Skip to main content

New top story from Time: The Best Albums of 2021 So Far

https://ift.tt/2SvJehl

This year’s musical offerings have been a scattered bunch: with the music industry still on a pandemic-induced slowdown, the output in the first half of the year has been less commercial than highly personal, narratively complex and, at times, surprisingly collaborative. We likely have quarantine to thank for that, a time during which artists could craft something cohesive on their own schedules. Besides Taylor Swift’s buzzy re-release of her 2008 album Fearless, the albums of the year so far have not been blockbusters, but projects to sit with and stew over, as some of the industry’s biggest stars continue to bide their time before making a comeback. Consider: Julien Baker’s melancholy, personal rock; the unlikely combo of a jazz musician and electronic DJ in Promises; Jazmine Sullivan’s intimate embrace of female sexuality in a project that sounds and feels like a warm bath. These are the best albums of 2021 so far.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Little Oblivions, Julien Baker

Little Oblivions begins with the bleary stop-and-start of static, which turns into the backbone of a melody, one that comes in and out of focus just like the story Julien Baker tells. “Blacked out on a weekday, still something that I’m trying to avoid,” she sings, voice low. “Start asking for forgiveness in advance/ for all the future things I will destroy.” She’s defeated but unflinching, a messed-up human still in the throes of messing up, yet self-aware. Addiction, trauma, alienation: Baker is a singer-songwriter keen to bare her scars. Her art is her balm, where stories about bad nights become soothing songs that help mend the memories. It’s also beautifully raw, with lyrics that hit pressure points: “Oh, there is no glory in love, only the gore of our hearts/ Oh, let it come for my throat, take me and tear me apart.” Her voice, baleful and clear, is full of the need to be heard and understood, whether she’s whispering confessions or finding release in an extended, tuneful screech. — Raisa Bruner

Promises, Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders

What do an 80-year-old jazz saxophonist from Little Rock and a millennial electronic DJ from Manchester have in common? Plenty, it turns out: a delight in gentle soundscapes and sharp disruptions; an endless curiosity and collaborative generosity; a spellbinding capacity to conjure complete immersion. Promises, a new project from Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, is a remarkable experiment in multi-genre, multi-generational mind-melding. The 46-minute album is organized around one motif, with harpsichords, synthesizers, swelling string melodies drifting in and out; Sanders amazes both through his voluminous saxophone and his wispy voice. Its serenity might put you to sleep—but then its stabs of energy will jolt you right awake again. — Andrew R. Chow

Heaux Tales, Jazmine Sullivan

In her fourth album, Jazmine Sullivan claims her place as R&B’s most honest voice right now. Heaux Tales isn’t just an album: it’s an unvarnished confessional and communal reckoning with Black female desire, featuring the spoken-word romantic experiences of an array of women in its thoughtful interludes. The songs, meanwhile, are rich with warm riffs, finger-snap beats and languorous keys. “Our society teaches them to be so wrapped up in themselves and their own conquests that they forget that we’re sexual beings ourselves,” goes one meditation on relationships in “Antoinette’s Tale.” Taken as a whole, the album comes off as a healing project, an offering to women everywhere to value themselves wholly, even when their desires are messy or conflicting, eager or cautious. Through it all, Sullivan’s flexible voice rises and falls, smooth and endlessly listenable. — R.B.

The Marfa Tapes, Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall

The latest album from Miranda Lambert, one of country music’s most enduring stars, has none of Nashville’s typical sheen: it was recorded live in a house in the Texas desert, with her and two longtime collaborators, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, crowded around a pair of microphones. The rough edges are palpable: the trio forgets lyrics; planes hum overhead; cold cans are cracked open. But what the album lacks in polish is more than made up for in chemistry and complexion. The best songs, including “Waxahachie” and “In Her Arms,” drip with stunning harmony and warmth, and could be easily mistaken for long-lost campfire classics. The album feels Edenic and, given Lambert’s stature, potentially transformative: a cultural reset on the level of acoustic masterpieces like Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger or Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. — A.C.

