Turn It Up - 5/20/2025

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

This week’s songs call out, call back, and call across, finding pathways both unexpected and unappreciated across style, era, and experience.

Fiona Apple – “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)” (single, 2025)

For the last several years, Fiona Apple has been a court watcher, observing proceedings in Maryland and advocating for fair treatment of those caught up in the criminal-justice system. Now, Apple spotlights one of the most maddening aspects of the process, in which pretrial defendants – disproportionately Black, Brown, and poor – are forced to remain in jail because they cannot avoid their bail. She’s now launched Let Her Go Home, which aims to raise awareness and money for the tens of thousands of women (most with young children) who are held for months or even years without conviction, Apple has released her first original music since 2020’s masterful Fetch The Bolt Cutters. “Pretrial” retains that great album’s unsettled atmosphere, with Apple swirling around a bed of percussion as she details the catastrophic effects of this injustice on individuals, families, and communities. (And, crucially, she reminds us of the linked realities of police brutality, eviction, health-care costs, and lack of access to childcare.) “What the fuck’s the point of all the fuckin’ hell you put her through?,” Apple demands in multi-tracked harmony with herself. A pulsing, piercing freedom song. – CH

Amanda Fields and Megan McCormick (feat. Odessa) – “Redbird” (single, 2025)

We love Amanda Fields and Megan McCormick, and their new collaborative single is more wonderful folk-rooted music from this crucial partnership. Their take on bluegrass-gospel standard “I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages” is fantastic – as eerie and portentous as the song deserves – but I’m stuck on the duo’s original “Redbird.” McCormick sings lead on this gorgeous ballad, with Fields (and guest vocalist/violinist Odessa Jorgensen) supporting her as she finds both solace and sadness in the birdsong just outside her window. The swelling chorus is pure close-harmony country, textured by McCormick’s electric guitar and Fields’ lap steel, and the high-lonesome waltz of “Redbird” carries across the air as it also finds a home deep in your heart. I can’t wait for more from either or both of these great artists. – CH

Ken Pomeroy – “Pareidolia” (from Cruel Joke, 2025)

Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon in which people perceive meaning in a seemingly unrelated image – it’s what causes us to see shapes in clouds or faces in inanimate objects, for example. Cherokee singer/songwriter Ken Pomeroy uses it as the central figure in the first song on her beautiful new album, asking her song’s subject to “tell me what you see” before relating a vision of ruin marked by “debris” and “family heirlooms sitting in the grass.” Given this imagery and Pomeroy’s Oklahoma roots, not to mention the gently whirling arrangement, it’s hard not to hear this disaster as a tornado. But it really doesn’t matter, especially since Pomeroy’s punchline – “I guess a cruel joke is all we can afford” – requires no specific context. A dreamy and devastating start to a dreamy and devastating album. – CH

Badge and Talkalot feat. Denitia – “I Wish You Would” (from Silver Sands, 2025)

Italian producer Gilberto Caleffi has released a few records under the name Badge and Talkalot, and I admit being unfamiliar with him before this new track featuring the great North Carolina-based artist Denitia. But “I Wish You Would” is the kind of thing that will send me immediately to the rest of his catalog. An easy-rolling R&B vibe that adds some subtle electronic textures in the final section, nodding perhaps to Caleffi’s Italo-disco precursors, “I Wish You Would” is a please-stay song that (in the grandest tradition of such) blends pleading and seduction as Denitia swims atop the warm bed of instruments. I hear the Isley Brothers and Macy Gray echoing through most profoundly, but your particular routes of influence will likely vary. And we’ll all end up in the right place. – CH

Rihanna – “Friend of Mine” (from Smurfs: Original Soundtrack, 2025)

