New Music Friday: Stream projects from Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn, Caribou, and more

“I was literally carrying death inside me,” Half Waif’s Nandi Rose says about her latest album, See You at the Maypole. It’s a record about grief and loss, with Rose writing about the devastation of experiencing a miscarriage and the grueling physical and emotional pain of losing a child. Through it all, though, Rose’s storytelling is helmed by the celebration of life and love as she deals with the heartbreak of her loss, acknowledging that she must accept and understand her grief while being surrounded by people who act as permanent reminders of vibrance, love, and vitality. “Figurine,” a beautifully haunting cut from the record, symbolizes the idea that life will continue despite every catastrophe: “Head up, it’s gonna get so much better, you’ll see/ And all the world is turning around like a figurine,” she sings. —Cady Siregar

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Dan Snaith’s sixth Caribou album is perhaps his most experimental album to date, with the mathematics PHD graduate turned club staple diving into the murky waters of AI technology and using voice altering filters to shift his vocals through genre and gender barriers. Where Honey experiments with process, however, it is more traditional in structure, with Canada-born Snaith delivering an album that beats to the rhythm of dance floors across his adopted hometown of London. “Broke My Heart” is a frothy U.K. garage track that skips its way around a hook reminiscent of PinkPantheress covering “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. Then there is “Campfire,” where Snaith samples those same hooks just a few songs later and even raps a verse through his digitally warped microphone. Elsewhere, both “Honey” and “Dear Life” deliver big room energy to the floor, bringing the often bittersweet Caribou closer than ever to Snaith’s club-orientated Daphni alter ego. “Only You” returns to safer territory, seeing the album out with a track that could have fit onto Caribou’s 2010 fan favorite Swim. Honey shows both the merit of trying new things, while staying loosely moored to the past. —David Renshaw

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Singer-songwriter Fred Thomas has had a varied career, playing in bands such as Saturday Looks Good To Me and Idle Ray while diligently plugging away at a collection of increasingly diaristic solo albums. Window In The Rhythm is his first new project in six years and features one hour of music spread across just seven songs. As such, it is an album that rewards patience and close listening. There is a tranquility to Thomas’ guitar playing on the album, as if he is catching the notes as they fall from the sky. A couple of songs feature harpist Mary Lattimore, while others dissolve into hissing feedback. These provide the basis for elongated wanderings reminiscent of similarly wordy and amorphous work by Mark Kozelek and Phil Elverum. “Embankment” is filled with memories of chemically induced malaise and techno mixtapes, thoughts that override people. “Hours,” meanwhile, swells with the acrid feeling of a love left behind. The overall effect of listening to Window In The Rhythmis akin to spending an afternoon with a cranky, yet beloved, old friend. —DR

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In theory, few things are less appealing to me than a 24-hour improvisation set. That’s what Jonah Yano and his band have planned for Oct. 1 in Toronto, where they’ll launch Yano’s new project Jonah Yano & the Heavy Loop. What could possibly hold my attention for that long, when my brain at the best of times has the tenor of a wasp’s nest? The more I listen to The Heavy Loop, the more my fascination grows — it’s a nesting egg of an album, seven songs concluding with the 30-minute improvisation that inspired the album. The majority of the album traverses jazzy climes, where Feist-era Canadian indie and Prince demos are part of the same ecosystem and love in all its forms is the life-giving sun. The collaborations nail this dynamic: A standout is “Snowpath,” a delicate duet with Clairo with the texture of two people writing messages to each other and tossing them into the night sky, never to know how much their feelings overlap. Yano feels bolstered, more creatively confident by the presence of a band on The Heavy Loop: It’s a reminder that catching a vibe is better when you’re surrounded by people you trust, and lasts longer, too — a whole day, or perhaps an entire career. —Jordan Darville

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When I first heard “Holy, Holy,” the lead single from former black midi frontman Geordie Greep’s debut solo album, I hated it viscerally. It immediately confirmed my worst fears about what a solo Greep record might sound like: Unencumbered by his bandmates’ opinions, he’d let his most self-indulgent tendencies run rampant. Later, though, as the track’s Steely Dan-sized arrangement and lightning-fast licks continued to pop into my head long after my initial listen, I realized that there was no point in resisting; I’m too hardwired to enjoy this type of music to get on my high horse now. Ironically, The New Sound fuses tried-and-true styles from the past — Latin jazz, MPB, yacht rock, show tunes, et al. It’s an album that will warm the hearts of concerned black midi fans (myself included), and one that the fanatics will gobble up greedily. (When Greep performed “Holy Holy” at Bushwick’s Sultan Room for his fourth sell-out crowd of the week, multiple men in the crowd already knew the song’s winkingly chauvinist lyrics by heart; this is not a good thing.) Luckily, The New Sound has plenty more tricks up its sleeve: the white-knuckled bossa nova that underscores “Terra”; the old-timey, honkey-tonk cut-up at the end of “Walk Up”; the breathtaking, vibes-led polyrhythms that kick off “Bongo Season”; the quiet-loud explosion that snaps “Motorbike” from a crooning ballad into a ferocious prog-rock rollercoaster ride; and the straight-ahead Sinatra cover that closes out the LP, to name a few. As on black midi’s work, a killer band rescues Greep’s absurdist lyrics and exaggerated delivery from falling into a pit of pure schlock. The New Sound might be annoying, but it’s certainly not boring. —Raphael Helfand

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If there’s one beef I’ve got with Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn’s collaborative output, it’s that they’re both too good at music. Richard’s voice verges at times too crystalline, and Zahn’s immaculate arrangements are so pure they inspire in failed former composers like myself a deep, unfair jealousy. Quiet in a World Full of Noise, the follow-up to their debut joint album, 2022’s Pigments, is less esoteric and, appropriately, quieter than its predecessor. The record starts out as a collection of clean, deceptively simple R&B ballads; its forth track, “Diets,” marks the first time a dissonant element — a space-age synth arpeggiator — enters the mix. The next song, “Stay,” moves into the rootless feel the duo explored in their first project. Later, we encounter the enrapturing strings of “Moments of Stillness,” the deconstructed, sacred-choir harmonies of “Remove,” the drifting tides of “Oceans Past,” and the clarion trumpet calls that kick off album closer “Try” before the song dissolves into a harmonious mist. While not quite as adventurous as Pigments, Quiet in a World Full of Noise is a more cohesive, flowing project that demonstrates the maturity and mutual respect undergirding Richard and Zahn’s creative relationship. —RH

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Another report on a world on fire from a band forever staring at the flames. The note with the album speaks to the war outside — “the old world order barely pretended to care. this new century will be crueler still. war is coming. don’t give up. pick a side. hang on.” — but the crushing thing about NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD is that it is not some bleak vision of a world beyond repair, some extended “Dead Flag Blues.” It is grand and heartbreaking and occasionally even hopeful and ecstatic. There’s still nobody else quite like them. —Alex Robert Ross

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