Lucy Dacus, ‘Finest Guess’
Lucy Dacus acknowledges that love will be precarious in “Finest Guess.” She sings, “I like your physique, I like your thoughts/They’ll change, so will mine.” The tempo is measured and the band provides a subdued folk-rock march as Dacus overcomes self-conscious skepticism to commit: “You might not be an angel, however you’re my lady,” she decides. PARELES
Yukimi that includes Lianne La Havas, ‘Stream of Consciousness’
“Stream of Consciousness” might be on the debut solo album by Yukimi Nagano, the singer within the Swedish group Little Dragon. Over a backdrop of gently strummed electrical guitars and plush concord vocals, she sings about an unsure however decided step ahead, with “Questions on what my future holds now / And ideas of the place I’ll find yourself, the place I’ll be.” Then she’s joined by Lianne La Havas as an alter ego or fellow traveler: “Hope that every one that is value it,” they sing collectively. PARELES
Rebekka Karijord, ‘Sanctuary’
Sampled, manipulated vocal syllables and the skilled voices of the modern vocal ensemble Roomful of Tooth accompany Rebekka Karijord in “Sanctuary,” an eerie, futuristic lullaby sung to her daughter. It contemplates the local weather catastrophe confronted by the subsequent generations: “Has the ocean reached your step, and the solar turned hostile?,” she wonders, and she or he mourns: “Our sanctuary’s damaged.” PARELES
The Lumineers, ‘You’re All I Acquired’
“Automated,” the brand new album by the Lumineers, plunges into the torments of a breakup: regrets, recriminations, self-doubt, shattered assumptions, lingering want. In “You’re All I’ve Acquired,” Wesley Schultz bemoans the lack of “All of the years we walked hand in hand” over strummed minor chords and tolling piano notes. At the same time as he is aware of it’s over, he makes a falsetto plea: “You’re all that I obtained / And I can’t give it up like Sisyphus beneath the rock.” PARELES
William Tyler, ‘Concern’
William Tyler, from Tennessee, deploys folky guitar and complex digital manufacturing in his instrumental tracks. “Concern,” from his subsequent album “Time Indefinite,” turns cyclical guitar chords into one thing like chimes; it additionally toys with pitch shifts and, ultimately, attracts within the sounds of outdated tape recordings of a choir to counsel the beginnings of an anthem. PARELES
