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Post Malone and the Weeknd Join Forces for New Song ‘One Right Now’

Post Malone and the Weeknd have teamed up for a new single called ‘One Right Now’. It marks the first-ever collaboration between the two artists, and it’s the first preview of Posty’s upcoming studio album. Give a listen to ‘One Right Now’ below.

Post Malone released first solo single of 2021, ‘Motley Crew’, in July. His third album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, arrived in 2019. According to press materials, his next LP is “coming soon.”

The Weeknd dropped his single ‘Take My Breath’ in early August. More recently, he joined Swedish House Mafia on the track ‘Moth to a Flame’.

 

Album Review: Marissa Nadler, ‘The Path of the Clouds’

Much can be said about the explosion of the true crime genre over the past few years, but perhaps more disquieting than the stories themselves is what our fascination with them reveals about – and how it can affect – the human brain. With a tendency to prioritize fear over empathy and sensational taglines over facts, it’s an overwhelmingly conservative way of approaching not only the narrative form but the world in general. They get us hooked on paranoia and anxiety by framing them as the only rational pathway to survival, as if the only possible way to avoid danger is to disappear yourself – to obsess over trauma and scrutinize the minutiae of day-to-day life until it no longer feels like your own. Seeing as the pandemic robbed us of any semblance of normality, it’s no surprise true crime documentaries, which have always straddled the line between reality and fiction, were more popular than ever last year.

It was during lockdown that Marissa Nadler, the prolific songwriter who has spent the last 20 years developing her haunting style of dream folk, found herself watching Unsolved Mysteries, the documentary series that began in 1987 and ran for almost as many years before being rebooted as a Netflix show in 2020. Nadler may have delved into the series as a way of warding off writer’s block, but though these kinds of stories bear more than a passing resemblance to the ones she has told throughout her career, the artist does more than coldly relay them on her latest album, The Path of the Clouds. Instead, she uses them as inspiration in ways that are compelling and personal, disclosing her own relationship with the truths they convey. She neither subverts nor stays incredibly close to the narrative formula, but her framing is often subtly interesting and evocative. Opener ‘Bessie Did You Make It’, for instance, revolves around the disappearance of wilderness explorers Bessie and Glen Hyde, but recenters it as a tale of female resilience.

But though the song suggests a particular ending, it’s the titular question that echoes long after it stops playing. The mystery is what drives these songs more than the actual crime, which gives Nadler room to explore and adjust her focus as a writer. ‘Well Sometimes You Just Can’t Stay’ follows a similar line of inquiry as ‘Bessie Did You Make It’, pondering on the fate of the only successful escapees from Alcatraz – but though it starts off with a list of specifics, it ultimately lands on an emotionally ambiguous and intriguing note: “Well, you knew that you couldn’t stay,” she sings, her pensiveness transferring the song into the realm of the personal. The title track is about the infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, but it mostly foregoes details in search of a poetic view of the story. “I’m lying awake thinking ‘bout the mess I made/ Did those memories fade?” she sings, and it’s like hearing her mind wander while watching an episode of the show, her conscience fading in and out.

Taking this approach to its natural conclusion, the majority of the songs on The Path of the Clouds don’t necessarily point to a particular set of events. They offer abstract meditations that are either so removed from or immersed in their original inspiration that revealing it would detract from their ambiguous, dreamlike resonance, the way it oscillates between factual and elegiac storytelling. If some of these songs could be read as allegories about love and personal transformation, however, Nadler brilliantly employs the internalized language of crime in a way that is both imaginative and powerful: “Leave your weapons at the door/ You don’t need them, you don’t need them/ Cause I’m not your killer anymore,” she declares on ‘Couldn’t Do the Killing’.

To reflect this liminal state of mind, Nadler experimented with new ways of constructing and bringing her music to life. She composed many of the songs on The Path of the Clouds, her first self-produced album, on piano, an instrument she learned during lockdown, and her process feels both intuitive and intentional as a result. More thrilling, though, is her decision to take the songs in a more cinematic direction, enlisting the likes of Cocteau Twins bassist Simon Raymonde, harpist Mary Lattimore, singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle, and multi-instrumentalist Milky Burgess to add both texture and tension to the already immersive arrangements.

