THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020 7
ists Scott Robinson and Donny McCaslin, and
the accordionist Gary Versace.—Steve FuttermanSonic Youth Live Archive
ROCK Since the lockdown began, Steve Shelley,
the drummer and archivist for the disbanded
New York alt-rock trailblazers Sonic Youth, has
uploaded to Bandcamp more than twenty live
concerts from the group’s thirty-year history,
with new entries appearing regularly. It’s a feast,
drawing from the band’s entire studio reper-
toire—and, in some cases, bettering it. “Live in
Los Angeles 1998” renders the material from the
autumnal “A Thousand Leaves” with vivid au-
thority, and “Live in Irvine 1990” does much the
same with that year’s “Goo,” transforming the
band’s poppiest songs into gleefully bent arena
rock. And “Live at City Gardens 1987” features
a rare treat: “Expressway to Yr. Skull,” typically
a barn-burning climax, gets perfectly cast as a
mid-set exclamation mark.—Michaelangelo MatosTaylor Swift: “folklore”
POP Taylor Swift’s “folklore” isn’t a folk record,
nor is it particularly autobiographical. Instead,
Swift is interested in the idea of storytelling—offolklore, writ large—as a kind of sense-making
process. Musically, “folklore” feels mostly genre-
less, though it drifts toward gauzy, atmospheric
pop. Aaron Dessner, who plays guitar in the
National, co-wrote or co-produced eleven of the
album’s sixteen songs, and his presence softens
it, folding in hazy strings, some mysterious per-
cussion, and a few quietly anxious builds. All the
characters Swift invents, borrows, and briefly
inhabits here are stuck between acquiescing
to the momentum of their lives and wresting
control of their own stories. She may purpose-
fully inhabit different perspectives—and no one
can blame her for seeking a bit of respite from
public confession—but “folklore” reiterates that
we’re all confused and trying in the same ways.
The human experience, however fractured and
refracted, is still very much shared.—Amanda
Petrusich (Originally published on July 24.)tled its summer season, the organization delves
into its archive of rarely staged pieces and makes
them available through its Web site as part of
its “Upstreaming” initiative. The choices reveal
the conductor and artistic co-director Leon Bot-
stein’s penchant for the bursting, bountiful, and
luxurious sounds associated with Romanticism—
Chabrier’s “Le Roi Malgré Lui,” Rubinstein’s
“Demon,” Dvořák’s “Dimitrij,” Korngold’s “The
Miracle of Heliane,” and Richard Strauss’s “Die
Liebe der Danae.”—Oussama ZahrDominic Fike: “What Could
Possibly Go Wrong”
POP RAP Insouciance has become a calling card
for the twenty-four-year-old artist and guitarist
Dominic Fike, who inked a multimillion-dollar
deal with Columbia Records after his demos
started circulating online, a few years ago. His
style of rap-singing over acidic surf guitars
is laid-back and uncalculated—particularly
on his début record, “What Could Possibly
Go Wrong,” which collects capricious sound
wisps that are often just a minute or two long.
His briskness can be refreshing on songs such
as “Good Game” and “Double Negative,” but
elsewhere his idleness and indifference grate:
“I hope they banish me, I miss my family tree,”
he sings on “Cancel Me,” a petulant rebuke of
fame. He touches on police brutality and his
time in jail, but, as with much on the album, his
thoughts are brief and fleeting.—Julyssa LopezLe Ren:
“Morning & Melancholia”
FOLK The EP “Morning & Melancholia” opens
the curtains on the talented Montreal singer
Lauren Spear, who performs under the name
Le Ren. The musician’s arrival is haunted by
a heartbreaking departure: the death of her
ex-boyfriend two years ago. On a full-length
album, Spear’s personal tragedy might color the
overarching mood, but in the tighter confines
of an EP it dominates the proceedings so thor-
oughly that her loss shrouds the record’s every
note, lyric, and moan of pedal steel. Throughout
the set’s three original compositions and lone
cover (Dallas Frazier’s “The Day I Lose My
Mind”), Le Ren stares down a fractured love
and a harrowing farewell, all in a crystalline
voice that sounds too young to hold such an-
guish.—Jay RuttenbergMaria Schneider Orchestra:
“Data Lords”
JAZZ The prodigiously gifted composer, arranger,
and bandleader Maria Schneider has a whole
lot on her mind these days, and much of it has
made its way into her impressive new double
CD, “Data Lords.” In the liner notes, she states
that disk one addresses her ambivalence toward
the technological universe and disk two her
bond with the natural world, but such an expan-
sive work—like all programmatic instrumental
pieces—carries the burden of making a case for
its own relevance. Without the use of words,
Schneider’s preoccupations remain ambiguous,
though she exhibits a masterly control of bold
and inventive tonal landscapes and subtler or-
chestral shadings. These potent settings provide
a backdrop for a cache of splendid soloists, in-
ILLUSTRATION BY CINDY ECHEVARRIAcluding the guitarist Ben Monder, the saxophon-
Last year, Beyoncé curated “The Gift,” a soundtrack inspired by Disney’s
ambitious, if hollow, C.G.I. remake of “The Lion King.” She voiced
Nala in the film, but her bigger contribution was the fusion of pop and
Afrobeats that she called “a love letter to Africa.” Her new visual album,
“Black Is King,” could have been a simple collection of videos set to
the record’s songs, but the project bloomed into a full-blown cinematic
experience, celebrating African ancestry and the Black diaspora—and
arriving squarely amid conversations about Black oppression. Lavish
sequences generate a rich iconography: an emerald-green tea party at-
tended by all Black women, a white butler brushing Beyoncé’s glowing
teeth, a dreamlike débutante ball. Some of the effort’s intentions are
buried in abstractions, but “Black Is King” is an aesthetic feat that rev-
els in its exquisite presentations of Blackness. “We were beauty before
they knew what beauty was,” Beyoncé says early on.—Julyssa LopezPOP
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MOVIES
An American Pickle
Piety and sentiment overwhelm the inspired
concept of this comedic fantasy, based on a series