What's Good: November 22, 2021

What’s Good: The Weekly New Music Newsletter is a new publication by Pitchfork’s founder and former Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Schreiber. Launched in September 2021 as a companion to Schreiber’s long-running weekly playlist of the same name, What’s Good outlines the week’s most essential tracks and albums, with a special focus on new and emerging artists. Listen to What’s Good on Spotify and Apple Music— and don’t forget to subscribe. (It’s free!)

In five and a half decades, Joni Mitchell released only one bonus track. It was the b-side of a 1972 single, written in 1966; recorded during her Blue sessions, it had gone otherwise unreleased for years. That song, “Urge for Going,” eventually opened her 1996 compilation, Hits. A clutch of others would materialize over the years in bootleg live sets or lyric books, but rarely in full form and never sanctioned. Fans could hardly venture to guess how much material might still be out there gathering dust. We’d have been elated at a single disc; the trove now seeing release would have been nearly unimaginable.

Last year, a five-disc box titled Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) gave us six hours of demos and live recordings— none ever heard by the public, most never heard of— signaling the potential of more to come. Now, Vol. 2 arrives, spanning her debut, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, and Blue. Here is our first glimpse behind the curtain at Joni hitting her stride.

From a staggering 119 tracks, the one (!) I’ve chosen for inclusion on the playlist this week is a breathtaking live rendition of “River,” recorded at the Paris Theater for the BBC on October 29, 1970. The entirety of that concert comprises the set’s final disc, and features prime selections from her catalog to date, including five songs from Blue that wouldn’t see release for another eight months. Here, Joni channels a stunning vocal purity that’s present— yet not quite as soaring— on these songs’ essential studio counterparts. This extraordinarily intimate recording is, by some distance, the best of all her live albums, capturing her voice at its absolute apex.

After a run of singles appearing on this playlist over the past couple of months, Chicago drummer/bandleader Makaya McCraven's Deciphering the Message is out at last. As stated, he’s assembled a dream team of modern jazz giants here to reinterpret his favorites from the Blue Note catalog— and as one of the finest jazz albums of this young decade, I imagine Rudy Van Gelden himself would have found it a knockout addition to the Blue Note discography, and more than worthy of the label's iconic mark.

My anticipation for Sega Bodega’s sophomore album, Romeo, has grown with each new single, and this week, my suspicions were confirmed: the album certifiably rips. On the heels of a slate of incredible productions for Shygirl, Oklou, and Haleek Maul, the Irish producer and NUXXE label co-founder first teased Romeo with “Only Seeing God When I Come” (a song as great as its title) and “Angel on My Shoulder,” a future-forward banger packed with trance synths and bruising breaks. But at the center of the record lie two particular standouts: “Naturopathe,” a sexy French-English club track with Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the twisted, crackling beauty of “Cicada,” featuring Arca. The former is possibly the album’s most accessible track and a strong point of entry, while “Cicada” shimmers beneath its surface, as Sega lobs acoustic guitars, chopped drums, and distorted effects at his collaborator. Arca deftly navigates around the buzzing synths of Bodega’s composition, her voice morphing between wispy, fragmented harmonies and distorted lead melodies with ease.

Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s Silk Sonic project is a sexed-up anachronism — the logical conclusion to Mars’ cosplay efforts as a 70s soul star. It’s been a long, weird road to this destination — for both artists — marked with hella brand partnerships and TV performances before the full record even dropped. Now that it’s here, it should be said: An Evening With Silk Sonic was worth the wait, an overt love letter to the duo’s (admittedly more pioneering) musical forebears, arranged with a level of precision that only true soul acolytes could’ve pulled off.

They’ve got the bonafides. Beyond the singles, the clear standout is “After Last Night,” an extremely sprung collaboration between album guest host Bootsy Collins and fellow funkateer Thundercat. Bootsy is the OG glue that ties this horny affair together, and though neither he nor Thundercat contribute bass— that would be the superb Brody Brown— the Parliament legend’s influence can be felt on every frequency.

Elsewhere...

