Weekly Music Roundup: Gnarls Barkley, Mitski, and Bruno Mars

This week, Gnarls Barkley’s return, hotly anticipated LPs from Mitski and Bruno Mars, and a musical blast from Ukraine’s front lines.

At Long Last, A New Song From Gnarls Barkley

Together, soul crooner CeeLo Green and super producer Danger Mouse, working under the name Gnarls Barkley, had a huge smash back in 2006 with their song “Crazy.” But since 2008, their individual careers have kept them from doing anything together. Next week, Gnarls Barkley will finally release its third album, Atlanta, and yesterday, they dropped the first single, “Pictures.”  By the way, the word “finally” is doing double duty in that sentence: Atlanta will also be the last Gnarls Barkley album. The single is a little more restrained and pensive than “Crazy” with its anthemic chorus and big sound. “Pictures” is a musical act of nostalgia, as the two musicians look back to their roots in Atlanta, riding the mass transit system known as MARTA. The melody, just for a moment, sounds like it’s about to launch into Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova,” but the chorus, with layered voices and Danger Mouse’s midtempo groove, is pure Gnarls Barkley. 

Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, Mitski Claims

The singer and songwriter Mitski has just released her eighth album, called Nothing’s About To Happen To Me. As with her last album, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We, there is a sense of a single narrative weaving through all the songs; themes of love and death, and cats and dogs, recur throughout the album. Musically, Mitski toggles back and forth between a kind of lush country balladry and indie rock, but her voice remains as calm and unruffled as ever - even when she’s dropping an F-bomb. The track “If I Leave” is one of the album’s rockers, and briefly threatens to spill into something even heavier, as she admits that “If I leave/Somebody else will find you/But nobody else could see me/Quite as clearly as you.” 

Mitski will be performing the album live in a series of residences. The first one is right here in NYC at The Shed, where she and her band will play on March 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9.  

A Memory From Ukraine, Via Black Metal Band Drudkh

Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and on that day the band Drudkh released a song called “Memory.” Drudkh is a black metal band that draws inspiration from Ukrainian folklore and from nature – their name is derived from the Sanskrit word for “forest.” They are based in Kharkiv, the northeastern city that Ukraine has grimly held onto during the course of this war. The guttural cries, relentless tremolo guitars, and pummelling blast beats of black metal might be the perfect soundtrack to a conflict like this, but for this song, at least, Drudkh go in a slightly different direction, creating a track that has a processional, almost ritual quality, with an almost orchestral-sounding arrangement. The emotion at play seems to be melancholy rather than rage. 

A New Single From Squarepusher

Squarepusher has always done things differently. Unlike so many other electronic music producer/DJs, Squarepusher, aka Tom Jenkinson, is a formidable bassist and has made live instrumental performance an important part of his work. Now he’s announced a new album, called Kammerkonzert, or “chamber concert,” and released the single “K2 Central.” The fat, rubbery sound of the bass is just one of the elements going into this relatively restrained electronic work – Jenkinson is often given to writing pieces that move at supersonic speed – as bits of percussion and a suggestion of orchestral instruments emerge from the texture.  

Bon Iver Begins Mining Its Archives

Justin Vernon has announced a stroll through the Bon Iver archives, modeled after Bob Dylan’s Bootleg series and the Neil Young archival releases. Vernon, who was Bon Iver when it started and still leads what is now a six piece band, has been going through almost 20 years of material for his series called Volumes. The first collection comes out April 3 and features ten live performances by the band recorded between 2019 and 2023. The first release is this live version of fan favorite “Heavenly Father,” which begins with Vernon himself at center stage, with just his voice and a small sampler, but builds to a cathartic, full band explosion. And with producer/keyboardist Sean Carey and singer/guitarist Jenn Wasner (of Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes) in the lineup, it’s a band worth hearing again.  

Bruno Mars Releases The Romantic

Bruno Mars continues his mission to take us all back to the days of American Bandstand with his new album called The Romantic. Lead single “I Just Might” is yet another entry in the Bruno Mars canon of catchy, retro pop, combining the song-and-dance ethos of 1980s Michael Jackson with the sound and the look of, well, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 in the early 70s. Just watch the video, where multiple Bruno Marses sing, play all the instruments, pull off neat choreographed dance moves, and even get involved in the camera work. At a time when the world seems to be one big doomscroll, “I Just Might” confronts a problem of almost crushingly nostalgic simplicity – what if she can’t dance?