Music reviews: Tune-Yards and PinkPantheress

'Better Dreaming' by Tune-Yards

★★★

Though Tune-Yards' sixth album probably won't top any sales charts, "it will definitely make you get up and dance," said Attila Peter in The Line of Best Fit. Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner, partners in both music and life, "have always been adventurous and uncompromising, showing an eclecticism that draws from African, folk, electronic, rap, and even classical music." But the result is always a form of pop, easy on the ears even when Garbus is singing, as she does here, about all that's happening in the world that infuriates her. "Full of pulsating beats and hypnotic grooves," this latest album is "bursting with an energy and joy that is impossible to resist."

If there's a complaint to be made here, it's that the music "backgrounds the songs' meanings," said Andy Crump in Paste. But "there are worse problems for an album to have," especially when "the music is so catchy that repeat plays are practically inevitable." Eventually, you will realize that Garbus is venting her anger about America's current turn toward corrupt authoritarianism. At that point, it may also strike you that Better Dreaming is one of this band's "all-time great records."

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'Fancy That' by PinkPantheress

★★★

Four years ago, PinkPantheress's music "felt like a future of pop," said Jem Aswad in Variety. The young British singer-songwriter-producer crafted fleet "microsongs" that packed verses, a chorus, and a bridge into 90 seconds, making them immensely TikTok friendly. Thankfully, her new eight-song mixtape avoids the more conventional sound of 2023's Heaven Knows and recaptures her strengths: "tight hooks, fast tempos, skittering beats, percolating bass," plus "her inimitable, breathy vocals." The songs "blaze by in less than 20 minutes," but "pack a velvet-gloved punch."

The music doesn't sound like the future, said Harry Tafoya in Pitchfork. Instead, "Fancy That is a portal into an alternate universe where U.K. garage successfully crossed the Atlantic and fashion froze in 2006." It opens with "Illegal," a song that, like many of this 24-year-old artist's best, is "musically busy" and "charmingly conversational." Nothing that follows slips into the "daydreaming detours" of her 2023 release. PinkPantheress "has never been more ready to dance," making Fancy That her "most exciting and fully realized release yet."