A Jessie J song once guaranteed vocal pyrotechnics on the scale of the Disneyland fireworks extravaganza. That’s mostly still true on Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, but the British singer’s first album in eight years—which balances R&B jams with misty 1980s pop—does more with less. On lead single “No Secrets,” Jessie J turns in one of her most restrained performances as she wrestles with life in the public eye. “I’m standing here naked/But I chose the spotlight,” she croons. “Sometimes I hate it, sometimes it feels nice.”
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Plosivs: Yell at Cloud [Swami]
In 2022, the San Diego punk-rock supergroup of Pinback’s Rob Crow, Rocket From the Crypt’s John Reis and Atom Willard, and Mrs. Magician’s Jordan Clark released a debut album as Plosivs. By that time, the band had already started work on its follow-up, albeit in less than ideal circumstances. Already hemmed in at a Winnipeg studio due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the band was stranded by a massive Arctic storm and forced to work by candlelight in below freezing conditions. (To quote the label copy, “Imagine a band trying making a record in John Carpenter’s The Thing.”) But record the group did, eventually overcoming the dark period of the album’s creation to complete the claustrophobic recordings and release them, as Yell at Cloud, on Reis’ stalwart label Swami.