Hear, the sonic superstars

music matters

Beyoncé — ‘Lemonade’
As a set of songs, ‘Lemonade’ plunges into one troubled marriage: a cycle of distrust, betrayal, fury, loyalty and wary reconciliation.

It moves sure-footedly through styles from the rooted to the futuristic; it touches down in gospel, blues, soul and country with all the programming expertise of the 21st century. And it presents Beyoncé, the singer, in guises from ethereal grace to raw ferocity and pain. Then, as a multimedia work, ‘Lemonade’ goes even further: its video album, directed by Beyoncé and Kahlil Joseph with crucial interludes of poetry by Warsan Shire, magnifies the personal to the archetypal, situating Beyoncé among  
generations of African-American women in a long, unselfish, unfinished struggle.

Bon Iver — ‘22, a Million’
Justin Vernon set the homespun aside for his third album as Bon Iver. It applies Auto-Tune and other gadgetry; it unleashes samples and distortion; it tucks phalanxes of overdubbed saxophones and backup vocals into its mix. And its songs take the cryptic introspection of his previous work into even more convoluted realms. Yet somehow, something comes through all the multitracking: a yearning, a compulsion to explore, a vulnerable heart within.

Leonard Cohen — ‘You Want It Darker’
Cohen’s entire catalogue was, in a way, a meditation on love, death and spirituality. His last album remained sombre and sly, still pithy and still skeptical about both the human and the divine; it was also attentive to musical detail. Cohen’s sepulchral, deadpan intonation is set within angelic voices, Gypsy violins and often an organ that can be churchy or bluesy; each verse could be last words.

David Bowie — ‘Blackstar’
Bowie made his final album not a summation but a final metamorphosis. He
assembled a studio band of forward-looking jazz musicians to play songs full of tense ambiguities: harmonic, structural, verbal. The album confronts mortality with a last burst of probing, passionate invention.

Radiohead — ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’
The sounds are often gauzy and pretty on Radiohead’s long-gestating ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’: bell tones, hovering vocals, shimmery reverberating keyboards, string
arrangements. But that’s no protection at all against the malaise that fills the songs.
Gazing at demagoguery, environmental ruin and intimate betrayal, Thom Yorke croons threnodies, not lullabies.

A Tribe Called Quest — ‘We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service’
A Tribe Called Quest reunited long enough to record a full album, its first since 1998, with all three of its founding rappers: Q-Tip, Jarobi White and Phife Dawg, who died in March. The group reaches back to the dense, sample-from-everywhere sound of its 1990s hip-hop, but replaces whimsical storytelling with a deeper sense of urgency and impending danger. Rich with multilevelled allusions, the raps confront gentrification, nativism, the dumbing-down of hip-hop and the rise of Donald Trump.
“Troubled times, kids, we got no time for comedy,” Phife Dawg rapped, summing it up.

Margaret Glaspy — ‘Emotions and Math’Glaspy’s stubborn songs need nothing more
than drums, bass and her own voice, and electric guitar. Her sinewy music finds an
intersection of roots-rock and indie grunge, as she sings, mostly, about relationships in various states of misapprehension and unequal expectations. Her voice wraps her lyrics in burlap: flexible, sturdy and a little rough to the touch.

Savages — ‘Adore Life’ — Love is an elemental, colossal force on the
second album by Savages: one that can be barely contained within the drone, gallop, blare and incantations of the English quartet’s post-punk onslaught. At once muscular and enveloping, the music nonetheless makes way for Jehnny Beth’s high-beam voice, clear and determined even as her lyrics battle to figure things out.

Anohni — ‘Hopelessness’
The intent is vociferously political in these songs by Anohni, previously known as Antony Hegarty. Her voice remains arresting and androgynous, while the perspective, often, is dystopian and ironic: calling down a drone bombing, welcoming constant surveillance and looking forward to boiling oceans and burning forests. Anonhi trades the chamber-pop of Antony and the Johnstons for caustic, arresting electronica — veering between stark and vertiginous — produced with Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s not exactly dance music, but it pushes hard.

Elza Soares — ‘A Mulher do Fim do Mundo’
No translation is necessary to
recognise the wrath and nerve of  ‘A Mulher do Fim do Mundo’ (‘The Woman at the End of the World’) by Soares, a 79-year-old samba singer who has long been
celebrated in Brazil. She uses the raspy but still-commanding state of her voice to hurl songs about abuse and abusers, poverty and history, lust and violence. Soares is abetted by musicians from São Paulo who describe their music as “dirty samba”; they spike traditional samba with distorted guitars, pushy drums and unruly electronics that underline how indomitable Soares remains.

Chartbusters

1. Rihanna, featuring Drake: ‘Work’
2. Paul Simon: ‘Wristband’
3. Alicia Keys: ‘In Common’
4. Bonnie Raitt: ‘The Ones We Couldn’t Be’
5. Solange, featuring Sampha: ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’
6. Anderson Paak: ‘Celebrate’
7. John Legend, featuring Brittany Howard: ‘Darkness and Light’
8. Blood Orange: ‘Augustine’
9. iLe: ‘Canibál’
10. Kanye West, featuring The-Dream, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin and Chance the Rapper: ‘Ultralight Beam’