Like a number of his near contemporaries, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan continues to release music at a steady pace, somehow more grizzled than most even though over the course of the past decade he’s settled into a pattern of jazz standards, mining the works of Frank Sinatra in particular in an attempt the shake the dust off the great American songbook. ‘Murder Most Foul’ then marks his first original song in eight years, a kind of spectral vision at once playful and harrowing in its evocation of communal grief. Appositely timed, the body of the song uncoils the assassination of John F. Kennedy through its plainspokenness even as it abounds in local minutiae and pop-cultural references, evolving into a rhapsodic playlist that might serve to get us through the extent of the coronavirus even if this seventeen-minute effort alone doesn’t quite do the trick.
While Dylan breathes life into the past, this collection of tracks of the week places his song in a distinctly modern context, alongside the unfurling of new records by Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams, Princess Nokia, Dirty Projectors, The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, and Run The Jewels. There’s the first solo single of the year from Future, a debut from Lakeith Stanfield operating backwards as Htiekal, and songs from the peripheries of the tumult by way of Lous and The Yakuza, raised between Rwanda and Congo, and Moscow electroacoustician Kate NV. Meanwhile Rosalía, Christine and the Queens, and Ian William Craig carve out small spaces of their own.
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Bob Dylan – ‘Murder Most Foul’
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SahBabii – ‘Double Dick’
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Ty Fontaine – ‘Tragic’
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Lous and The Yakuza – ‘Solo’
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Dirty Projectors – ‘Search For Life’
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Rosalía – ‘Dolerme’
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BICEP – ‘ATLAS’
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Car Seat Headrest – ‘Martin’
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Jackie Lynn – ‘Dream St.’
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Boldy James – ‘Grey October’ (feat. Evidence)
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Sufjan Stevens, Lowell Brams – ‘What It Takes’
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Future – ‘Tycoon’
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KeiyaA – ‘a Mile, a Way’
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HOOK – ‘ONION’ (feat. Almighty Suspect)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDv9QKzkysQ
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Clarice Jensen – ‘Holy Mother’
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Run The Jewels – ‘Ooh LA LA’
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Squid – ‘Sludge’
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Princess Nokia – ‘Gross’
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Kate NV – ‘Sayonara’
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Blake Mills – ‘Vanishing Twin’
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MIKE & Jadasea – ‘Regrets’
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Htiekal – ‘Fast Life’
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PARTYNEXTDOOR & Rihanna – ‘BELIEVE IT’
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Dua Lipa – ‘Break My Heart’
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The Weeknd – ‘In Your Eyes’
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G Herbo – ‘My Bro’s A Legend’
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Vex Woo x Shmelly Woo x Johnnie Bread – ‘Chief’
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Christine and the Queens – ‘Mountains (we met)’
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Ian William Craig – ‘Open Like A Loss’
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Ozuna x Willy – ‘Temporal’
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Shabazz Palaces – ‘Chocolate Souffle’
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Christian Lee Hutson – ‘Talk’
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Beabadoobee – ‘Coffee’
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Kraków Loves Adana – ‘Young Again’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfUw5IcyCQI
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Half Waif – ‘Clouds Rest’
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Knxwledge – ‘Makeitliveforever’
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Jadakiss – ‘ME’
came to your blog through your sapokanikan article – greatly enjoyed the Joyce, Mansfield and Bakhtin/Ariel Pink. it would be amazing if you could make these weekly song reviews into Spotify or YouTube playlists and link them in the article – I admire the vast collection of music you engage with.
Thanks so much for the message Amber. Check out this week’s iteration of tracks of the week: I’ll be adding Spotify and YouTube playlists henceforth, and I’ll probably collate some of my favourite songs to go into monthly and other assorted playlists.