The return of Rihanna is always worth celebrating, and her appearance on the new Smurfs soundtrack is both compelling and slightly, delightfully confounding. “Friend of Mine” features only the barest of lyrics, with most of the track given over to the churning beats of co-writer and co-producer Jon Bellion. Rihanna sings with a rough resonance that nearly loses her completely but serves “Friend of Mine” as it loses itself on the dancefloor. (Speaking of losing, Rihanna’s rare appearance on this club-ready banger for the soundtrack of a kids’ movie reminds me of Ms. Lauryn Hill’s surprise return with “Lose Myself” on 2007’s Surf’s Up.) “Friend of Mine” might be a harbinger of more music to come, or it may be just another one-off from one of the great pop artists of the 21^st century. Either way, I’ll take it. – CH

Roberta Lea – “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” (single, 2025)

We’ve been fans of country singer-songwriter Roberta Lea here for a while. Charles and I would both recommend her 2021 EP Just a Taste; I “Turned Up” her “Small Town Boy” in what was just NFR’s third week of existence; and Charles praised Lea’s debut album, Too Much of a Woman, only a few weeks later. Earlier this month, a cut from that 2023 album was released as Lea’s latest single and since it’s been a minute I wanted to make sure everyone knew about it. “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” written by Motown’s Norman Whitfield and Barret Strong, was of course one of the Temptations’ most singular hits in the time after their star lead singers, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, had left the group; the song had been cut originally by the Undisputed Truth. Those earlier versions, each bass line-fueled and funky as hell, highlighted Whitfield’s love of post-Sly Stone psychedelia. Lea’s inspired version is, as she puts it, “reimagined,” though that humbly undersells the audaciousness of what she pulls off. Lea not only eliminates the signature, doom-saying bass line of the Temps version but seriously tweaks the melody—the better to fit strummed guitar and plunked banjo, and an electric guitar solo that can’t figure out if it wants to rage or sob—and the changes unearth the country story song that was being told there all along. “All he left us was alone,” and just in time for Father’s Day! – DC

The Freedom Affair – “The Water” (from The Freedom Affair, 2025)

Another band I’ve recommended here at NFR before (a couple of times, in fact) is The Freedom Affair, a nine-piece soul collective from Kansas City. Their music is the best kind of retro—unmistakably grounded in the sounds of seventies soul but with lyrics that take on the world as we find it today. Case in point: My favorite cut off their brand new self-titled set, at least so far, is “The Water.” It has a heavy crossover B.B. King vibe—think of his early seventies’ country-soul singles like “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Ain’t Nobody Home”—and even builds to a “Lucille”-gesturing solo from The Affair’s guitarist Cole Bales. The real star here though is the powerhouse lead vocal from Paula Sanders. (I should say I’m only guessing its Sanders: The group has a trio of lead singers, the Freedom Threedom, but the notes I’ve found don’t specify who’s doing what track to track.) She starts out moaning a wickedly timeless blues verse about coming up short on the rent, updates that with a verse about poisoned water, then rages through a bridge that concludes by demanding reparations. “You tell me this is freedom,” she testifies at the close. “But this ain’t freedom… I ain’t the one percent.” The Affair’s familiar sounds facilitate some radical messages. – DC

Bob Woodruff – “Peggy Blue” (from Waysides, 2025)

Bob Woodruff has a slim catalog but, boy, is it ever fantastic. As I’ve written here before, his 1994 debut Dreams & Saturday Nights goes on the shortest list I’ve got of that decade’s great country albums. The follow up in 1997, Desire Road, had to settle for being merely one of its year’s finest. Woodruff’s harrowing reinvention of “Stop in the Name of Love,” off 2016’s The Year We Tried to Kill the Pain, downgrades the poppy, pretty persuasion in favor of amping the last-ditch desperation. Now comes Waysides, a new collection of outtakes and other previously unreleased cuts from throughout his career. If you’re a Lucinda Williams fan, for instance, you won’t want to miss her and Bob’s striking duet here, “There’s Something There.” But I want to turn up “Peggy Blue,” a new version of a song I first heard on an earlier (and non-redundant) collection of Woodruff’s unreleased sides, The Lost Kerosene Tapes, 1999. The Waysides version of the song is a ringing, jangling, power-popping delight, with Woodruff finally confessing that he tried his best, and he knows she did too, but… “It’s gone, it’s gone.” “Peggy Blue” is less country-rock twangy than his official sides, but its heartache is rendered as concisely, and its hooks sound even better loud. – DC

