JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's time for New Music Friday. Today, we've got an uncategorizable band from my own hometown of Kansas City, Mo., 50-year-old recordings from a folk legend and the long-awaited return of a celebrated British dance producer. And that is where we'll start handing it over to Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Lars Gotrich from NPR Music to bring us the new album "In Waves" by the producer behind The xx, Jamie xx.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMIE XX'S "WANNA")
DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN, BYLINE: So this record opens with a track called "Wanna," which is sort of a quiet - you know, it's very moody. And then it transitions to a track called "Treat Each Other Right."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TREAT EACH OTHER RIGHT")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) All we got to do treat each other right. All we got to do. All we got to do.
TYLER-AMEEN: Which is a lot more aggressive and beat heavy. And it has transitions and drops and what have you. It feels like kind of a pledge, to me, that he understands the difference between the softer edged, more kind of down tempo music that he has made with The xx and on his last solo record, "In Color," and what it is to try to enter the club. But I want to jump ahead to the Robyn feature because...
LARS GOTRICH, BYLINE: It's so good.
TYLER-AMEEN: I mean, there's a song called "Life" with Robyn. The way this song starts out, she is full-on bionic woman. It's just like flat delivery, no nonsense...
GOTRICH: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...No cracks in the armor.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIFE (FEAT. ROBYN)")
ROBYN: (Singing) Giving me life. Get it, make 'em gag. You're giving me life, life, life. You're giving me life.
GOTRICH: Like, what almost kind of a flex from Jamie xx to be like, this song features Robyn, but it's not going to sound like the Robyn you truly love until about 1:30.
TYLER-AMEEN: That's the thing. And that's what I love. It really rewards you for sticking around because over time, she is who she is. And so the quivers in her voice kind of trickle out. And she transitions from that sort of flat, rhythmic speak song to something that's a lot more full-throated and melodic.
GOTRICH: And flirty.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: Like, this is her, like, in flirty mode, which is - I mean, I love all Robyn's modes, but this one is particularly a favorite of mine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIFE (FEAT. ROBYN)")
ROBYN: (Singing) No, I'll never get enough. It's just a matter of fact that we'll never get this back. Let's make it last all night.
TYLER-AMEEN: That is "In Waves" by Jamie xx, a record with a lot to discover. Up next, the trio BLACKSTARKIDS and their new record, "SATURN DAYZ." Lars...
GOTRICH: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...How to describe what this group does? (Laughter).
GOTRICH: All right. Let me see if I can string the web together.
TYLER-AMEEN: OK.
GOTRICH: A Tribe Called Quest. The Go! Team. Warped Tour pop-punk.
TYLER-AMEEN: Gotcha.
GOTRICH: Kanye in his old bag.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yes.
GOTRICH: I think those are - there's more.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: There's more, but that's like...
TYLER-AMEEN: No. If you throw those in all in the pot together, I think you get pretty close.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOULMATEZ!")
BLACKSTARKIDS: (Singing) Tender heart, your brown skin. Butterflies everywhere, I can't pretend. Look in your eyes. Now I'm blushing. If it's not with you, don't care to fall in love again.
GOTRICH: I feel like you and I, Daoud, have been talking about this band just, like, in the office for a number of years.
TYLER-AMEEN: Well, they waltzed into my consciousness in 2021 with a song called "JUNO." You remember "JUNO."
GOTRICH: Oh, yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: The thing that I wrote about them in my year-end blurb was that they are sort of structure agnostic.
GOTRICH: Yes.
TYLER-AMEEN: It really feels like they maybe come up with the song titles first and then say, like, OK, what do we do from here?
GOTRICH: Yes.
TYLER-AMEEN: The other thing that this connects to is, I think, a deep sense of self-awareness about how they are perceived as young Black people in an "alternative," quote-unquote, kind of scene.
GOTRICH: It is extremely self-aware of their place as musicians, especially as musicians not in one of the major cities. They're in Kansas City.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: So they're not New York. They're not LA. They are making this very idiosyncratic music as three young black people in the Middle Coast.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: And they are questioning themselves as much as they're questioning their listeners. Like, how are you perceiving this thing that we are offering to you?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. You can hear that in the song, "STEREOTYPE," which has this hook. You're a this. You're a that. You're a stereotype. Not only self-awareness, but a little bit of anxiety, right? Because it's - artists who carry some kind of othered difference, when they enter, you know, mainstream spaces, they are burdened with always having to sort of watch their angles and decide whether sharing their pain and their anxiety and whatever else is going to be a cathartic experience or whether it stands to be exploited, misinterpreted, co-opted, all of this stuff.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STEREOTYPE")
BLACKSTARKIDS: (Singing) You're a this. You're a that. You're a stereotype.
TYLER-AMEEN: That was "SATURN DAYZ" by BLACKSTARKIDS. Last up, an archival recording from Bob Dylan and The Band. This is officially called "The 1974 Live Recordings."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIKE A ROLLING STONE")
BOB DYLAN: (Singing) Once upon a time, you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? People call, say, beware, doll, you're bound to fall. You thought they were all kidding you.
GOTRICH: I am no Dylanologist (ph) - really not. But I got my favorite eras of Bob Dylan. And my personal favorite era is represented here in these recordings. In 1974, Bob Dylan had not gone on tour in eight years.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: Which I'm like, I reread that, and I was like, wait. What?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. It's sort of hard to imagine, especially in that time.
GOTRICH: Yeah. And the whole concept was let's do 40 dates, North America. And this is my favorite era of Bob Dylan because this is a man who's constantly reinventing himself, right?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: This is when he reinvented his own myth.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yes.
GOTRICH: This is when Bob Dylan took all those beloved folky songs, threw them in the trash, lit them on fire...
TYLER-AMEEN: (Laughter).
GOTRICH: ...And smiled as they burned.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND")
DYLAN: (Singing) The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.
TYLER-AMEEN: I mean, listening to this, I realized that I had really absorbed the idea of Dylan as the sort of stoic performer...
GOTRICH: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...Steady and serious, maybe cracking a joke once in a while. But here, I don't know, man. It sounds like he's having so much fun.
GOTRICH: There is always an energy and a wild hair behind all of those old folk songs.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
GOTRICH: This is where he was figuring out how to take these songs that he knew his fans love but maybe he was tired of. And he wanted to make it exciting for himself. And he famously has said much after the fact that he was kind of disappointed with, like, that tour. It was, like, something to the effect of, like, it was all style, no substance. But I think the style is the substance in this case.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. I mean, ever the contrarian. He's never going to be happy with the last thing he did.
GOTRICH: That's true.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOST LIKELY YOU GO YOUR WAY (AND I'LL GO MINE)")
DYLAN: (Singing) When you go your way and I go mine.
SUMMERS: That was Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Lars Gotrich from NPR Music. And you can hear more in their full episode of New Music Friday from the podcast All Songs Considered. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
