New Music Friday: 1/30/26

As always, New Music Friday is partly powered by Pause & Play.

"I Did This to Myself," Thundercat featuring Lil Yachty and Flying Lotus
For me, Thundercat is sort of an R&B version of Nickel Creek, which — wait, just hang on a second — which is to say that while I'm in awe of his musical abilities and think he has excellent taste in co-conspirators, I frequently find myself less than moved by the actual songs. "I Did This to Myself" is somewhat standard 'cat in some respects; much of it exists in a space I'd describe as Vulf-adjacent, with a heavy emphasis on groove and a lot of silky-smooth sonic surfaces. The difference-maker for me this time around is Lil Yachty's verse, which finds him channeling the vocal spirit of Bootsy Collins and adding just enough silliness to make the track memorable rather than simply mildly enjoyable.

"Fara," O'Flynn
House music, generally speaking, is not my bag, but I'm happy to make exceptions when I hear a track that has something more than OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ on its mind. The infectiously cheerful "Fara" is one such exception. Resting largely on an extensive sample of Farafina's "Sene," it sounds sunny and tropical without being overly aggressive about it, which makes it a pretty perfect listen for someone looking out the window at huge piles of snow and below-zero wind chill.

"Starlight," Cannons
As if on cue, here's this week's Track That Whirls Semi-Ethereally at the Spot on the Venn Diagram Between Kate Bush and Olivia Newton-John in 1985. It's a song subcategory that I thought was kind of cute when Carly Rae Jepsen was busy staking her claim to the territory 15 years ago, which means that by all rights I should be pretty sick and goddamn tired of it by now, but I dunno — there's still something easily appealing about pixie-dust vocals and Fairlight soundscapes, to the extent that even if a song isn't particularly memorable, those ingredients can still make it more than enjoyable enough in the moment. While I don't suppose "Starlight" deserves to be held up as a classic of the genre, it's still solid enough for a few trips around the roller rink.

"Die to Fall," the Maine
Speaking of synth-assisted pop bangers with a retro lean, here's "Die to Fall," the leadoff single from the Maine's upcoming tenth LP. This is a real arms-out, race-to-the-horizon anthem, with a wide open heart and hooks to match; as frontman John O'Callaghan puts it, the song's lyrics represent a dialogue with himself as he attempts to "Let go of my insecurities, my ego, my worries, let go of 'me' for even just a second and truly feel the gravity of all the little moments we can often take for granted."

Long story short, this is something Big Country might have recorded 40 years ago. Do with that what you will.

"Scooby," corook
I know you probably know this, but: Writing a pop song is a lot harder than it looks, and that's even if we're just talking about your standard moon/June three-minute, five-second confection. To write something quick and catchy that also has a lot on its mind? That's damn near black magic, so hats off to corook, an artist whose uneasy relationship with their own ability to produce viral hits lies at the heart of this brilliantly bouncy lamentation of life in 21st century America. Like Randy Newman's "Rednecks," it's a song that skewers institutional cruelty enabled by ignorance, but does so in a way that refuses to deny its narrator's own blind spots and complicity.

"I Believe in Love," Tyler Ballgame
Tyler Ballgame is one among a small but seemingly growing handful of singers who sound like a blend of Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, although in his particular case, it also seems like he grew up listening to a lot of Rufus Wainwright records. "I Believe in Love" isn't quite as rococo as some of Rufus' stuff, but you can still picture Van Dyke Parks hearing this and salivating over the thought of having a chance to write a string arrangement for it. A classically sound pop song, in other words, delivered by a singer with an uncommonly elastic instrument. What's not to love?

"Hymn for the Unholy," Emily Scott Robinson
The weight of our current shared moment is such that any mournful-sounding new song is liable to leave the listener wondering whether it was written with current events in mind, so it may or may not be to Emily Scott Robinson's credit that I listened to "Hymn for the Unholy" and felt like I was hearing a crushingly sad yet stubbornly hopeful response to all this doo-doo in democracy's yard. Setting all that aside, lines like "In the quiet of the new year, we will let our old dreams go /
And when the spring comes, if we're ready, we can plant new ones to grow /
But in the silence of this ending, we will gather in the snow / And it's okay if, for tonight, dear, there are things you do not know" are chills-inducing regardless of the tenor of the times, and this song's quiet yet towering beauty is proof enough that Scott Robinson deserved to join the storied roster at Oh Boy Records.

"Graze the Bell," David Moore
And then sometimes, you don't even need words to evoke that feeling of stubborn hope. Sometimes, all it takes is one particularly talented musician sitting alone at the piano, quietly stirring up worlds of emotion. I haven't gotten all the way through David Moore's new Graze the Bell album — truthfully, I was stopped in my tracks by the title cut, and immediately added it to the end of this list — but I think I might be fated to spend a lot of time with it this year.