New Music Friday: Stream projects from TiaCorine, Kirin J Callinan, J Mascis, and more

TiaCorine’s mesmerizing 2022 album I Can’t Wait cemented her as an artist to watch thanks to her nimble flows and effusive charm; this week’s Almost There EP highlights just how far her chameleonic versatility can stretch. She squeaks over a totally evil Pi’erre Bourne production on “Burnt” with Lil Uzi Vert and shimmies through the beaded curtain chords of the airy “Yung Joc.” At times her major label debut parallels the 808 nocturnes of Travis Scott (“Nah He Tweakin”) and the screwball rage of Yeat (“Shamone”), although fans of 2021’s The Saga of 34Corine will more likely have “Bonnet” on repeat. But the easy highlight is “Olive,” where a typically cracked Zelooperz verse spurs Tia to spiteful new highs: “you cop what I cop it don’t make you my twizzy/shit can get popped, soda, fizzy.” — Vivian Medithi

Hear it: Apple Music | Spotify

Kirin J Callinan lives in the wrong notes, thrives in them. For his entire career as a solo artist, the Australian singer-songwriter has made dissonance a central facet of his sound and image — not so much punkishly or with impudence (although there’s a bit of both) as matter-of-factly, like he’s simply displaying a natural order. So it is again on If I Could Sing, Callinan’s fourth solo LP. A shift in sound was inevitable: Callinan’s debut Embracism was acclaimed for its menacing industrial post-punk, and his sophomore project Bravado’s screwball EDM deserved far more acclaim than it got (his covers LP Return To Center was not as outlandish stylistically in its revisions of songs like “The Whole of the Moon” and “Life Is Life,” but it helped give Callinan a bit of distance from public image as a hypersexual rascal and reminded listeners of his genuine talents). If I Could Sing is Callinan’s art-pop album — his time as the touring guitarist in Jack Ladder’s band may have influenced this direction — and it’s an addictive record even by Callinan’s standards. As usual, he opens the album with wild-eyed bombast: on “Bread of Love” he jumps between discordant growls and triumphant bellows as electric guitars seem to herald the first rays of sunrise over a mountaintop. On this project, though, it feels like Callinan has something to prove, and it works to his benefit. He endeavors to show all angles of his songwriting talents, putting his best foot forward every time: there’s “Eternally Hateful,” electro-pop bliss that sounds like Late of the Pier if they produced Madonna’s Ray of Light, and “Young Drunk Driver,” where tinny, arpeggiated synths and hype man Hubert Lenoir are strewn across Callinan’s frustrated ode to life’s fragility. A Callinan project is defined by the strength of its quieter moments, though; “In Absolutes” and the album’s title track are among the most touching songs he’s ever made, painstaking ballads that make the sincerity of the surrounding mayhem shine even brighter. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Apple Music | Spotify | Bandcamp

Liquid Mike's latest is an album that harks back to a quieter time, a pre-social media age where kids were regularly left to their own devices as long summer days unspooled in front of them. The band might write about being bored but they crucially never sound boring, spinning yarns about playing reckless schoolyard games and turning them into something approaching a power-pop take on Guided By Voices ("K2"), crunchy and melodic but layered thick with hiss and melancholy. The group, who are led by Marquette, Michigan postal worker Mike Maple, are very prolific: this is their fifth album in four years. By their own admission, there's not much else to do but write where they come from. Even the album title, according to the band, nods to the lengths a humdrum life can push someone to. The real-life slingshot, a sculpture erected in honor of the mythical lumberjack beloved in the Midwest, was a proud fixture in Gladstone, MI until it was sawn in half by a teenager. It's not all Jackass-style tomfoolery, though. "Mouse Trap" zooms out and looks at the root causes of this malaise. "A dog and a house Is this what it's all about?" Maple asks between swaying riffs that bristle with an existential anger before landing on a crushing realization. "The American dream is a Michigan hoax." — David Renshaw

Hear it: Apple Music | Spotify | Bandcamp

If the frenetic, explosive noise-pop of Dinosaur Jr. was J Mascis trying to hold several breaths, shaking with the contained energy, then his solo projects have him exhaling and letting go. Mascis has had several solo projects since his heyday with Dinosaur Jr., but his latest offering, What Do We Do Now, sees the iconic frontman allowing himself to breathe in and out; fuzzy distorted guitars are traded in for an acoustic sound, though it’s no less huge-sounding or amplified. It’s all technically stripped-down, sure, but the chugging of the drumwork and pleasantries of the melodies still evoke something nostalgic and wistful. Mascis can’t resist the occasional drawn-out guitar solo — or several — here and there, sometimes working as a verse of their own. It’s still power-pop, sure, but less frenzied and more considered and calm; a cool breeze.

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Lee “Scratch” Perry — master reggae producer, dub pioneer, and innovator till the end — passed away in August 2022. King Perry, the final LP he recorded in full, doesn’t put a period on his life, exactly. It’s more like an ellipsis — a slow transition into whatever lies beyond. On opener “100llbs of Summer,” he sounds spry and happy, but on more reflective ballads like “Midnight Blues,” he starts to drift a little, his unmistakable voice cracking under the weight of his words. The record is strongest, as on “I Am a Dubby,” in the moments when the production accentuates these wrinkles, not as signs of weakness but markers of 85 years well lived. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Apple Music | Spotify | Bandcamp