‘Your Day Will Come’ by Chanel Beads
★★★
“Of all the so-called ‘cloud rock’ bands dissolving the line between analog and digital, Chanel Beads have the most evocative melodies and moments of unlikely beauty,” said Kieran Press-Reynolds in Pitchfork. Or maybe we should credit Chanel Beads’ band, because Chanel Beads is also the stage name used by frontman Shane Lavers, who’s now put out a second album that bears the title of his group’s acclaimed 2024 debut. It’s another “nervy tangle of organic and digital sounds,” filled with songs that are “even more expressive, stricken, and achingly contradictory.” It also helps clarify how the New York City–based group, which includes multi-instrumentalist Maya McGrory and violinist Zachary Paul, leaped from playing clubs to opening for Lorde at arenas last fall. Though Lavers’ songs “have earworm qualities,” they “nevertheless unsettle,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. The song “Tyler Richard,” which references Lavers’ deceased brother, is a “pointed examination of grief and regret” that throws in a scream before settling back into a repeated piano figure and “luxe” strings. The music and Lavers’ impressions of the world feel “real and unreal at once.”
‘The Ground Above’ by Beth Orton
★★★★
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“Death hangs over The Ground Above,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “But for Beth Orton the inevitability of the end electrifies the present.” As she ponders mortality, the former darling of Britain’s trip-hop era continues a career resurgence that began with 2022’s Weather Alive. Acting as her own producer and working with musicians ranging from Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley to Smile drummer Tom Skinner, she’s evolved a plaintive, sprawling sound that recalls both 1980s Van Morrison and “the shadowy atmosphere of a Daniel Lanois production.” Her voice has evolved to match her somber themes, becoming “scuffed and battered” like Marianne Faithfull’s. “She stretches her breathy, cracked vocal style over songs about death, friendship, and other big themes that tend to become preoccupations in middle age,” said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.). On the album’s closer, “Otherside,” a sleepless Orton seeks clarity amid a blackbird’s morning call. She’s grateful for another day to set things right “as the track builds into a ‘Hey Jude’–like sing-along begging to be belted out in town squares the world over.”
