Freshly Spilt Milk: Jack White, Duran Duran, Los Bitchos, Los Pao Paos and More

Jack White

We found a few debts paid to Bowie, some dream(y) pop, French hip-hop and fleshed out Americana in the inbox last week.

Last week’s Freshly Spilt Milk spoiled me.

Pulling it together was so easy that I figured this was going to a snap, deciding what good songs to cut to keep the length functional. This week, reality kicked in and I weeded through a lot of pedestrian ideas, genre-bound compositions, and unconvincing lyrics. I don’t need them to be good, but I do need them to not chase me out of the song, and some did this week. The experience was a reminder that a lot of people releasing music are really buying lottery tickets, putting music into the world and hoping for a miracle.

As I said last time, I’m vouching for the artists or the albums because I’m not doing deep dives in either. These are the tracks that got my attention. Where you go from here is up to you.

Still, I like what’s here. Here are the notes:

1. “Boss” - Crystal Murray: I’ll take my slinky R&B with a psychedelic twist. Here, it takes the edge off the standard relationship tropes. From her new album, Twisted Bases.

2. “Good for the Soul” (feat. Hemlock Ernst) - Fatlip, Blu & GBA: Fatlip from The Pharcyde and Blu from Blu & Exile restate the value of bars and hip-hop rooted in a jazzy chord.

3. “In the Garden” - LANNDS: From the new Lotus Deluxe, the dream pop-ish “In the Garden” hits me like updated exotica. You can feel the rays.

4. “Moving” - Trupa Trupa: From B Flat A. This Polish rock band will start a limited tour of the States on April 28, and it’s easy to hear them as more moody, less abrasive inheritors of the Jawbox tradition. The PR announcement hypes this as math rock, and “Moving” is one of the few songs that does what that phrase evokes for me as the song’s musical logical feels constructed and not driven by a lyrical or musical narrative.

5. “Fear of the Dawn” - Jack White: Jack White has to stay good because when he stumbles, all his controlling nonsense will give fans a reason to move on. This isn’t the song that will shake people off. If anything, it’s most accessible track White has produced in a long time as he gives in to his glam and metal leanings. Fear of the Dawn is due out February 19, and he’ll go on tour starting April 8.

6. “Mykki Blanco” - COMMANDO: From the press release: “COMMANDO was created as an act of revisionist history: how would the world have been different if that specific cultural moment in the late 1990s that birthed nü metal and its then-ubiquitous musical toolbox had been used to dismantle homophobia, misogyny, racism/white supremacy and heteropatriarchy rather than reinforce them?” I’m in.

7. “Mona Lisa” - mxmtoon: “I’m so tired of being a book on the shelf” charms me, not only for the line but the way mxmtoon tap dances across the line. Her sweet embrace of pop’s expansiveness keeps this self-consciously artsy track from being swamped by self-consciousness or artsiness. She’s also going on tour starting May 2.

8. “Hawks Don’t Share” - Carson McHone: I’m there for the Americana artists whose lyrics are their songs’ starting points, not the sole selling points. Saxes come in to give the song a little push in the strummy spaces, giving “Hawks Don’t Share” regular infusions of energy.

9. “The Link is About to Die” - Los Bitchos: From Let the Festivities Begin!, which isn’t nearly as festive as that exclamation point would have you believe. This London-based, all-woman, cumbia-favoring band has recorded an album you can clearly dance to, but I suspect it’s more celebratory live. Here a smart, engaging Turkish melody prevents the Los Bitchos from sounding like dilettantes who turned a handful of thrift store finds into a culturally dubious proposition. The cumbia is still there, but its transformed in this context.

10. “Manifesto Surrealista” - Los Pao Paos: This Mexican band brings a touch of the garage to a sound that’s art rock in the sense that it’s art influenced by rock, much like the NYC rock of bands that played Max’s Kansas City.

Los Bitchos

11. “Velvet Newton” - Duran Duran: This Nick Rhodes showcase is one of three songs added to the deluxe edition of Duran Duran’s recent Future Past, and it sounds like the first song from side three of David Bowie’s Low.

12. “Tchalla” - Kaaris & Kalash Criminel: These French rappers’ intensity balances that stately, elegiac piano in the beat, and the space it allows gives them room to define the track’s energy.

13. “Senna” (remix) - Cadence Weapon, Jacques Greene & Logan: From Parallel World, the Canadian rapper shows a clear affinity for British grime and how it can sound as hard as any American emcee spitting threats and boasts.

14. “Beside” - No Swoon: It’s dreamy and airy in the way that dream pop is, and if you think you already have this song with different words and changes, you’re right. But that doesn’t make it less lovely and engaging.

15. “Elvis Comeback Special” - Empath: From Visitor, which is out now. The song’s not amateurish and I doubt the production is too, but it all sounds appealingly underworked. The parts almost sound like a rough mix with the drums clunking through, but they give the song a tumbling energy that pairs nicely with the distorted but melodic lead vocal.

16. “Lucifer on the Sofa” - Spoon: The title track from their new album, which sounds like another Bowie-in-Berlin outtake. I’m not sure how to process a band that has spent so much time evading meaning, but they’ve made it this far on the strength of their sound and I’m still engaged.

17. “Bad PR” - And the Broken: From the new Blue EP. I’m there for this Swedish rock band, which borrows from classic rock without sounding like it’s trying to stave off modernity.

18. “Silent Love Song” - Silent Cure: From Sweden to Denmark and a track from An Electronic Jazz Punk Passage Through Dreams. I don’t hear the jazz or the punk, but it just feels wrong to argue with something this chill.

19. “Vini Wè” - Leyla McCalla: From her upcoming Breaking the Thermometer. McCalla comes through the clearest when it’s just her voice, her cello, and a little percussion for flavor and texture, but I like how other instruments slowly creep into the arrangement to let the song grow. The sounds of chickens at first evoke Haiti—central to her artistic identity—but also New Orleans, where coops in the neighborhoods are more common than you might think.

20. “Mountain Valley” - Peter Jackson & Trey Songz: What’s not to like about the classic house thump with a Motown hook?

Leyla McCalla