Harry Styles tries Synth-Pop and 13 more new songs

In ‘As It Was’ Harry Styles seizes on the kind of feisty electro-pop that The Weeknd has updated from groups like a-ha. The song is from Styles’ third album, “Harry’s House,” due out May 20, and the persistently upbeat production fuels the ambiguity of the lyrics. When he sings, “In this world we’re alone/You know it’s not the same as it was,” it’s impossible to tell whether he’s retreating or longing to reunite. JON PARELES

Brooklyn musician and producer Barrie Lindsay makes music that sounds like the work of an introverted person with a kaleidoscopically vibrant inner world. Through her melodic, softly melancholy new album ‘Barbara’ there is a mumbled, endearingly humble quality to her vocal delivery that contrasts with her colourful, adventurous production choices. That signature push and pull can be heard on the luscious opening track “Jersey,” where Lindsay sweetly shrugs on top of an intricately layered number: “You haven’t been dreaming for so long, I’m just the girl you have.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Angel Olsen, ‘All the good times’

Angel Olsen’s forthcoming album “Big Time,” out June 3, was written during an emotionally tumultuous moment in her life: At age 34, she came out as queer to her family, only to lose both her parents in quick succession to illness. shortly after. Olsen certainly manages to capture and expel melodramatic feelings in her music – see: “Lark”, the bombastic opening track from her great 2019 album “All Mirrors” – but the lead single off “Big Time” is more of a slow burn, smoldering and occasionally sparking with sudden, cathartic thrusts. Spinning from the luscious synth scapes of “All Mirrors”, “All the Good Times” harks back to Olsen’s twangy roots, and the melody has a relaxed confidence that is occasionally reminiscent of Willie Nelson. “I’ll be long gone, thanks for the songs, think it’s time to wake up from the journey we’ve been on,” Olsen sings, as the instrumentation swells to meet her suddenly impassioned croon. ZOLADZ

Jensen McRae, ‘Take it easy’

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” announces Los Angeles songwriter Jensen McRae as she begins “Take It Easy,” off her debut album, “Are You Happy Now?” But of course she does. The tone is serene, two chords to a soft Caribbean melody, even as she sings about struggling with burdens that seem to be both physical and emotional. She wonders, ‘Atlas, is your back hurting?’ but she strikes a graceful balance. PARELES

What is country music right now? It’s far from great pickers and singers working together in real time, as it was in honky-tonk history. Like the rest of pop, it’s a construction. Country superstar Thomas Rhett sings about a romance with a waitress hoping for a musical career, played by Katy Perry, in “Where We Started,” the last track except the title track from his new album. “I would play my guitar and sing those covers in an empty room,” she recalls. The beats are programmed drum machine tones, like trap, with guitars sounding like loops, and the collaboration with Perry may have been a long way off. It is an artificial path to a real feeling. PARELES

Ibeyi with Jorja Smith, ‘Lavender and Red Roses’

Hand drums and echoey, soaring voices give “Lavender and Red Roses” the air of a ritualistic procession, while Ibeyi – French Afro-Cuban twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz – and English singer Jorja Smith lament a self-destructive partner: ” I’ve welcomed you with open arms baby / But you’re still walking towards the dark lately,” they sing, as hope fades. PARELES

Michael Leonhart Orchestra with Elvis Costello, Joshua Redman and JSWISS, ‘Shut Him Down’

The Grammy-winning Michael Leonhart Orchestra turns itself into a crack studio band on “Shut Him Down,” the guest-star-fueled opener off its latest album, with a groove infused with the bubbling chatter of Nigerian juju music. Elvis Costello takes center stage, rattling a few verses with shadowy eyes from the point of view of a man battling an attack. Then rapper JSWISS drops his own mates, fiddling with puns and internal rhyme, before tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman wraps things up. Always an exuberant improviser, he threatens to blow the lid on this medium-boiling track, but ends up playing along with the chilly, jammy vibe. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

On the interplay of two crumpled, echo-laden guitars, Congolese-born singer Juanita Euka sings with an easy reliance on “Motema,” meaning “heart.” in Lingala. The song comes from “Mabanzo”, the debut album of this young heir apparent (her uncle, Franco Luambo Makiadi, was a rumba star in Congo), who grew up in Buenos Aires and has lately become a promising voice on the London music scene. RUSSELLO

Coffee, ‘Where I Come From’

Grammy-winning Jamaican singer Koffee (Mikayla Simpson) broadens the reggae idiom on her debut album, “Gifted,” which features dembow, afrobeats and more. In Where I’m From, she raps about its troubled beginnings and current success, featuring a scrubbing funk guitar that sounds like “Shaft,” a surging bassline, ominous piano interjections, and wordless choral harmonies that are at once mournful and lofty. PARELES

Vince Staples, ‘Rose Street’

“I don’t sing love songs, never sang love songs,” proclaims Vince Staples at the top of “Rose Street,” and the title of the upcoming album it will be released on may be an explanation: “Ramona Park broke my heart.” However, as he deftly raps to a bass-heavy, vaguely haunting beat, he gradually lets his guard down and confesses the reasons why he doesn’t want to commit to the girl who wants him to stay. “I promise you don’t stress, it’ll be fine,” he assures her before admitting, “Okay, I’m lying, I live from day to day.” ZOLADZ

Toronto-based band Pup has long been making frenetic punk pop with neat verse-choir-bridge structures underlying Stefan Babcock’s raw, overwrought and completely self-assured lead vocals. “Totally Fine”, from the band’s fourth album, “The Unraveling of Puptheband”, takes everything to the next level: feedback, drums, high and low guitars, Babcock’s flapped confession that “I just couldn’t decide / whether I my worst or I’m all right.” And then it continues, with a big stadium-ready sing-along.The video, a nice broadcast of tech-bro vanity, is a bonus.

sadie, ‘Nowhere’

Anna Schwab, the Brooklyn songwriter and producer who records as sadie, uses the jittery double time, computer-distorted vocals and cheap-sounding presets of hyperpop as its digital native. But in ‘Nowhere’ she also conveys something more than just playing games: a sense of how difficult it is to cope with the pressures of 21st century romance. “Think I’ll make it / Then it’s over”, she sings with a resigned resignation. PARELES

Flume with Caroline Polachek, ‘Sirens’

In her purest soprano, Caroline Polachek sings her most benevolent aspirations, written during a pandemic peak: “If I could I’d raise my arm / wave a wand to end all evil.” Australian electronic musician Flume and his co-producer, Danny L. Harle, give her ethereal sustain at first — quivering string tones and echoey arpeggios — then throw up all sorts of sonic obstacles: clatter, thump, swing, scrape, distort, and even the sirens. bring back the ones she wished she never had to hear again. PARELES

The cool rippling saxophone sound of Charles Lloyd, 84, is unmistakable on “Peace Invocation,” a duet with pianist Gerald Clayton that appears on the younger musician’s latest album, “Bells on Sand.” The influence of a few other legendary saxophonist-composers also hangs over this track: there’s Wayne Shorter’s open-ended, shadow-casting style, and hints of John Coltrane’s classic “Naima” in the indecision of Clayton’s bittersweet melody. RUSSELLO