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Aug 3, 2023 · On 'Time Ain't Accidental,' Jess Williamson is heartbroken, but open to love. June 22, 2023 • On the record's 11 songs of vividly detailed, windswept alt-country, Williamson's reeling from the ...
- The 50 Best Albums of 2023 : NPR
December 5, 20233:00 AM ET. Illustration by Jed Chisholm for...
- Album Review: Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets ... - NPR
Turning the Tables. Taylor Swift Is The 21st Century's Most...
- The 50 Best Albums of 2023 : NPR
Dec 12, 2022 · History lessons that sparkled like the best party you could imagine. There were too many great albums to count, let alone narrow down to a round number. But here are 50 that made us feel awe, ache or adoration, selected and ranked by the contributors, public radio partners and staff of NPR Music. 50.
- An Evening with Silk Sonic
- Io
- Gumbo'!
- And Then There's This
- Sofia Gubaidulina: Orchestral Works
- Drama
- A Southern Gothic
- Dawn
- Sounds from The Ancestors
- Palabras Urgentes
As expected, An Evening With Silk Sonic has been one of the year's most talked-about releases. The pairing initially came about as a joke, but after "Leave The Door Open" exploded in spring, anticipation and pressure soared sky-high. In the case of two hit-making mammoths like Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, risks rival reward, and perfection is the...
Haley Fohr leapt into the great chasm of grief and found something in and outside herself. Circuit des Yeux has never backed away from harsh sounds or traumatic themes, but on recent albums, Fohr's sonic experiments have bloomed beautifully toward empathy. With an orchestra and Chicago's experimental community of musicians at her disposal, -io is b...
Pink Siifu hails from all over the sonic and geographic map. But there's a special groove in his soul for his native South. GUMBO'! serves as his site-specific dedication to a musical lineage that stretches from Dungeon Family funk to Weezy's proto-trap. Still, it couldn't rightfully be classified as gumbo — or Siifu — if he didn't smack it up, fli...
Flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Mike Reed — dynamic third-generation members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — originally formed Artifacts Trio with an inspired agenda, tapping that organization's archive as a repertory source. But if their first album, Artifacts, showed proof of concept, this s...
Sofia Gubaidulina, who turned 90 in October, is a God-fearing composer who puts the fear of God, and plenty of philosophic rigor, into her courageous music. In exhilarating, exquisitely recorded performances, the album tackles life's big questions. The Wrath of God opens with a hair-raising horde of snarling tubas, and Dialog: I and You, ruminates ...
With his first solo album in seven years, the great Brazilian-born, now Los Angeles-based musician Rodrigo Amarante explores his masculinity and memories. The songs on Drama are soul-filled, fun-filled and tropical, bouncing from English to Portuguese. We meet characters along the way: some filled with joy and love, others troublemakers with troubl...
Her pinned tweet reads: "to the south—my land and my people. this record is yours. from one of your daughters." Musician, poet and podcaster Adia Victoria wrote much of A Southern Gothic in 2020, filling orders while working in an Amazon warehouse, not consciously trying to create music. In the mindlessness of that menial work, Victoria crafted stu...
Yebba's debut album, Dawn, hops styles and touts a youthful ambition preventing us from slapping a label on it. Pick a mood and she'll master it. Just don't settle in too long. You're carried away on the acoustic folk vibe of "All I Ever Wanted" when, next thing you know, Smino is riding shotgun on "Louie Bag." Then on to the next. I believe it all...
There is a moment in the title track of Sounds from the Ancestors where the spirits that Kenny Garrett has spent the album invoking all converge. Up to that moment, this journey in ancestor worship has called upon the spirits of late musicians Roy Hargrove, Art Blakey, Tony Allen; the spirit of the Black American church and the Hammond B-3 organ; t...
How did Afro-Peruvian vocalist Susana Baca celebrate her 50th year working as a recording artist? She made one of her best albums ever. Palabras Urgentes, produced by Snarky Puppy's Michael League, is a collection of 10 songs that honor other legendary, Latin American women vocalists and offer life lessons about the times in which we are living. Ac...
NPR Music offers current and archival podcasts, live concert webcasts, reviews, music lists, news, studio sessions, and interviews to listen to from NPR and partner public radio stations across the country, as well as an index of public radio music stations streaming live on the Internet.
Dec 1, 2021 · NPR. If the year presently coming to a close was a dance, it'd be a hesitant shuffle, tentative steps toward — or heyyyy, maybe away from? — an uncertain future.
