Weekly Music Roundup: Tyler The Creator, Tunde Adebimpe, and Ethel Cain
This week, musical surprises from Tyler The Creator and Chopin, and solo songs from members of TV On The Radio and yMusic. Plus mxmtoon and Ethel Cain.
Tyler The Creator Does It His Way
On Monday morning, rapper and producer Tyler, The Creator bucked the music industry’s Friday release schedule by putting out Chromakopia, a full-length collection of songs that offers a kaleidoscope of musical colors (the “chroma” in the title), from industrial to something like Brazilian pop, and a range of guests, most notably his mom, whose advice dots the album. Tyler has implied that with age (he’s 33) has come a kind of maturity, and the album cover credits Tyler Okonma, his given name, instead of the usual Tyler, The Creator. Still, he’s as foul-mouthed and laconic as ever; even a track like “Balloon,” built on a cartoonish electronic sample and a buoyant pop chorus, has enough language to make sure it’s radioactive to radio.
Another Monday Surprise, This Time From Chopin. Yes, That Chopin
The classical music world also woke up Monday morning to an unexpected bit of music – a newly discovered waltz by Frederic Chopin. The last time an unknown Chopin work was unearthed was in the 1930s, so this is a big deal – even if it’s not a big piece. The short piano work – unlike his famous “Minute” Waltz, this one actually could be played in about a minute – was part of a collection of letters, old postcards, and autographs that the Morgan Library here in New York had acquired. Curator Robinson McClellan first noticed the postcard-sized score in 2019, but actually figuring out what it was (an apparently genuine, but unsigned, Chopin work) and what it was not (a version of any of his other works) took years. The New York Times immediately asked the star pianist Lang Lang to record the waltz for the New York Times, which has a stormy opening that sounds more like Beethoven than Chopin before settling down into more Chopin-esque territory. It was likely written as a gift, but Chopin either thought better of it or forgot about it, and it has remained unplayed for about 200 years. Until now.
mxmtoon’s New LP Is An All-Female Production
It’s no secret that even with all the women at the top of the pop charts, there is still a gender gap in the studios, where engineers and producers are overwhelmingly male. The indie-pop singer mxmtoon has just released her new LP, liminal space, after working with a team of women who handled everything - from recording the music to shooting the videos to designing the album. You’d never know this from listening to it, which seems to be mxmtoon’s point. As for the songs themselves, they range from intimate acoustic bedroom pop to more slickly-produced kiss-offs like this deliciously Swiftian track “I Hate Texas.” “You ruined New York,” she sings, and while she may insist that she hates Texas, she has to admit, everything’s bigger, and “the exits have more room to run away from you.”
TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe Goes Solo
First of all, no, TV On The Radio has not broken up. The band is touring in support of the 20th anniversary of their debut LP Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. But it has been ten years since their last album, so the next best thing might be the news that frontman Tunde Adebimpe is releasing his first solo LP in the new year. Even better, that announcement comes with the release of the first single, “Magnetic,” which is very much in the vein of TVOTR’s hit song “Wolf Like Me.” Adebimpe clearly has some big issues in mind – “I was thinking about the human race/in the age of tenderness and rage,” he sings; but in the end, this is a song about groove and movement, and perhaps rolling down the car windows and driving down the highway through the end of days.
Alex Sopp of yMusic Returns To Spoleto
“Spoleto” is a new single by flutist, singer, and composer Alex Sopp. She’s best known as a member of yMusic, the chamber sextet that performs with Paul Simon, Bruce Hornsby, and a range of musicians from pop to classical. This song is a collaboration with producer/keyboardist Thomas Bartlett (The Gloaming, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon), and is essentially a nostalgic trip back to her student days when Sopp spent a summer with the Juilliard Orchestra in Spoleto, Italy. Like yMusic, Sopp’s own songs live in a place where pop music and art song meet, and “Spoleto” builds to a richly textured, electroacoustic orchestration while Sopp’s layered vocals settle in to sunny California-style pop harmonies.
A Haunted New Song From Ethel Cain
Ethel Cain is both a singer/songwriter and an art project of sorts, created by Hayden Anhedonia (also a pseudonym? “anhedonia” is the inability to feel pleasure). Her debut LP, Preacher’s Daughter, made a strong first impression in 2022 with its loosely-told story of a character named Ethel Cain and its blend of gothic imagery with indie rock. Her second LP will be called Perverts and is due on January 8. Today she unveiled the single “Punish,” which leans into the gothic side of her sound world. Tolling piano chords repeat throughout the song, and behind Cain’s soft croon we hear the eerie moans of what might be a see-saw or a squeaky door cycling endlessly in the background. When a series of slow, distorted guitar chords eventually appear, they seem almost inevitable given the song’s unsettling buildup.
