HEAR65 SING ALONG SG
The final edition of the month-long online concert series, Hear65 Sing Along SG, features live performances and interviews by a cross-genre lineup.
Performers include singer-songwriters Charlie Lim, Joanna Dong and Shak'thiya; as well as jazz stalwart Jeremy Monteiro, whose set features singers Jacintha Abisheganaden, Melissa Tham and Alemay Fernandez.
Apart from keeping Singapore music alive at a time when concerts are put on hold, the series also provides work for more than 90 self-employed practitioners in the arts community.
WHERE: www.youtube.com/Hear65SG; Hear65's pages on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook
WHEN: June 13, from 7.30pm
DOWNLOAD TV 2020
Like other major music festivals, popular British rock festival Download has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It has been moved online and the livestream will feature some of the biggest rock acts such as British stalwarts Iron Maiden, American bands Kiss and System Of A Down, and Japanese group Babymetal.
Each act will run through footages from past editions of the festival.
WHERE: www.youtube.com/downloadfestivaluk
WHEN: June 12 to 14, from 11.30pm
DANCE-POP
CHROMATICA
Lady Gaga
4 stars
A dance album filled with exhilarating bangers from start to finish, Lady Gaga's Chromatica is pop escapism suited for these trying times and a return to her early roots.
She started working on her sixth album in 2018, just before her Hollywood foray, A Star Is Born (2018), earned her an Oscar for Best Original Song.
The buoyant beats and earworm melodies barely hide the fact that many of the songs are born from her personal pain.
"The scars on my mind are on replay", she sings on Replay, which sees her using past trauma as motivation to shore up courage.
Plastic Doll and Fun Tonight deal with the downside of fame and success, while 911 alludes to her antipsychotic prescription ("My biggest enemy is me ever since day one / Pop a 911, then pop another one").
Sour Candy, a collaboration with K-pop stars Blackpink, is a rallying cry for acceptance, warts and all. And Rain On Me, the hit duet with Ariana Grande, about persevering through tough times, is the clarion call we all need now.
ROCK/POP/ELECTRONIC
NOTES ON A CONDITIONAL FORM
The 1975
3.5 stars
British band The 1975's fourth album is a sprawling, yet delicious kind of mess.
Comprising 22 songs with a run-time of 80 minutes, it dips into the band's chameleonic 18-year history.
There is the hardcore-punk urgency reminiscent of their early days in the track People, the UK garage and house music influences in Frail State Of Mind and Shiny Collarbone, as well as the fusion of pop and post-punk the band is best known for in tracks such as If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know).
Singer Matty Healy muses about impostor syndrome in the hip-hop tinged Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied, hinting that his lyrics may not actually reflect real life.
He also contemplates romance in the modern age in the folksy Playing On My Mind ("I won't get clothes online 'cause I get worried about the fit / That rule don't apply concerning my relationships).
HIP-HOP
RTJ4
Run The Jewels
4 stars
With its hard-hitting rhymes that rail against systematic injustices, American rap duo Run The Jewels has dropped this year's most topical album.
The pair of Killer Mike and El-P released RTJ4 earlier than scheduled as the United States and some other parts of the world are gripped by Black Lives Matter protests.
The track Walking In The Snow, written before the death of American George Floyd, includes his tragic last words, "I can't breathe". The same words were also uttered by another black man Eric Garner, who died at the hands of police officers in 2014.
"And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free / And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me / Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper 'I can't breathe'," raps Killer Mike.
An eloquent protest album for modern times, the incisive lyrics also call out fake activists on social media who pay only lip service to causes they supposedly champion.
Addressing greed and the failings of capitalism in tracks such as JU$T and The Ground Below, the duo literally put their money where their mouths are. The album is free on their website (runthejewels.com), with an option to donate to legal support initiative Mass Defense Program.
