Radiohead’s latest spin-off is the Smile, the quasi-power trio of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. “Not the smile like in ha-ha-ha, more the smile like in the man who lies to you every day,” Yorke told the virtual audience at the Glastonbury Festival 2021. On proof of his 2021 performances online, it is a raw, riff-loving project, especially on its lead single, “You Will Never Work in Television Again”. To a crackling 5/4 beat and swaying guitars climbing through three chords, Yorke growls his vengeful fury at “some gangster troll who promises the moon” who would devour “all those pretty young hopes and dreams,” and you can almost feel the saliva fly. JON PARELES
Amber Mark, ‘Most Men (A Colors Show)’
Amber Mark has gradually unveiled her album on January 28, “Three Dimensions Deep”. Her latest glimpse is a live-to-track performance of “Most Men,” a sisterly warning about giving in to lust, addressed to those women who are “reckless with your heart.” As the song evolves from gospel organ chords to a funk strut, she’s blunt — “most men are crap” — but willing to entertain other rare opportunities. PARELES
Inna, ‘Champagne Problems’
Long-running Romanian pop megastar Inna remains relentless. “Champagne Problems” – off her new album, “Champagne Problems #DQH1” – is impeccable club pop: ecstatic, bubbly, heartless. JON CARAMANICA
Rochy RD and Anuel AA, ‘Los Illuminaty’
Fast, gruff and sinister, “Los Illuminaty” is a full confession of Eminence. Rochy RD, the father of el bajo mundo (the underground dembow movement in the Dominican Republic) goes well with Puerto Rican reggaeton star Anuel AA: the full throats of both artists’ voices land with a satisfying rogue sense. The pairing is mutually beneficial: it’s another international co-sign for Rochy, who quietly pioneered the spread of underground dembow, but also a much-needed injection of street cred for Anuel, who has strayed further from his fall roots in the world of pop. ISABELIA HERERA
Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, ‘You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon’
Slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein is what they call a musician’s musician: a decades-long veteran of the New York jazz scene, with the skills, the scars, and the encyclopedic recall to prove it. But he is also a crowd pleaser. And both sides are foundational to the music of his Millennial Territory Orchestra, a nine-piece group that plays Bernstein’s airtight, feel-good arrangements of classics and hidden gems from the 20th-century American canon. ‘Good Time Music’, the orchestra’s new album, was inspired by his longtime friend and collaborator Levon Helm, the band’s famed drummer, who died in 2012 and whose shows were in his barn in Woodstock towards the end of his career. based on the same kind of repertoire. The singer Catherine Russell met Bernstein at one of those shows; on “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon” — Bessie Smith’s farewell to a “broken” lover — she’s in perfect sync with the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
David Byrne and Yo La Tengo, ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’
Yoko Ono’s “Who Has Seen the Wind?” – a lullaby about the invisible power of nature, love and dreams, supported by baroque pop flute and harpsichord – was the B-side of John Lennon’s 1970 single ‘Instant Karma’. For ‘Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono’, a tribute album To be released on February 18, David Byrne and Yo La Tengo recreated the song as an echoing meditation: tinged with Indian drone, shimmering with a vibraphone pulse and collected communal vocal harmonies. PARELES
Delaney Bailey, ‘J’s Lullaby (Darlin’ I’d Wait for You)’
Patient as a gentle breeze, “J’s Lullaby (Darlin’ I’d Wait for You)” is about the awe of romantic intoxication, but never wide-eyed. Instead, the startling whisper of a Delaney Bailey’s voice—which lies somewhere between lonely, parched country and indie resignation—walks on with determination, both when she’s swooning (“I’d feel you give me / that stuff for the for years to come” ‘) or feeling the object of her affection may be just out of reach. CARAMANICA
Tony Malaby, ‘Just Me, Just Me’
The pandemic has forced jazz musicians to become resourceful – in some cases to the extreme. Before 2020, tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby gave regular home jam sessions that doubled as workshops. A few months after being shut down, he decided to recreate them in a Covid-safe environment: under an overpass on the New Jersey Turnpike, in a graffiti-streaked passageway that only slightly protected him and his fellow musicians from the elements, but which does have a resonant chamber of echo. He called it the Cave of Winds. That name now adorns his new album, on which guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tom Rainey play Malaby originals. “Just Me, Just Me” is his lockdown-era play on “Just You, Just Me” — though it has more in common with Ornette Coleman’s wily harmonies than any pre-war jazz standard. Malaby and Monder share the ragged, corkscrew melody over a rhythm section support that is never far from total disintegration. Monder’s solo is a scribbled, distorted trip, and Malaby follows it up with his own shot of bright melodic chaos. RUSSELLO
Funeral, ‘Upstairs Flat’
There’s spectral music and then there’s Burial. The British producer’s haunting, dilapidated electronic textures have always conveyed a hollowed-out sense of loneliness, especially when heard in the darkness after hours. ‘Upstairs Flat’, the last track on his new EP, ‘Antidawn’, is as dark and dim as ever: hiss and clink of metal, the echo of a disembodied voice singing of the ‘light in your loving arms, somewhere in the Darkest Night.” But even the icy emptiness of Burial’s world has a strange kind of solace: Somewhere in the isolation, waves of ascending synths descend, offering a cloak of hope and warmth. HERRERA