Embed iframe src https://www.npr.org/player/embed/965903895/967241551 width 100% height 290 frameborder 0 scrolling no title NPR embedded audio player Pink Sweat$. His debut full-length,
Pink Planet, is on our shortlist of the best new albums out on Feb. 12. Jimmy Fontaine/Courtesy of the artist
hide caption
toggle caption Jimmy Fontaine/Courtesy of the artist
Tyron, the sophomore full-length from English rapper slowthai, is a multidimensional, brilliantly nuanced journey through a world of fantastically warped sound. It s both menacing and delicate, with as much glowering swagger as there is tenderness and love. We open this week s show with a quick sampling across the album and dig into some of its multilayered themes on identity and more.
Adrian Spinelli February 4, 2021Updated: February 5, 2021, 7:23 am
Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters are back with a new album. Photo: Kevin Winter, Getty Images for iHeartMedia
The Chronicle’s guide to notable new music.
New Albums
Foo Fighters, “Medicine at Midnight” (Roswell/RCA)
Recorded in early 2020, the Foo Fighters’ 10th studio album was primed for a raucous world tour as the Foos planned to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a band. Dave Grohl and company kept holding the album’s release in hopes of a reprieve from the pandemic but eventually decided there was no more sense in waiting.
“We finally realized that our music is made to be heard, whether it’s in a festival filled with 50,000 of our closest friends, or alone in your living room on a Saturday night with a stiff cocktail,” Grohl wrote in a Jan. 1 letter to fans.
Year in review: 25 of the best jazz albums of 2020
By JAZZ.FM91
The jazz clubs all closed, and so did everything else. But thankfully, the music never stopped.
This was a challenging year for most people. Yet jazz artists from around the world went on to release an impressive amount of great music for some, the best of their careers. That music brought us a sense of excitement and hope at a time when we needed it most.
One day, these musicians will be seeing us in the audience once again, finally able to soak in the sounds of live music. Until then, we have these standout records (along with so many others) to bring the joys of life to our best and worst days.
One-time pop star and acclaimed
Mixmag columnist the Secret DJ continues to chronicle the last 30-plus years of dance music’s evolution as a superstar DJ before it all went pear-shaped. Yet
Book Two is not a direct follow-up to the biographical
The Secret DJ: From Ibiza To the Norfolk Broads. Rather, they take a more anthropological approach, recounting the purity of a youth movement falling prey to gentrification and filthy lucre. “No one in publishing would have the balls to touch this book with a bargepole,” the Secret DJ said in a statement on the Velocity website. “It takes courage to speak up. There’s not much in the way of reward for telling it like it is, not any more. If you expose an industry and that industry hates you for life with the intensity of the sun.”
Close runner-up: Who are You by Joel Ross.
Here are the others that I consider keepers for the long haul, listed alphabetically by album title: The Art of Intimacy, Vol 1 by Jeremy Pelt Artemis by Artemis The Color of Noize by Derrick Hodge Cri$el Gems by Paul Bryant Dinner Party by Terrace Martin The Dockside Sessions by Brad Walker Fly Moon Die Soon by Takuya Kuroda Happenings: Live at the Village Vanguard by Gerald Clayton Kindred Spirits by Charles Lloyd King Butch by Butcher Brown Life Goes On by Carla Bley Meeting in Progress by Nutria Night Dreamer by Gary Bartz and Maisha