New Music Friday: 11/21/25

"Lipdance," Obongjayar
In days of yore, it was highly unusual to see a new single from an artist who'd just released a new album five or six months ago. These days, it's no big deal; David Byrne, for example, just released a record ten minutes ago, and he's already back with a new Brian Eno-assisted single. All of which is to say that when I spotted Obongjayar on this week's NMF playlist, it didn't register as anything out of the ordinary, even though his latest LP, Paradise Now, came out in May.

Well, guess what? This isn't just any between-albums single. What we're looking at here is yet another goddamn deluxe edition: "Lipdance" is one of five cuts on the second disc appended to Paradise Now, the two of them combining to form the hopefully titled Paradise Now & Forever.

I've seen "Lipdance" described as a song about "living in the moment," which is an awfully polite way of summing up a tune with lyrics like "Can we dance with our lips to our favorite song? / Can we dance with our lips 'til the lights come on, 'til the night gets lost?" Some of these lines are admittedly quite cheesy ("Tattoos on her body, she's a dancing art piece... We danced all night, she has poetry for feet"), but no one listens to a song like "Lipdance" for the lyrics anyway; this music exists to inspire impure thoughts and shake tail feathers, and it wins on both counts. Credit where credit's due.

Still, though. People have got to knock it off with these deluxe editions.

"HACE CALOR," Maria Becerra featuring El Alfa and XROSS
On its surface, "HACE CALOR" is just a madly addictive banger about the joys of bad behavior — which, all by itself, is more than enough to earn a spot in this week's New Music Friday post. There's a lot more to the story, though: Maria Becerra's new Quimera LP is a 16-track saga, spread across five chapters, each one finding her playing a different character, all in an attempt to come to terms with the pair of ectopic pregnancies that nearly killed her. (Read more here.)

That's a lot more ambition than you might expect from an album containing a track that includes the lyrics "Because of an ass, they took me to jail."

"Bridges," Tobias Jesso Jr.
Tobias Jesso Jr.'s last album, 2015's Goon, made the kind of impression that allows a singer-songwriter to step away from the spotlight and spend a decade focusing on the "songwriter" half of that equation — and in his case, that included writing with or for some very big names. (Adele's "To Be Loved"? That's one of his.) Along the way, he also found himself, presumably reluctantly, at the center of the 2020s' self-love news cycle when "goon" was adopted as a term for fiddling with oneself until achieving a trancelike state. ("I call that Wednesday," grumbles Sting.)

A recent breakup and subsequent depressive episode led Jesso back to making music for himself, and his new album s h i n e is the result. Based on "Bridges," it seems safe to say that a decade of commercial success hasn't altered his approach; this song is just Jesso, his piano, and his still-impressive knack for melodies that would make Nilsson or McCartney jealous. Looking forward to digging into the rest of this record.

"Gary," Stephen Wilson Jr.
Songs about how things just ain't as good as they used to be goldarnit are a crutch that country music has been leaning on for decades, and I'm of the opinion that we need songs like that less than ever, given all the toxic, backward-looking fantasies that have utterly captivated millions of Americans over the last, oh, decade or so. On the other hand, it's awfully hard to argue with a song whose refrain is "There ain't a lotta boys named Gary these days," and Wilson has stirred up an appealing sonic palette here, with a mournful harmonica popping up like an overalls-clad gopher while the track builds from quiet strummer to Mellencampian rocker.

I think there's something somewhat Mellencampian about what Wilson's doing here lyrically, too — specifically that its depiction of small-town lives of quiet desperation is emotionally evocative, but never quite gets around to making a point. Then again, with songs like these, that's often a feature rather than a bug; if Wilson might be accused of a certain amount of laziness or undeveloped perspective with "Gary," one could just as easily argue that he's simply presenting a picture and leaving the interpretation up to you.

"Lifers Too," Spanish Love Songs featuring the Wonder Years
Spanish Love Songs' new LP, No Joy Sessions, finds the group picking over the bones of their 2023 No Joy album by reworking a handful of its songs — not the world's most creative endeavor, but not a deluxe edition either, so I'm not going to give them a hard time for it, especially since it comes with "Lifers Too."

A song that wasn't ready in time to make the cut for No Joy, and was presumably intended as a sequel to that record's "Lifers," this is basically "Glory Days" or "Keepin' the Faith" for '90s kids, and I'm sure we're going to hear a lot of songs that tread similar territory in the years to come as that generation confronts its own mortality. Your fondness for this song will be at least partly predicated on your tolerance for tremulous vocals and lyrics like "We don't need this boulder, so we just let it roll / You thought I was a lifer / Never thought I'd get this old." It's navel-gazing stuff for sure, but moving in its fashion.

