Music review: Japanese Breakfast, Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, and Steve Reich

'For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)' by Japanese Breakfast

"Isn't it a little fun, sometimes, to be sad?" asked Aimee Cliff in Pitchfork. On the follow-up to Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast's 2021 breakthrough album, lead singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner "luxuriates in the aesthetics of the titular emotion." After opening by singing atop a plush bed of strings, she settles into a sepia-toned country mode for most of these 10 songs that almost theatrically play at sorrow. The record "crackles" with "electric moments of intimacy" that pull you in so close you can "see the tears drying in the stage makeup."

Gone, though, is the alt-pop bounciness that distinguished Jubilee, said Kitty Empire in The Guardian. The "mellow prettiness" of this new record "doesn't really do Zauner's best writing justice." But who can complain that Zauner's music continues to become more sophisticated, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. "The efficiency of the LP is something to behold—10 tracks, 32 minutes, not a single weak song." There's "a sturdiness to these compositions" that can't be faked and that "echoes the work" of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.

'I Said I Love You First' by Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco

"The world needs all the uplifting pop-star love stories we can get," and that's exactly what Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco's new album has given us, said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. The pop icon and the superstar producer are in love. They also "can't keep their hands off each other," and they want to share their delirium in songs that the world can enjoy, including a mid-set trio focused almost entirely on sex. This happens to be a romance that arose long after the two first worked together, because Blanco was behind the boards in 2015 for Gomez's Revival, which distanced her from her Disney past and was also "one of the era's most influential pop albums."

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Thanks to that turning point, Gomez "no longer disguises her small voice but embraces it," said Katherine St.Asaph in Stereogum. She inhabits several tracks here "with crystalline anonymity," though the influence of other vocalists, especially Lana Del Rey, is so strong that you might suspect Gomez is either done making music or close to it. If so, "it's hard to fault her." She'll probably make more money in her other celebrity pursuits.

'Collected Works' by Steve Reich

"There's no box big enough for Steve Reich's music," said Michael Andor Brodeur in The Washington Post. Yet the composer's longtime label, Nonesuch, has assembled a 27-disc set covering six decades of his work, from the tape loops he made of human speech in the 1960s to everything else that has emerged as his music grew "more operatic in scope." Though he'll always be labeled a minimalist and though his music is characterized by the constant presence of a pulse, he consistently finds ways to achieve "kaleidoscopic" effects from systematic variations in rhythmic patterns, often creating music of "outsize emotional impact."

Reich, who's still active at 88, "has become a lodestar visible to many younger musicians," said Rob Young in Uncut. His music builds so gradually that "it can seem to have a mind of its own." But far from dealing in only abstractions, "Reich has striven for his music to retain a contemporary relevance," whether by incorporating the voices of victims of violence or reaching toward heaven with his latest composition here, 2023's Jacob's Ladder.