Mach-Hommy has had an incredible year with the release of his AOTY contender Pray For Haiti, and his new one-off collaboration with Katryanada, “$payforhaiti,” is a fitting victory lap. Over jazzy keys and a Shaft-inspired drum groove, Hommy handles all the vocals on the track, turning in an absolutely infectious hook before unfurling one of the best run of verses we’ve seen all year. There are too many quotables to list here, but check this bar and try to argue the Newark-based MC isn’t one of the best on the planet right now: “I keep a stick at home base like I’m bunting strays/ Wanna play like vitamins fuckin’ one a day/ N****s talkin’ like they unafraid/ If we talking bars then it’s 100k.”

It’s comforting that Freddie Gibbs’ deal with Warner didn’t push him away from what he does best: rap his ass off. There’s no push for radio singles, earworm hooks, or Spotify stream superstars as collaborators on “Black Illuminati.” It’s just Gibbs and Jadakiss unleashing a torrent of unreal 16s. Here’s Gibbs, during verse two: “Turn the witness to Stevie Wonder, ho, you ain't seen shit/ Youngins on a mando' slide, this shit routine, bitch.” Then Jada rolls through, reminding Gibbs that things were done differently back in the day: “'Fore we knew what Billboard was, we had our own chart/ Strapped and they pull the car over, you take your own charge.” It’s an awesome display of force from two dudes with distinct but connected POVs.

On albums like 2018’s Some Rap Songs and 2020’s FEET OF CLAY, Earl Sweatshirt used his voice in an aesthetic function. His words were merely part of a bigger picture, a surprising approach given his preternatural talent as a lyricist. With his latest single “2010,” he excavates his voice from the amber center of dusty jazz loops and stands front and center, showcasing his prowess as one of the game’s best pure rhymers. Over a skittering, arpeggiated beat, Earl reminds any forgetful listeners that when he’s locked in, few do it better. Case in point: “Triumph over plight and immense loss/ Ride alone at night, I get clear thoughts/ Caught a couple slights and I veered off.”

New York jazz vocalist Melanie Charles’ take on Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” is the opening track and scene-stealer from her new album, Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women. Her first for Verve, it finds her exploring the label’s deep repertoire while fully reinterpreting the material as only a true jazz improviso can. The cut is a spacey meditation with a modern twist, trading out Holiday’s silvery palette with explosive drums and organs that reach for the heavens. The song rests on a bevy of instrumental layers, and it's a testament to Charles’ muscular vocal that it so effortlessly soars above the thundering arrangement.

FKA Twigs has teamed up with UK grime star Central Cee for “Measure of a Man,” taken from the soundtrack to The King's Man, the third installment (and prequel) of the action-comedy series Kingsman. The logical comparison here would be with the Bond themes, and on “Measure of a Man,” Twigs flexes her pop muscle, building an epic vocal performance that rides along a wave of smooth drum clicks, cinematic string samples, and the sort of morose piano that seems to feature in every big movie trailer these days. It’s a time-tested formula for big-budget box office soundtrack cuts, yet remains captivating in her capable hands.

Speaking of artists whose new songs are events, Ye (née Kanye West) shared a tweaked version of “Life of the Party” as part of his new DONDA deluxe update. This is the track with Andre 3000 that Drake leaked back in September, shortly after Kanye casually blasted out his home address on Instagram. Had it been included on the original tracklist, “Life of the Party” would’ve been the best song on DONDA by a country mile, so regardless of how we got here, it’s a blessing (however heartbreaking) to hear Andre wax poetic on death and the loss of his mother.

Rosie Lowe and Duval Timothy’s new album, Son, overflows with beautiful harmony snippets and restless explorations of tape hiss and ruminative piano. The former can be attributed to Lowe, the singer, and the latter to Timothy, the pianist/composer. On “Gonna Be,” Timothy wraps Lowe’s chopped and pitch-shifted vocals with the warm tones of plucked acoustic bass and piano chords that hit like the first sip of whiskey on a cold night.