"Only Girl," Man/Woman/Chainsaw
Bouncy piano, grungy guitar, swirling strings, and a chorus sticky enough to keep bouncing around your brain for the rest of the afternoon: "Only Girl" might be the strongest single yet from Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the critic-approved six-piece that's been popping up on "ones to watch" listicles for the better part of a year.

"Float," Samm Henshaw
Going back to what I was saying earlier about artists releasing singles willy-nilly, here's Samm Henshaw, whose discography has been annoyingly singles-heavy — although I say "annoyingly" only because I reliably enjoy pretty much everything he does, and I always want a full ten-plus tracks to sit with instead of having to wait for his stuff to come out in dribs and drabs.

With the smoothly soulful "Float," Hemshaw's announcing — hallelujah! — a new album. Titled It Could Be Worse, the new record is a vinyl-only affair; at least for now, if you want to hear the rest of it, you'll need to do it the old-fashioned way, starting with ponying up for the physical product. (Purchase link here.)

"Float" isn't the most interesting thing Hemshaw's ever done, but its gospel-tinged Sunday-morning vibes seem likely to endear him to the same folks who've kept Leon Bridges, Gregory Porter, and Michael Kiwanuka on label rosters. It's making commercial overtures the way leadoff singles are supposed to, in other words; I'm really looking forward to sitting down with the rest.

"Easy for You," John Scofield and Dave Holland
Jazz is conversation, and with the new John Scofield/Dave Holland LP Memories of Home, we're treated to an opportunity to hear two masters converse with an understated fluency that borders on the cruelly unfair. This track, a new version of a Scofield tune from the early '90s, distills the project's appeal particularly well — not flashy, not showy, just a series of perfectly placed notes that each feel like they were waiting for the exact moment they were plucked out of the air.

"Always," Boys Life
We've become so addicted to reboots, revivals, remakes, and reunions that it's gotten to the point where I'm more excited when something actually has the good sense to stay dead. That goes out the window, though, when the project in question is driven by love over gold, and that certainly seems to be the case with Boys Life. A foundational part of the Midwest emo sound, the group fell apart in the late '90s after releasing a pair of albums, and although they've reunited for a handful of live dates over the last decade, it wasn't until last year — when the Numero Group reissued their records — that new material started coming together.

The new Boys Life EP, Ordinary Wars, takes its title from frontman Brandon Butler's idea that Americans are fighting a series of unprecedented wars simply by being alive — that we're under assault from corporations that have invaded every facet of our daily existence, and that with social media, we've even found a way to commodify people's thoughts and feelings. Fighting back on any really meaningful level would mean tearing down a whole socioeconomic system. These are thoughts I think a growing number of people share, and they're probably way too heady for a four-song set, but they go a fair distance toward getting across the bloody-knuckled populism that thrums through the band's new music.

"Always," the EP's first single, offers an anthemic exhortation to throw off all those aforementioned shackles and remember your true intrinsic value. As he puts it, "We are universe incarnate, not our names, or titles or our ego. We are always here in one form or another. We should treat life like children treat joyful things."

"The Package," De La Soul
Speaking of life after death, we've got a new De La Soul album out now, featuring vocals from dearly departed member Trugoy the Dove, who passed in 2023. He handles lead vocals on six of the record's 20 tracks, so this is something more than the type of ghoulish cameo one might expect — and in the case of the funky, Pete Rock-produced "The Package," it's also genuinely fun, albeit in a way that seems unlikely to remind anyone of classic De La.

"Red Chair," S.C.A.B.
"Singing along to Sugar Ray in the back of my dad’s Subaru Outback," says S.C.A.B. frontman Sean Camargo when summing up this song. "No job. Rent’s due. Time to move." I'm not sure what it really says about where we are as a society that I can absolutely hear what he's going for here, and/or that I don't mind being compelled to listen to "Someday," but either way, Camargo's at least a little guilty of underselling what S.CA.B. is up to. "Red Chair" is catchy, and the optimism of late '90s pop is part of the stuff coursing through its veins, but there's also something darker and realer at play — the nagging thought that as hard as you might want to keep things together, and however willing you might be to sacrifice whatever you have to in order to try and make it happen, some things are simply out of our hands.

"Gotta Have a Horse," Kim Wilson
In my experience, a little Kim Wilson can go a long way. While certainly talented and admirably prolific, the Fabulous Thunderbirds frontman tends not to be the best judge of material. I'm always on the hunt for new harmonica-led blues records, so I've given his stuff a lot of chances over the years; often as not, I find myself yawning and checking out partway through.

What I'm telling you is that I approached Wilson's new Slow Burn LP with no small degree of suspicion, but from what I've been able to hear thus far, it's one of his finest solo sets, and this song — an instrumental that plays Wilson's harmonica off Nathan James' guitar to saltily stinging effect — is an early favorite.