The primary track from Beyoncé’s album due July 29, “Renaissance,” has a clubby home beat and an perspective that equates defiant self-determination with salvation. She and her co-producers, Tough Stewart and The-Dream, work two chords and a four-on-the-floor thump right into a consistently altering observe. They sampled shouted recommendation — “Launch your anger! Launch your thoughts! Launch your job! Launch the time!” — from “Explode” by the New Orleans bounce rapper Huge Freedia. Beyoncé extrapolates from there: becoming a member of the Nice Resignation, constructing “my very own basis,” insisting on love and self-love, going through each impediment with the pledge that “You received’t break my soul.” When she invokes the soul, a gospel choir arrives to affirm her interior power, as if anybody might doubt it. JON PARELES
Gorillaz that includes Thundercat, ‘Cracker Island’
A sort of residing cartoon character in his personal proper, the charismatic bassist Thundercat is a pure match within the Gorillaz universe — a lot in order that it’s virtually shocking he’s by no means collaborated with them earlier than. Thundercat’s insistent bass line and backing vocals add a cool jolt to the group’s “Cracker Island,” a glossy and summery jam that occurs to be about … a made-up cult? Fortunately the tune doesn’t get slowed down by something too conceptual, although, and invitations the listener to easily lock into its blissed-out groove. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Elizabeth King, ‘I Bought a Love’
The Memphis-based vocalist Elizabeth King as soon as appeared headed towards gospel stardom. Within the early Seventies, she and a gaggle of all-male backing singers, the Gospel Souls, scored a radio hit and received the Gospel Gold Cup award, introduced by the town’s gospel D.J.s. However then King stepped again, spending many years elevating 15 kids; her public performances had been restricted to singing on a weekly gospel radio program. It wasn’t till final yr that King, now in her 70s, launched her first full album, the spectacular “Dwelling within the Final Days.” She returns this week with “I Bought a Love.” On the title observe, King reprises the sultry model of praise-singing that she had perfected within the Seventies, telling us about her rock-sturdy romance with God over a sluggish and savory tempo. Behind her, a tube-amplified guitar slices out riffs, an organ alternates between full chords and lengthy rests, and a heavy, pushing bass retains the band’s muscle groups flexed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’
The title observe from Amanda Shires’s upcoming album is a poetic and provocative torch track enlivened by an electrifying vocal efficiency. That includes her husband Jason Isbell on guitar, “Take It Like a Man” is a sweeping ballad that repeatedly builds in blistering depth — form of like one thing Shires’s Highwomen bandmate Brandi Carlile may launch. However the track is a showcase for the distinctive energy of Shires’s voice, which is each nervy and tremblingly weak on the similar time. “I do know the price of flight is touchdown,” she sings because the melody ascends ever larger, “and I do know I can take it like a person.” ZOLADZ
Taylor Swift, ‘Carolina’
“Carolina,” from the soundtrack to the forthcoming film “The place the Crawdads Sing,” holds the excellence of being one of many spookiest songs within the Taylor Swift catalog; save for “No Physique, No Crime,” it’s the closest she’s come to writing an outright homicide ballad. Co-produced with Aaron Dessner, “Carolina” sounds of a bit with Swift’s folky pair of 2020 releases: The association begins with only a sparsely strummed acoustic guitar that finally swells right into a misty environment with the addition of strings and banjo. As on her 2015 single “Wildest Goals,” there’s a touch of Lana Del Rey’s affect as Swift digs into her breathy decrease register to intone ominously, “There are locations I’ll by no means go, and issues that solely Carolina will ever know.” ZOLADZ
Sessa, ‘Canção da Cura’
“Canção da Cura” (“Tune of Therapeutic”) from the Brazilian songwriter Sessa’s new album, “Estrela Acesa” (“Burning Star”), hints at some clandestine ritual. In his light tenor, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll devour you.” Acoustic guitars and percussion arrange an intricate mesh of syncopation, and in his light tenor, with hushed backup vocals overhead, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll devour you.” It’s a quick glimpse of a thriller. PARELES
The Mars Volta, ‘Blacklight Shine’