Deacon, Serpentwithfeet

Sinuous, meditative, tender, haunting: there are plenty of adjectives you could apply to serpentwithfeet’s Deacon, but none of them quite illustrate the tenor of his music, which is equal parts inviting and shiver-inducing. Serpentwithfeet, real name Josiah Wise, mixes gospel choruses with intimate directives; on Deacon, the British artist’s third album, a new warmth glosses his darker tendencies. Piano is everywhere, as are echoing beats and layered lyrics that celebrate love and satisfied same-sex domesticity: on “Derrick’s Beard,” a pared-down ballad of sorts, he repeats the line “Come over here, missing your beard” for over two minutes. But in Serpentwithfeet’s capable hands, every repetition feels like a sweet revelation. — R.B.

Actual Life, Fred. Again

The U.K. superproducer Fred Gibson has lent his deft touch to superhits by artists like Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding and Stormzy for years. Since the pandemic, he’s embraced his more angular, experimental side in collaborations with FKA Twigs and Headie One. And this April, he released his debut album Actual Life, which was recorded over quarantine and summons a global community via aural collage. (The legendary electronic producer Brian Eno served as a collaborator on the project.) Gibson weaves voice memos from friends and Instagram soundbites into beatific house beats, creating both a deep intimacy and a party soundtrack that begs to be spun at newly reopened nightclubs. There isn’t much subtlety here: ”We’ve lost the hugs with friends and people that wе loved/ All these things that wе took for granted,” The Blessed Madonna cries out on the single “Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing).” But the record offers some much needed catharsis after a year of disconnect. — A.C.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

L Taraval Improvement Project Update

L Taraval Improvement Project Update By Sevilla Mann Roundtable at the Community Parklet Shares Project Updates  This past week, the SFMTA hosted a media roundtable discussing updates about the L Taraval Improvement Project at the community parklet located in front of the The Rolling Out Café  on Taraval St.   Segment B construction began in February 2022 and is scheduled to be completed Fall 2024. Sewer and water infrastructure work is currently taking place. Future work includes track work, overhead line work, the construction of new boarding islands and streetscape improvements.    On hand to answer questions and provide updates was District Four Supervisor Gordon Mar, SFMTA Board Director Sharon Lai and Director of Transportation Jefferey Tumlin.   The Roundtable  Supervisor Mar opened the discussion by highlighting the many benefits that the local community will receive with the planned infrastructure upgrades along the corridor. These benefits include:   Replacing sew

FOX NEWS: Cincinnati zoo renames sloth habitat after late 1-year-old who loved sloths The sloth habitat at Ohio's Cincinnati Zoo will be named after a toddler who recently passed away.

Cincinnati zoo renames sloth habitat after late 1-year-old who loved sloths The sloth habitat at Ohio's Cincinnati Zoo will be named after a toddler who recently passed away. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3DLAshi

IPL 2020 | KKR, SRH search for first win to get off the mark https://ift.tt/333a9nc

Having suffered defeats in their opening games, the Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad will lock horns on Saturday at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. While Kolkata faced a tough 49-run loss to defending champions Mumbai Indians, the Sunrisers suffered a monumental batting collapse against Royal Challengers Bangalore, losing the game by 10 runs.

FOX NEWS: Decadent double chocolate mint cookies for National Chocolate Day National Chocolate Day on Oct. 28th calls for a serious dose of chocolate.

Decadent double chocolate mint cookies for National Chocolate Day National Chocolate Day on Oct. 28th calls for a serious dose of chocolate. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3nEJxSB

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work By Mariana Maguire The latest data from SFMTA’s new  Equity Toolkit  shows that Muni service changes are helping people in neighborhoods identified by our  Muni Service Equity Strategy  access more jobs and support the city’s recovery.   In winter 2020, we launched the  SFMTA Equity Toolkit  to understand how service decisions are affecting neighborhoods where there is likely a high prevalence of essential workers who rely predominantly on Muni to get to their essential jobs. Our goal is to make better service decisions based on the trends and impacts we see in the Equity Toolkit.   Recently, the greatest increases in access to jobs via Muni have been in Hunters Point and Western Addition. The Hunters Point neighborhood saw the largest gains from the addition of the  15 Bayview-Hunters Point Express , as demonstrated in the table below. Thanks to the return of key Muni lines and increased frequencies on connector routes, I