“Some freak storm drenched everything,” Nadler sings at one point, and some of the sounds here can feel like remnants of the past, like Amber Webber’s distant, mournful vocals and Lattimore’s shimmering harp on ‘Elegy’. Others are more like the storm itself, creating an ominous and oppressive atmosphere, like the distorted guitars and feedback Seth Manchester contributed to the mix. Nadler uses her new sonic tools to occasionally gesture at a sweeping transcendence, but there’s still a hazy quality to the music that feels apt, reserved for things that are lost to time but whose shadow one can never escape, not even when refashioned as entertainment. “I wish that I knew/ The shadow of gloom/ Is everywhere,” she continues, the proof all around her voice. “I hope it can’t find me here.”

Charli XCX Announces New Album ‘CRASH’, Enlists Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek for New Song

Charli XCX has announced her new album, CRASH, with a new single featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek. ‘New Shapes’ was produced by Deaton Chris Anthony and Linus Wiklund. Give it a listen below.

The follow-up to last year’s how i’m feeling now is set to arrive on March 18, 2022. The record features contributions from Rina Sawayama, Oneohtrix Point Never, A. G. Cook, the 1975’s George Daniel, Justin Raisen, and more. ‘New Shapes’ follows her September single ‘Good Ones’, as well as collaborations with Saweetie, Joel Corry, and Jax Jones (‘Out Out’), the 1975 and No Rome (‘Spinning’), and ELIO (the ‘Charger’ remix).

In addition to the album news, Charli XCX has also announced a North American and European tour; find the full list of dates here.

Christian Lee Hutson Releases Video for New Song ‘Strawberry Lemonade’

Christian Lee Hutson has shared a new song called ‘Strawberry Lemonade’, which was produced by frequent collaborator Phoebe Bridgers and her Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Conor Oberst. The track also features Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott on piano and trumpet, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy on electric guitar, and Oberst and Sharon Silva on backup vocals. It arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Waley Wang. Watch and listen below.

“‘Strawberry Lemonade’ is a series of vignettes about memory, letting go and holding on,” Hutson explained in a statement. “I remember talking to a friend, around the time that I wrote it, about the relentless repackaging of 1960’s culture; so some of that ended up in there. The laugh at the beginning of the song is my friend Harry who plays bass on the song.”

Hutson’s debut album, Beginners, arrived in 2020. Earlier this year, Hutson released a series of covers EPs.

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul Announce Debut Album ‘Topical Dancer’, Share New Song ‘Blenda’

The Belgium-based duo of Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul have announced their debut album, Topical Dancer, which is out March 4, 2022. It will be released via Deewee, the label run by Soulwax, who co-wrote and co-produced the LP. Along with the announcement, they’ve shared a new song called ‘Blenda’, the follow-up to September’s ‘Thank You’. Check out its accompanying video below.

‘Blenda’ was partly inspired by Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book Why I’m Not Longer Talking To White People About Race. In a press release, Adigéry explains that the song references how “I am a product of colonialism and I feel guilty for taking up space in a white country,” continuing: “It talks about the colonial past and post-colonial present in the UK, but that isn’t merely a British or American problem, Belgium is part of that as well.” Her home country, she said,  is similarly “oblivious to a big part of its history,” resulting “in general ignorance and a lack of understanding and empathy towards Belgian inhabitants of immigrant descent.”

Of the album, Adigéry added: “I don’t want to feel this heaviness on me. These aren’t my crosses to bear. Topical Dancer is my way of freeing myself of these issues. And of having fun.”

Topical Dancer Cover Artwork:

Topical Dancer Tracklist:

1. Bel DEEWEE
2. Esperanto
3. Blenda
4. Hey
5. It Hit Me
6. Ich Mwen (with Christiane Adigéry)
7. Reappropriate
8. Ceci n’est pas un cliché
9. Huile Smisse
10. Mantra
11. Making Sense Stop
12. HAHA
13. Thank You

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Cover Bert Jansch’s ‘It Don’t Bother Me’

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have shared a cover of Scottish folk singer Bert Jansch’s ‘It Don’t Bother Me’, the latest preview of their forthcoming collaborative album Raise the Roof. Check it out below.

“I’ve been a big follower of Bert Jansch’s work since I was a teenager, and of that whole Irish, Scottish, English folk style that has a different lilt and different lyrical perspective,” Plant said of his and Krauss’ cover in a statement. “I was very keen to bring some of that into the picture.”

