. LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Elizabeth King, ‘I Got a Love’

Memphis-based singer Elizabeth King once seemed to be heading for gospel stars. In the early 1970s, she and a group of all-male backing singers, the Gospel Souls, scored a radio hit and won the Gospel Gold Cup award, awarded by the city’s gospel DJs. But then King took a step back and spent decades raising 15 children; her public appearances were limited to singing on a weekly gospel radio program. Only last year, King, now in his seventies, released her first full-length album, the impressive ‘Living in the Last Days’. She returns this week with ‘I Got a Love’. On the title track, King revisits the sultry style of hymn she perfected in the 1970s, telling us about her rock-solid romance with God at a slow and hearty pace. Behind her, a tube-enhanced guitar cuts riffs, an organ alternates between full chords and long rests, and a heavy, driving bass keeps the band’s muscles tensed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

The title track from Amanda Shires’ upcoming album is a poetic and provocative torch song enlivened by an electrifying vocal performance. Featuring her husband Jason Isbell on guitar, “Take It Like a Man” is a riveting ballad that continually builds a blistering intensity—something like something Shires’ Highwomen bandmate Brandi Carlile could release. But the song is a showcase for the unique strength of Shires’ voice, which is simultaneously nervous and tremblingly vulnerable. “I know the cost of the flight is landing,” she sings as the melody rises higher and higher, “and I know I can handle it like a man.” ZOLADZ

“Carolina,” from the soundtrack to the upcoming movie “Where the Crawdads Sing,” stands out as one of the haunted songs in the Taylor Swift catalog; other than “No Body, No Crime,” she’s the closest she’s come to writing an outright murder ballad. Co-produced with Aaron Dessner, “Carolina” sounds off a piece with Swift’s folky pair of 2020 releases: the arrangement opens with just a sparsely strummed acoustic guitar that eventually swells into a misty atmosphere with the addition of strings and banjo. As on her 2015 single “Wildest Dreams,” there’s a hint of Lana Del Rey’s influence as Swift digs into her husky lower register to say ominously, “There are places I’ll never go, and things only Carolina ever will. know.” ZOLADZ

Sessa, ‘Cancao da Cura’

“Canção da Cura” (“Song of Healing”) from Brazilian songwriter Sessa’s new album, “Estrela Acesa” (“Burning Star”), refers to a clandestine ritual. In his soft tenor, Sessa sings: “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” Acoustic guitars and percussion created an intricate network of syncopation, and in his soft tenor, with muted backup vocals overhead, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” It’s a brief glimpse of a mystery. PARELES

The Mars Volta, ‘Blacklight Shine’

After a decade of other projects, virtuoso, enigmatic guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist and lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have reunited as the Mars Volta, with a tour kicking off in September and a new song: “Blacklight Shine.” It’s a six-beat, bilingual rocker, full of complex percussion and hasty guitar lines, with lyrics like “the high-control hex he obsessively strokes with his thumbs / thinking no one is looking, but I’ve got the copy he can never erase.” But unlike many of Mars Volta’s previous efforts, this one strives for catchiness, and its rolling rhythm and harmony vocals unexpectedly reference Steely Dan, another band that put musical and verbal performance behind pop hooks.An extended “short film” connects the underlying beat. of the song with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Puerto Rican bomba

Dedication is a questionable thing; in “Watawi”, Nigerian singers CKay and Davido and South African rapper Focalistic keep evasively asking “What are we?” CKay softly sings a non-answer: “We are what we are.” To keep things going is South African Abidoza’s production, which hovers around a syncopated one-note pulse as he fuses the cool keyboard chords of the South African amapiano with fresh Afrobeats percussion. In the last minute, the song introduces a fiddle that could easily lead to a whole new phase of the relationship. PARELES

Alex G, ‘runner’

There’s something wonderfully creepy about the music of Philadelphia Alex G. His songs often reference familiar sounds and textures – ‘Runner’ from his forthcoming album ‘God Save the Animals’ bears a melodic resemblance to, of all things, Soul Asylum’s early ’90s anthem ‘Runaway Train’, but their gradual accumulation of small, idiosyncratic sonic details create an overall sense of strangeness. “Runner” initially sounds like a warm, pleasant alt-rock pastiche, but before it can lull the listener into nostalgia, the song suddenly bursts with unruly emotion: “I have done a couple bad things”, Alex sings a few times. with mounting despair, before letting out a thrillingly unexpected scream. ZOLADZ

Lil Nas X with YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Late to da Party’

Exile comes in many forms – sometimes it is spiritual, sometimes it is literal. Pop-rap phenom Lil Nas X recently took up the blame – serious or not, who knows – for not being nominated for a BET Award at this year’s ceremony. YoungBoy Never Broke Again is still under house arrest, one of the most popular rap figures, but one who achieved that success without the participation of traditional tastemakers. Together, they share the kinship of outsiders, even if they never quite match this song, which is fictitiously focused on BET; the video features a clip of someone urinating on a BET Award trophy. They are radically different performers – two different rap styles, two different subject obsessions, two different levels of seriousness. Towards the end, it feels like they are seeking exile from each other. JON CARAMANICA

“What does a girl like me want from you?” asks Swedish songwriter Tove Lo in “True Romance,” a four-minute catharsis. The song uses only two synthesized chords and a slow pulse, but the voice is aching, hurting, and the drama constantly escalates: a desperate human voice trying to escape an electronic grid. PARELES

Rachika Nayar, ‘Heaven Collapses’

Composer Rachika Nayar explores the texture and orchestral possibilities of electric guitar and digital processing: effects, loops, layering. Much of her work has been meditative, and so has the beginning of “Heaven Come Crashing,” which features shimmering, lingering washes of guitar and abstract vocals from Maria BC. But halfway through, there’s a surprise: A raging drum beat kicks in, and what had been a weightless drift is suddenly a warp-speed thrust forward. PARELES

Abraham Burton and Eric McPherson, ‘Will Never Be Forgotten’

In an alternate universe, the release of new music from tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton and drummer Eric McPherson would be a major event. Both are Gen X jazz eminences, and over the decades playing together, their styles have grown complementary. Burton holds long notes in a powerful yet undulating screech or shoots out notes in string-like bursts, conveying a wounded tenderness despite all that volume and power. McPherson has a relatively soft touch on the drums, but still channels the earth-shattering polyrhythmic power of Elvin Jones. Last summer, these longtime musical partners gave a concert, along with bassist Dezron Douglas, as part of Giant Step Arts’ outdoor series at the old Seneca Village location in Central Park. The performance closed with “Will Never Be Forgotten”, a lament with a descending bass line and a melody that winds down like a tear. A full recording of the concert was released on Juneteenth, as “The Summit Rock Session in Seneca Village.” RUSSELLO