Powered Scooters Charge City’s Transportation Recovery

Powered Scooters Charge City’s Transportation Recovery By Jason Hyde The SFMTA is releasing its next round of Powered Scooter Share permits on July 1. Scooters remain a sustainable mode of travel and a complement to Muni and public transit service as the city recovers from the pandemic and San Franciscans begin to travel more. The SFMTA’s Powered Scooter Share Program is essential in ensuring that shared scooter operations support the city’s economic recovery in a safe, sustainable, and equitable way.  The SFMTA received four submittals for the permit program and will issue permits to two operators : Spin and Lime. Permits will be in effect for a one-year term, with the option to extend for another year at the discretion of the SFMTA based on compliance with various program metrics. While the new permit program does not set a limit on the number of scooters each operator may deploy, it does limit the overall citywide fleet size at 10,000. Starting at a base of 2,000 scooters per

New top story from Time: 3 Killed in Northern California as Wildfires Force Thousands to Evacuate

https://ift.tt/34at2Uy (SAN FRANCISCO) — Northern California’s wine country was on fire again Monday as strong winds fanned flames in the already scorched region, destroying homes and prompting orders for nearly 70,000 people to evacuated. Meanwhile, three people died in a separate fire further north in the state. In Sonoma County, residents of the Oakmont Gardens senior living facility in Santa Rosa boarded brightly lit city buses in the darkness overnight, some wearing bathrobes and using walkers. They wore masks to protect against the coronavirus as orange flames marked the dark sky. The fire threat forced Adventist Health St. Helena hospital to suspend care and transfer all patients elsewhere. The fires that began Sunday in the famed Napa-Sonoma wine country about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of San Francisco came as the region nears the third anniversary of deadly wildfires that erupted in 2017, including one that killed 22 people. Just a month ago, many of those

Traffic Collisions have Decreased on San Francisco’s Slow Streets

Traffic Collisions have Decreased on San Francisco’s Slow Streets By Julia Malmo   As a whole, Slow Streets are safer than they were before being designated Slow Streets  Streets that are part of the SFMTA’s  Slow Streets Program have become measurably safer since the program began in 2020, with the number of traffic crashes falling by almost half. On average, these corridors have seen a 48% drop in collisions following their designation as Slow Streets, compared with a 14% drop in collisions citywide over the same period. Slow Streets also are more welcoming for people who walk, bike and roll. Fewer than 1,000 vehicles per day use all but four of the current Slow Streets (20th Street, Minnesota Street, Noe Street, and Page Street).  The goal of the program is to create safe, shared streets that are comfortable and enjoyable for people of all ages and abilities, using any mode of transportation. We now can see how it’s doing in a new evaluation report . When the SFMTA Board appr

New top story from Time: How History Is Repeating Itself for Haitian Migrants Trying to Enter the U.S.

https://ift.tt/3upRk9U In the past 11 years alone, Haitians have suffered natural disasters, rising gang violence, outbreaks of cholera and COVID-19, and political instability, including the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse . The crises left many in the hemisphere’s poorest nation feeling they had no option but to leave—despite the difficulties they face in fleeing to other countries. In late September, Americans were confronted with the reality of those difficulties too. An estimated 15,000 people arrived in Del Rio, Texas, during the month, below a bridge connecting the city to Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña. A majority were Haitian nationals, migrants and asylum seekers who ended up living in tents or under tarps, in conditions similar to those in other camps that have formed along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read more: Caught Between U.S. Policies and Instability at Home, Haitian Migrants in Tijuana Are in a State of L

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J कोरोना सकंट में TV सीरियल की शूटिंग शूरू, मास्क लगाकर पहुंचे स्टार्स- निया, पार्थ से लेकर रश्मि-PICS

कोरोना वायरस के चलते जारी लॉकडाउन में टीवी व फिल्मों की शूटिंग बंद थी। कोरोना के खतरे को देखते हुए तमाम सीरियल की शूटिंग रोक दी गई तो वहीं फिल्मों को रिलीज अटक गई। एंटरटेंमेंट इंडस्ट्री को कोरोना के चलते करोड़ों from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/tv-shooting-starts-kasauti-zindagi-kay-naagin-nia-sharma-parth-samthaan-rashmi-desai-pics-090604.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.11.231.156&utm_campaign=client-rss