Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Billie Eilish proclaims love for herself in ‘My Future’
Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.
Billie Eilish, “My Future.”
“I’m in love but not with anybody else/Just want to get to know myself,” Billie Eilish sings on “My Future,” her first self-isolation-era single. Everyone’s quarantine awakening should be so wise. Eilish’s ode to loving oneself is textured and uncomplicated. For a full minute and a half, she leans into her crooner side, singing deep exhales with heavy flutter. The ambience echoes the astral, roomy R&B of The Internet and Steve Lacy, and even when the song kicks into something slightly more zippy, Eilish’s ease is the dominant mode. Worrying about yourself first makes for no worry at all.
— JON CARAMANICA Randy Travis, “Fool’s Love Affair.”
Randy Travis was always a master of stoic, moral songs, even the ones about misbehavior. So it is with “Fool’s Love Affair,” his first new song in years. Based on a demo Travis recorded in the early 1980s — way before his 2013 stroke, which left him with aphasia — it’s a reassuringly sturdy jolt of traditionalism. His grip on regret is firm, so tight he makes it sound like decency.
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JON CARAMANICA Bill Frisell, “Valentine.”
Guitarist Bill Frisell tends to build his improvisations around warm harmonic intervals and circular gestures — not exactly the jagged dissonances and sharp jabs of Thelonious Monk. But Monk’s influence is subtly written into a lot of Frisell’s music, and it comes to the surface on “Valentine,” a 12-bar blues the guitarist wrote with a Monkish, asymmetrical wobble. In
Monk’s band, the other musicians usually held fast to a swinging foundation while he dashed off idiosyncrasies. But the members of Frisell’s trio, drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Thomas Morgan, take a loosened approach, scattering and scrambling around the melody. “Valentine” is the title track from this trio’s first album together, due out on Blue Note on Friday.
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GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Snakehips and Jess Glynne featuring A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and Davido , “Lie for You.”
British dance music producers working with a British singer, an American sing-rapper and a Nigerian Afrobeats star — in theory, collaborations like these are a streaming-era blessing. Music
like this accelerates crossgenre, cross-border conversations and helps export local sounds globally. In reality, though, what began as regional particularities — unique sonic identifiers and sales pitches — ends up smeared together so intensely here that the implicit argument ends up being that these styles were all the same to begin with.
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JON CARAMANICA Subculture featuring Rachel Chinouriri, “The River Bend.”
Rachel Chinouriri’s voice goes slinking through a jazzy minefield in “River Bend,” a 2019 song from British producer Subculture about urban paranoia that was just re-released with a video. The bass line repeats and then multiplies, leaping around the low register as other instruments and sounds materialize and vanish with equal suddenness: cowbell, slide guitar, wordless voices, trumpet. She’s surrounded by phantom threats, with nothing to count on.
— JON PARELES Laura Veirs, “Burn Too Bright.”
“Burn Too Bright” is an up-tempo elegy for Richard Swift, a prolific Pacific Northwest songwriter, producer and backup musician who was 41 when he died of hepatitis in 2018 after alcohol addiction. “Who were you running from?/It was yourself all right,” Veirs sings amid crosscurrents of strings, electric guitars and a teakettle-whistle synthesizer, sympathetic but also curious about how well-loved musicianship was not enough.