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Brennan Wedl: ‘Pretty Little Fantasy’
Brennan Wedl confronts the predictable male gaze with grungy guitar chords in “Pretty Little Fantasy,” from an album due in August. “What do you want from me?,” she taunts. “I’m not everything you think you see.” With Lindsey Jordan (from Snail Mail) on electric guitar and Katie Crutchfield (from Waxahatchee) on backup vocals, Wedl has found sympathetic, accomplished allies.
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Lau Ro: ‘Conclusão’
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, and based in England, Lau Ro blends Brazilian pop with neo-psychedelia and freak-folk on a new album, “Lau.” In “Conclusão” (“Conclusion”), Ro proffers empathy for someone’s troubles, urging them to let go of both their burdens and their pride: “Reveal what you hide behind your armor,” Ro sings. Six-beat guitar curlicues mesh with the preternatural lightness of bossa nova drumming, offering solace through rhythm.
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Chanel Beads: ‘Tyler Richard’
“In a dream I wrote a song for you,” Shane Lavers sings in “Tyler Richard” from “Your Day Will Come,” the second album by his studio project, Chanel Beads. His songs emerge from a lo-fi haze to ponder memory, love, desolation and the power of music itself. In “Tyler Richard,” circling keyboard patterns and eerie sustained violin tones accompany a dream that veers between longing and brutality. “Life is a joke,” Lavers sings. “Can you tell it to me right?”
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What’s New in Jazz
Cécile McLorin Salvant: ‘Left Over’
Cécile McLorin Salvant has continually explored and expanded what it means to be a jazz singer. Her latest high-concept album, “With Every Breath I Take,” carries a vintage category — the orchestral ballad album — to an ethereal extreme. The tempos are slow and slower, demanding subtle breath control, and Darcy James Argue’s arrangements for the Metropole Orkest become partners in a spectral dialogue. Salvant’s own composition, “Left Over,” is tucked among songs by Duke Ellington, Stephen Sondheim and Kurt Weill. Her hesitant melody carries lyrics about an unrequited obsession. “I wonder if he even knows my name,” she sings, with innocence and envy, as she watches him smiling at someone else.
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What’s New on the Charts
Le Sserafim and Illit and Katseye: ‘Iconic by Mistake’
Metrics and social media matter deeply to K-pop groups and fans, so why not sing (and rap) about it? “Iconic by Mistake” brings together a triumvirate: two K-pop girl groups — Le Sseraphim and Illit — plus Katseye, the American group designed like a K-pop act. As it unites three fanbases, it’s no wonder the song immediately jumped into the Top 40 (at No. 38). Over crunching electronics, the lyrics, all in English, taunt the haters whose attention still raises the numbers: “Thank you for the comments, it’s because of all your hate / I-I-I-I-I-I I am iconic by mistake.” The goal, as the song says, is to become “algorithm bulletproof.”