Big Thief have unleashed a fifth track from their forthcoming 2xLP, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. (Double albums seem to be an emerging trend going into next year.) The latest single, “Time Escaping,” forgoes the usual ornate trappings of the Big Thief sound. The subtle surprises and ticks in Adrienne Lenker’s delivery when the band lets loose is my favorite aspect of their otherwise fairly straightforward folk-rock. Here, she wraps her voice in harmonies while guitarist Buck Meek slowly unfurls clever guitar effects beneath her stream-of-consciousness delivery. A perfect segue into winter.

Maybe I just miss the particular emotional openness of The Wrens, maybe Aeon Station is hitting all the right notes, or maybe it’s a little bit of both. Regardless, I’ve loved every song from Kevin Whelan’s new offshoot project, as he teases the debut Aeon Station album, Observatory. “Fade,” the latest single, smarts with the same cathartic honesty that made The Wrens so beloved in the first place, with Whelan belting lines like, “Today is the day we are finally free of pretending to be something we never wanted.”

British duo Let’s Eat Grandma take a sharp left turn from candy-coated hyperpop on their fairly breathtaking, almost folk-like new single, “Two Ribbons.” It’s a refreshing move away from the dance-heavy compositions of their 2018 album, I’m All Ears, finding beauty in the slow build of a guitar, despite their clear prowess with glossy synths and sequenced drums. And yet, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth retain their knack for cathartic songwriting. Impressive.

You’d think British dance producer Fred again... might take a beat, having already dropped an AOTY candidate this year. Au contraire: This week, he followed April’s Actual Life (April 14 - December 17 2020) with a sequel spanning February to October of this year. New single “Faisal (Envelop Me)” pulls back on his signature, sampled, soft-spoken realism to revel in pure, post-covid euphoria— a dance floor anthem that begs for open-air clubs and the heat of communal joy.

While fan rips of Arca’s “Electra Rex” have been kicking around for a year now, the studio version finally arrived last week— along with the announcement that she’s putting out not just one sequel to her KicK series, but rather a trilogy. This piece, from the third installment, is heady and pummeling in both concept and execution: The title melds together Freud’s and Jung’s most infamous psychosexual notions, while the track itself puts (apologies in advance) the kick in KicK, with murderous percussion and ominous, shifting chords. As Arca herself puts it, KicK iii is “a portal directly into the more manic, violently euphoric and aggressively psychedelic sound palettes” of the bunch.

In August, English producer Joy Orbison finally issued his excellent debut album, still slipping vol. 1, more than a decade after his first EP. Now, he’s back with a prickly piece of techno in “red velve7.” Routine club music structures routinely turn to fine art in Orbison’s hands; “red velve7” wafts into the atmosphere with the mysterious effortlessness that defined much of Joy O’s pre-album output before working in some crowd-pleasing breaks by the end.

It’s been five long years since Huerco S. dropped his breathtaking ambient masterpiece, For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), all the way back in 2016. Where that record only made intimations at club music, trance, and electro, his new single, “Plonk IV,” is a full-throated embrace of the dancefloor. The drums on this thing could cut through any DJ set; the full track cycles through several distinct movements, linked together in a rattling chain of percussion.

Tasked with scoring the Rebecca Hall film Passing, Devonte Hynes turns in a sparse, elegant title theme. What begins as a duet between two horns slowly builds as a piano drops in, first with tight, jabbed chords, then with graceful voice-leading on the right hand, as if slowly conducting the isolated horns. It’s a mesmerizing introduction to the Blood Orange mastermind’s melancholy soundtrack.

From his early days in Tortoise to his mid-career resurgence as a go-to guitar ace for the next generation of jazz stars, Jeff Parker continues to astound as one of the most innovative guitarists in music. “Suffolk,” the lead single from his just-announced album of solo guitar works, Forfolks, thrums with uniquely textured drones backing layers of picked strings. The arrangement runs like clockwork, each component locked into its own individual function: loops and leads and arrhythmic plucks, cello-like hums, and radiant, resonating chords.

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