New Music Friday: Stream projects from John Glacier, Erick The Architect, Laetitia Sadier, and more

There’s nothing especially revelatory about artists approaching rap as texture. It’s now the industry standard, the M.O. of everyone from Playboi Carti to cult musicians building their hype on SoundCloud. Still, John Glacier managed to distinguish herself. Her excellent 2021 album SHILOH: Lost For Words landed somewhere between hypnagogic pop impressionism (“If Anything,” “Boozy,”) and capital-B Bars tinged with slam poetry rhythms (“Icing,” “Trelawny Waters”). Her new five-track EP Like A Ribbon, Glacier’s first release on Young, gives a slight polish to her sound without sacrificing any of its exhilarating tendencies. The project opens with two pirate radio frequencies from trip-hop’s future, “Satellites” and “Tripsteady,” where Glacier’s entranced flow gets two fitting showcases. Things take a turn with “Money Shows,” a collaboration with New York experimental songwriter Eartheater built over a distorted guitar loop that only gets noisier as Glacier drops oblique bars about keeping busy as a distraction from herself. The closing tracks “Emotions” and “Nevasure” embrace the rave and deconstructed club textures favored by Drain Gang, a new mode for Glacier to do her braggadocious thing. All kinds of textures connect Like A Ribbon‘s panoramic vision, and there’s not a weak link among them. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

For stoners of a certain age, the psychedelic transmissions of Flatbush Zombies were some of the most defining sounds of rap’s “Blog Era,” their bars as introspective as in-your-face. Erick the Architect was, true to his name, the visionary designer behind it all, shaping the group’s sound with blunted beats and unexpected samples as much as his intricate raps. I’ve Never Been Here Before, his debut solo album, still has enough straight-up rapping to keep the backpackers happy, as Erick unleashes his tongue-twisting flow over grimy beats like “Mandevillain.” But the record also shows Erick experimenting with new personas, with a wide range of collaborators from George Clinton to James Blake, who tries his hand at straight-up rap production on tracks like “3-2 Zone.” From one track to another, Erick’s style remains totally unpredictable, from woozy dancehall on “Beef Patty” to groovy hip-house on the Channel Tres-featuring “Ambrosia.” The soulful “Breaking Point” even approaches something like cosmic country, with the unexpected twang of a steel guitar mingling with glistening strings. — Nadine Smith

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

It’s difficult to listen to Laetitia Sadier’s solo music without being overwhelmed by echoes of Stereolab: Her incomparable voice is as crystalline and agile an instrument as it was when she and Tim Gane co-founded the band in 1990. And her penchant for open and inquisitive but riff- and groove-driven arrangements has been a constant throughout her career both in and outside the group. The act of going solo is never a total separation; the works of all un-banded musicians — vocalists especially — bear traces of their previous catalogs. But on Sadier’s new album Rooting For Love, as on her previous non-Stereolab releases, the connection runs deeper than genetics. She has, of course, developed greatly in both style and wisdom in the last 30-odd years, but she’s stayed firm in her core beliefs: in collaboration, creative freedom, and the power of gnosis to heal the wounds of unchecked capitalist “progress.” Rooting For Love begins with the nervous, Beckettian, synth-centric “Who + What?,” but track two is the sublime “ProtéÏformunite,” a mini-saga of a song that exists — like Stereolab opus “Refractions in the Plastic Pulse,” for instance — entre le nouménal et le phénoménal (between the emotional (Greek) and the phenomenal). Xavi Muñoz’s crunchy guitar chords open “The Dash,” a serpentine cut about the supreme vitality of human connection. And The Choir (a proper-noun-worthy entity, somewhat like The Groop), which swells up to support Sadier’s lead vocals at key points throughout the album, sounds particularly Gregorian at the start of “The Inner Smile.” The chorus continues to grow behind her as she pours pure love into the mic, as if her lyrical sunbeams are making the voices blossom in real time. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Though the accolades and superlatives Mary Timony continues to accrue may become increasingly overused and hackneyed –– think “your favorite guitarist’s favorite guitarist,” “guitar hero,” a “multi-talent talent” –– they’re all still true. Growing up in and around DC’s punk scene, Timony’s work as a guitarist in Helium, Autoclave, Wild Flag, as well as fronting the excellent garage-pop band Ex Hex has made her an aspirational force for female musicians and music fans alike, changing and shifting the mold of male-dominated world of indie rock (she also acts as a literal bridge for the next generation of independent musicians, having taught guitar to Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan). Her new solo album, Untame the Tiger, is her at her apex; written in the aftermath of two great personal tragedies (the death of both her parents and the dissolution of a long-term relationship), Timony meditates on her life, love, and loss with an equal amount of wryness and charm, set to folk-tinged guitars and an Americana warmth. There are multiple references to a “desert,” in the tongue-in-cheek “Dominoes”; opening track “No Thirds” is about rebuilding everything after losing it all, with Timony herself stating she wanted the sound to evoke the feeling of riding across the sandy plains as you start anew. In Timony’s world, if the rain represents turmoil and she searches for the sun for growth and comfort, the sunny desert dryness represents a happy medium during transitional periods, an in-between realm you have to drive across to get to somewhere better. — Cady Siregar

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Still is Erika de Casier's third album but one that feels like a breakout moment for the 33-year-old Danish artist. The album arrives off the back of a year in which she wrote some of the year's stickiest and most fun pop songs in recent memory as part of the team behind K-pop group NewJeans and, while her own music is more understated in its approach, it's no less effective. Still tracks a relationship from its charged and carefree early stages ("Home Alone") right through to the bitter end ("Toxic"), covering lack of commitment, compromise, fractured connections, and the myth of having it all in its exploration of modern dating. de Casier has grown as a producer too, adding finesse to her luminescent blend of subtle electronica and tender R&B while bringing in guests Blood Orange, They Hate Change, and Shygirl to help her make sense of it all. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp