Woods’s new album Legacy! Legacy! is framed by the presence of a larger community — the enacted community of choir singing and an imagined community of Black artists.
Music
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Surface Buzz with Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Twice, and GFriend
The new albums by these artists all adapt R&B tropes to their own uses.
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The Art Songs of Carly Rae Jepsen
If you’d told radio listeners in 2012 that the singer responsible for “Call Me Maybe” would in seven years be hailed as an eccentric avant-pop totem, nobody would have believed you, but here she is.
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The Maximalist Dance Music of Valgur, Ibibio Sound Machine, Hama, and Steve Lacy
These new releases burn with creepy surprises, rubbery jitters, musical knots, and basslines that run into your arms.
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Ragnar Kjartansson’s Panorama of Love and Death
The artist’s Death Is Elsewhere conveys an understanding that humans — relatively recent additions to a 4.5-billion-year-old planet — will come and go. The planet will remain.
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Rock Without the Posturing
New albums from Mdou Moctar, Control Top, L7, and Gary Clark Jr., guitar heroes all.
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Vampire Weekend Self-Consciously Grows Up
Growing up and finding love are conflated as a general spiritual awakening on the band’s new album.
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The Gospel According to Kanye and Aretha
The live stream of Kanye West’s Coachella “Sunday Service” and the restored Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace offer contrasting portraits of celebrity faith.
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The Singer-Songwriter Complex
New word-heavy releases from Jenny Lewis, Sir Babygirl, Nilufer Yanya, and Sharon Van Etten.
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Billie Eilish’s Creepy, Crawly Pop
Eilish’s debut album is an exercise in comic horror.
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Solange, Captured Mid-Dream
Conceived as a musical map of Houston, Solange’s hometown, When I Get Home wanders from mood to mood, arrangement to arrangement, a soundscape as cityscape, where songs correspond to locations and melodies merge with memory.
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John and Yoko’s Wedding Album, Once an Oddity, Now an Icon
An unlikely element of Lennon and Ono’s late-1960s peace campaign was an aural selfie, ahead of its time.