Randy Savvy – “Nuthin’ to Drank” (from Overnight on the West Side, Vol. 2 – Rank Hours, 2025)

Randy Savvy is a “street country” act and founder of the Compton Cowboys, a Los Angeles-based group that uses horseback riding to help at-risk kids. (I learned about Savvy from NFR friend Erin Osmon, who spoke about the current black country explosion in this segment on L.A.’s Spectrum News 1.) Savvy’s singles have been a bit on the generic side, but high quality just the same, riding the trail blazed by the moment’s biggest successes: His “SheHaw” puts me in mind of “The Git Up” with a slower gait, and his “Horse Keys” would make a good addition to a playlist honoring the influence of “Old Town Road.” Now, his latest, “Nuthin’ to Drank,” flips “Tipsy” on its head: He hasn’t even cracked a beer but is seeing double because he just locked eyes with the girl of his dreams. The beat is an unhurried canter. He’s got all night and doesn’t want to sober up. – DC

Ray Charles – “I’ve Got a Woman” (single, 1954)

As May 7^th marked the 60^th anniversary of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” topping the R&B charts, I wanted to take a moment to honor one of the most important recordings of the rock & soul era. Charles’ secular adaptation of “It Must Be Jesus,” by the Southern Tones, as well as his hard gospel-inspired use of textures and melisma and his band’s hurtling-train rhythm helped to invent the world we still live in, pretty much regardless of what kind of music you listen to. If you’re like me, you’ve heard this record so many times already that it’s easy to take for granted, a long-ago world changer that by now just feels like your birthright. If you haven’t heard it in a minute, treat yourself and give thanks for Brother Ray. – DC

Bruce Springsteen – comments in Manchester, England, 5/14/2025

Tell ‘em, Boss. – CH and DC

Recommended readings:

-Tressie McMillan Cottom writes that “When politics become reactionary, Black people make the blues. And country music makes a choice,” for The New York Times

-Juliana Spahr on the critic, poet, activist and more Joshua Clover, for The Nation

-Natalie Weiner on Sinners and country music, for Don’t Rock the Inbox

-Wesley Morris on Sinners and Cowboy Carter, Albert Murray and “Not Like Us,” for The New York Times

-Ann Powers on the literature of the blues, for NPR

-John Kelly on underground cartoonist The Mad Peck, for The Comics Journal

-Alex Williams on Hee Haw star Lulu Roman, for The New York Times

-Sarah Kendzior on seeking the Hornet, Missouri Spooklight, for her newsletter

-Carl Wilson “texts” with Morgan Wallen about his I’m the Problem, for Slate

-Charlotte E. Rosen on the cringey but radical art of The Pitt, for The Los Angeles Review of Books

-Al Shipley on Eric Clapton’s Unplugged and the “peak dad rock” of the 90s, for SPIN

-Brooke Macdonald talks to Ashley McBryde on the occasion of her honorary doctorate from Arkansas State University, for Oxford American

-Yara El-Soueidi on Arcade Fire’s “rotten legacy,” for The Rover

-Bob Mehr on Christy Moore at eighty, for New York Times

-Justin A. Davis on the Drake/Kendrick beef and the meaning of “us”, for Scalawag

-Eva Dickerson on Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter, and empire, for Scalawag

-Jewly Hight on Sinners and the grassroots movement in Black roots music, for WXPN

-Laura Snapes on Kate & Anna McGarrigle’s debut album, for Pitchfork

-Caryn Rose on Nick Cave, for Salon

(Ellie, 2014 to 2025)