Four albums this week

Phoebe Bridgers finally flies alone

By Laura Fernández

Phoebe Bridgers' velvety emo folk sadness stretches boundaries - the 'Savior Complex' orchestration; the forest of arpeggios for 'Halloween'– in this their second album, in which the bandmate of the also emo folker Julien Baker (in Boygenius) and the no less self-pitying Conor Oberst (in Better Oblivion Community Center), goes into in a fascinating redemptively expansive exegesis ('Chinese Satellite'), drawing a calm impressionism looking, at times, fabled ('Garden Song'), intensely precious and with a lo-fi color palette (attentive to 'Kyoto' ), at times, superior to Baker's. No, there is no longer any trace of Ryan Adams, nor of their stormy relationship. Bridgers finally flies, and promisingly well, alone.

Punisher. Phoebe Bridgers. Dead Oceans.

Moses Sumney's radical ambition

By David Broc

Initially published in two parts during the first half of 2020, græ , the expected return of Moses Sumney, comes to life, and resizes its relevance, in a unified version, which gains coherence and solidity when heard in one sitting and is already among the most amazing releases of the year. With radical ambition, without a stylistic compass but always aware of what he wants, he takes part in R&B to get to the heart of modern pop: along the way, and with the help of stars like Thundercat, Jill Scott or James Blake, Sumney accompanies his reflections on loneliness and impossible love with a fusion as chaotic and disorganized as it is beautiful and groundbreaking of folk, jazz, electronic and spiritual pop soul.

græ Part 1 & 2. Moses Sumney. Jagjaguwar-Popstock!

The sound environments of Beatriz Ferreyra

By Álex Sánchez

Three recent compositions (2001–2018) by the Argentine artist Beatriz Ferreyra meet on this album (which has Echos + , also published these days, a perfect complement). She was a student of the pivotal Parisian GRM in the sixties, a group in which she completed her training as composition assistant for Pierre Schaeffer. The three works in this volume give a good account of one of its main routes of action, electroacoustic music: the concrete voice and its transformation into choral abstraction, the relationship between pets and their owners, and a humorous tribute to Bernard Parmegiani They articulate a unique dialogue between organic music and electronic interventions that, starting from minimal structures, become complex sound environments.

Interlocking footprints. Beatriz Ferreyra. Persistence of Sound.

Dunford and Rondeau: hatching talent

By Luis Gago

They couldn't be more different: one (Dunford) seems the most applied and formal boy in the class; the other (Rondeau) looks like a rebel, a mixture of hermit and revolutionary from '68. They are two of the pearls of the inexhaustible French interpretive school of early music. Both, by virtue of the instruments they play and their fantasy, are required by the best European groups to be part of the section of the continuum, but when they give the true measure of their genius it is alone or, as here, mutually exercising spur on your talents to interact. A French program (Couperin, Visée, Lambert, Marais, Charpentier, D'Anglebert, Forqueray, Rameau) joyfully grabs our attention from start to finish. They are self-described as "filibusters of joy". Voilà!

Barricades. Thomas Dunford (arch file) and Jean Rondau (key). Erato 0190295269937.