After a decade of different tasks, the wildly virtuosic, conundrum-slinging guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and the singer and lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have reunited because the Mars Volta, with a tour to start out in September and a brand new track: “Blacklight Shine.” It’s a six-beat, bilingual rocker, filled with advanced percussion and scurrying guitar strains, with lyrics like, “the excessive management hex he obsessively pets together with his thumbs/pondering nobody’s watching however I acquired the copy that he can by no means erase.” However not like lots of Mars Volta’s previous efforts, this one strives for catchiness, and its rolling rhythm and concord vocals trace, unexpectedly, at Steely Dan, one other band that tucked musical and verbal feats behind pop hooks. An prolonged “brief movie” connects the track’s underlying beat to the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Puerto Rican bomba. PARELES
CKay that includes Davido, Focalistic and Abidoza, ‘Watawi’
Dedication is an iffy factor; in “Watawi,” the Nigerian singers CKay and Davido and the South African rapper Focalistic keep evasive when girlfriends ask “What are we?” CKay suavely croons a non-answer: “We’re what we’re.” Protecting issues up within the air is the manufacturing by Abidoza from South Africa, which hovers round a syncopated one-note pulse because it fuses the cool keyboard chords of South African amapiano with crisp Afrobeats percussion. In its closing minute, the observe introduces a fiddle that might simply result in a complete new section of the connection. PARELES
Alex G, ‘Runner’
There’s one thing splendidly uncanny concerning the music of Philadelphia’s Alex G. His songs usually gesture towards acquainted sounds and textures — “Runner,” from his forthcoming album “God Save the Animals” bears a melodic resemblance to, of all issues, Soul Asylum’s early ’90s anthem “Runaway Prepare”— however their gradual accumulation of small, idiosyncratic sonic particulars produce an total sense of strangeness. “Runner” initially appears like heat, nice alt-rock pastiche, however earlier than it could actually lull the listener into nostalgia, the track instantly erupts with unruly emotion: “I’ve executed a pair unhealthy issues,” Alex sings a couple of occasions with growing desperation, earlier than letting out a thrillingly sudden scream. ZOLADZ
Lil Nas X that includes YoungBoy By no means Broke Once more, ‘Late to da Occasion’
Exile is available in many kinds — generally it’s religious, generally it’s literal. The pop-rap phenom Lil Nas X just lately took umbrage — significantly or not, who can inform — at not being nominated for a BET Award at this yr’s ceremony. YoungBoy By no means Broke Once more stays on home arrest, one in every of rap’s hottest figures however one who’s achieved that success with out the participation of conventional tastemakers. Collectively, they share the kinship of outsiders, even when they by no means fairly align on this track, which is notionally aimed toward BET; the video incorporates a clip of somebody urinating on a BET Award trophy. They’re radically completely different artists — two completely different rapping types, two completely different subject material obsessions, two completely different ranges of seriousness. By the tip it feels as in the event that they’re in search of exile from one another. JON CARAMANICA
Tove Lo, ‘True Romance’
“What does a woman like me need with you?” the Swedish songwriter Tove Lo asks in “True Romance,” a four-minute catharsis. The observe makes use of solely two synthesized chords and a sluggish pulse, however the vocal is pained, aching and consistently escalating the drama: a determined human voice attempting to flee an digital grid. PARELES
Rachika Nayar, ‘Heaven Come Crashing’
The composer Rachika Nayar explores the textural and orchestral prospects of electrical guitar and digital processing: results, loops, layering. A lot of her work has been meditative, and so is the start of “Heaven Come Crashing,” with shimmering, sustained washes of guitar and summary vocals from Maria BC. However there’s a shock halfway by: a hurtling drumbeat kicks in, and what had been a weightless drift is instantly a warp-speed surge ahead. PARELES
Abraham Burton and Eric McPherson, ‘Will By no means Be Forgotten’
In an alternate universe, the discharge of recent music from the tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton and the drummer Eric McPherson could be a serious occasion. Each are Gen X jazz eminences, and throughout many years enjoying collectively, their types have grown in complement to 1 one other. Burton holds lengthy notes in a robust however wavery yowl or shoots out notes in string-like bursts, conveying a wounded tenderness regardless of all that quantity and energy. McPherson has a comparatively light contact on the drums, however nonetheless channels the earth-moving polyrhythmic drive of Elvin Jones. Final summer season, these longtime musical companions gave a live performance, joined by the bassist Dezron Douglas, as a part of Big Step Arts’ out of doors collection on the outdated Seneca Village website in Central Park. The efficiency closed with “Will By no means Be Forgotten,” a lament with a descending bass line and a melody that winds downward like a teardrop. A full recording of the live performance was launched on Juneteenth, as “The Summit Rock Session at Seneca Village.” RUSSONELLO
