New Music Friday: Stream projects from Ravyn Lenae, Belong, oso oso, and more

Ravyn Lenae went into the sessions for her second full-length album determined to make music that pushed beyond the limits of R&B – limits she’d imposed on herself as she took her first uncertain steps into the recording industry. She found the perfect collaborator in Dahi, Bird’s Eye’s executive producer, who would intentionally pull songs into different directions when they seemed to be heading down a straight path. The result is an exploratory album, lush and rich, folding in funk, pop, and reggae, never obscuring Lenae’s eternal weapon: a breathy and dream-inducing voice that doesn’t sound quite like anything else in modern music. — Alex Robert Ross. Read our cover story here.

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Arriving 13 years after their sophomore album Common Era, Realistic IX finds New Orleans post-shoegaze duo Belong in a propulsive new mode. The band's appreciation for My Bloody Valentine and the anarchic production style of Kevin Shields comes to the fore here, resulting in the most unabashedly goth-rock songs the band has ever produced. The sounds may be familiar, even in vogue, but the effort Belong have taken to fit them within the context of the band is close to tactile, and far outweighs any ostensible hint of trend-chasing. Realistic IX is an ocean of sound, driven by some unknown force to wash over the listener and move us in different ways as many times as we're willing to jump in. — Jordan Darville. Read our interview with the band here.

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“I remember it all / I mean, it wasn’t all that long ago,” Jade Lilitri sings on "Stoke," a standout moment on his fifth album as oso oso. Looking back is a major theme on life till bones, the first oso oso album written since the death of Tavish Maloney in 2021. The loss of Maloney, who was Lilitri's cousin and creative partner, is felt across an album that colors its grief with a move away from the fifth-wave emo of previous albums with a summery, pop-rock sound. "the country club" is a buzzing indie disco song that is reflective and full of sorrow ("Ain’t that what love is, my fault? Lilitri asks at one point), while "That's What Time Does" acknowledges time as a finite resource, and thus the most valuable gift you can give a person. That song's sunny demeanor and bittersweet pop hooks gives it the feel of Phoenix covering Paramore's "That's What You Get." That's not to suggest Lilitri is copying other's homework. He has always had a bone-deep knack with melody and life till bones is his masterclass. From "all of my love" through to "skippy" and rugged highlight "application," this is an album about pulling joy from the darkest depths and making it through whichever way possible. — David Renshaw

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For almost three decades, Osees leader John Dwyer has made it pretty clear that he hates repeating himself, and it’s a compulsion that makes SORCS 80 his boldest release yet. From a mere technical perspective, it’s hard to imagine a psyched-out garage band playing with zero guitars and no keyboards, let alone making a catchy, aggressive, and propulsive album from outer space that veers away from the band’s poppier productions. Rather, it’s a grab bag of sounds and jumpy arrangements that bring to mind Jay Reatard’s fuzzy paranoia and X-Ray Spex’s funked-up sax numbers. It’s a left-turn, for sure, but SORCS 80 isn’t a record that’ll leave long-time fans scratching their heads, with Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone’s dynamic drumming acting as a stabilizer that brings everything back to the band’s sci-fi krautrock roots. — Sandra Song

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Milton Nascimento's influence on música pop brasileira and beyond is titanic, and he’s aged as gracefully as a giant star can; the 81-year-old's vocal range no longer spans ~600 octaves, his lower tones settling into a leathery croak and his famous falsetto not nearly as effortless or angelic as it once was, but these lived-in qualities only emphasize the absolute majesty of his voice. On this new joint project, Milton finds the Ella to his Louis in ultra-brilliant bassist, vocalist, and composer esperanza spalding, who masterfully rearranges some of the elder artist’s classic tracks — “Cais,” “Outubro” — alongside originals and inspired covers: Paul Simon pushes past his less-than-optimal Portuguese to join Milton on a track dedicated to Simon specifically; Brazilian guitarist Guinga taps in for a new rendition of his own track “Saci”; flute luminary Elena Pinderhughes darts playfully in and out of “Wings for the Thought Bird”; Wayne Shorter’s widow Caroline appears on the album’s closer, a redux of her late husband’s “When You Dream,” and “Saudade Dos Aviões Da Panair (Conversando No Bar)” is a pile-on posse cut featuring Lianne La Havas, Maria Gadú, Tim Bernardes, and Lula Galvão. Even the record’s rare clunkers — a sweet but forced take on the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and an overwrought production of Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” — have plenty of good things going for them. And when things are gelling, Milton + esperanza reaches ecstatic heights. — Raphael Helfand

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Earlier this year, we received Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final masterwork — a film documenting live, solo piano performances of 17 songs he handpicked from his enormous catalog, as well as three previously unreleased pieces. Aptly titled Opus, it’s a proudly imperfect record. It’s far from an exhaustive compilation of Sakamoto’s greatest hits — most of my favorite Sakamoto joints are omitted — but the rare insight it gives us into the mind of a true master as he stares unblinkingly into the abyss is far more valuable than that. Highlights include: a keyed-down version of the Lack of Love video game theme, a Vince Gueraldi-esque take on a whiskey commercial soundtrack, a stripdown/slowdown of YMO classic “Tong Poo,” an unreleased cut from the 12 session featuring a prepared piano with clothespins on the strings making the chords sound extra spooky, a faithful rendition of “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” and a closer/title track that’s literally a last waltz. — Raphael Helfand

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Peter Cat Recording Co. weaves stories of kinship, home, and romance with the wisdom one only gains from the passage of time and place. Their new record BETA ("child" in Hindi), is “a collection of stories about the future told 50 years in the past, to make sense of the present, on our only home, planet Earth,” the New Delhi band said. Amid a jazz-indie-psychedelic wall of sound, Suryakant Sawhney's vocals provide solace amid heartbreak. But BETA’s lyrics also sneak in poignant tales. “Suddenly,” the second single from the record, is a playful tune that uncovers past familial strife: “Oh / Papa I know / You were fighting to live your life your way / Wherever you are / I hope you’re playing.” The jump from “Just Another Love Song” to “Connexion” displays PCRC’s reliable prowess in melding their influences of Mohammed Rafi and Sam Cooke in one song, before incorporating Sawhney’s solo electronic project, Lifafa, in the next. — Hannah Sung

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