Raise the Roof, the follow-up to 2007’s Grammy-winning Raising Sand, is due for release on November 19 via Rounder Records. It includes the duo’s previously released take on Lucinda Williams’ ‘Can’t Let Go’, as well as the original ‘High and Lonesome’.

Nils Frahm Announces New Album ‘Old Friends New Friends’, Releases New Single

Nils Frahm has announced a new double album titled Old Friends New Friends. It’s set for release on December 3 via Leiter, the label he formed with his manager, Felix Grimm. Hear the new single ‘All Numbers End’ below, and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.

Old Friends New Friends is a collection of 23 solo piano tracks recorded between 2009 and 2021, which Frahm pieced together during the pandemic. According to Frahm, it offers “an anatomy of all my ways of thinking musically and playing” as well as “a different spectrum of freedom for me.” He continued:

I forgot that some tracks are ten years old, some two, and they’re all played on different pianos. Instead I remembered how, as a fan, I love albums like this. With a lot of my records there’s a point where you feel, ‘This is the centrepiece,’ but here I wasn’t really worrying about that. It still feels like my universe, though, and I’m proud that all these things which I never found a way to unite before now work together. It’s like I tossed flowers indiscriminately into a vase and then realised it looked exactly right.

Nils Frahm’s last release was a collaborative album with F.S. Blumm, 2X1=4, which came out in September.

Old Friends New Friends Cover Artwork:

Old Friends New Friends Tracklist:

1. 4:33 (A Tribute to John Cage)
2. Late
3. Berduxa
4. Rain Take
5. Todo Nada
6. Weddinger Walzer
7. In the Making
8. Further in the Making
9. All the Numbers
10. The Idea Machine
11. Then Patterns
12. Corn
13. New Friend
14. Nilds Has a New Piano
15. Acting
16. As a Reminder
17. Iced Wood
18. Strickleiter
19. The Chords
20. The Chords Broken Down
21. Forgetmenot
22. Restive
23. Old Friend

Watch IDLES Perform ‘The Beachland Ballroom’ on ‘Kimmel’

IDLES performed their recent single ‘The Beachland Ballroom’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live, marking the band’s US late night TV debut. The track, which is named for the Cleveland, Ohio venue, is taken from their upcoming album CRAWLER. Watch the performance below.

Yesterday (November 3), IDLES offered another preview of the album with the song ‘CAR CRASH’, which arrived alongside a Matthew Cusick-directed video. CRAWLER is slated for release on November 12 via Partisan.

Watch Thundercat Perform ‘Dragonball Durag’ on ‘Colbert’

Thundercat appeared on last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he was joined by Jon Batiste for a performance of ‘Dragonball Durag’. Watch it below.

Thundercut is currently on tour in support of his Grammy-winning album It Is What It Is. Earlier this year, he collaborated with Flying Lotus on a single for the soundtrack to the Netflix anime series Yasuke and joined Ace Hashimoto on his track ‘VAPORWAVES’.

Chastity Belt Release Video for New Single ‘Fear’

Chastity Belt have announced a limited 7″, ‘Fake / Fear’, which is out on December 3. Along with the news, they’ve shared a video for the new track ‘Fear’. Check out the Eleanor Petry-directed visual below.

Chastity Belt’s Lydia Lund said of the new song in a statement:

I wrote the song a few summers ago based around a dream I had. At one point in the dream, I was opening door after door, noticing the fear build, then dissipate upon opening, then build again when I realized there was yet another door. It felt like my dream was giving me practice in noticing my fear as something separate from the thing causing the fear, as something potentially more harmful and unbearable.

About a year later I was recording vocals out at my parents’ place. My mom knocked on the door – ‘is there anything you want to talk to me about? Is there something you’re afraid of?’ At that point I’d become so detached from the lyrics of the song it took me a minute to realize she thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy. And I guess in a way I am.

Eleanor Petry commented on the video: “The Chastity Belt girls are some of my dearest friends, and working on these videos with them felt like the culmination of so many years of growing together. Cheryl Waters (of KEXP) connected us with her friend Holly Taylor, who has a film background and does Equestrian Therapy. Through her we were able to shoot with a whole herd of horses on this amazing property on Vashon Island.”

Fake / Fear Cover Artwork: