The New Cue #446 November 29: Kendrick Lamar, Father John Misty, Mark Barrott, Kevin Parker, jasmine.4.t., Bambara, Last Train, Aquilo

"The lesson is to embrace the uncertainty."

Hello!

Have we got a Black Friday deal for you! It’s this: you can subscribe to The New Cue for just £5 a month, or £55 a year if you want to drive a harder bargain, and for that you’ll get three editions a week filled with unrivalled interviews, music recommendations, exclusive photography (selfies), and all the musical anecdote, revelation and backstory anyone could possibly want. You’ll also gain the satisfaction of knowing that some hard-working content miners might not starve after all.

OK, this is not a new Black Friday deal per se. It’s not really a Black Friday deal at all. It’s the same price we’ve held despite inflation for over four years, but, as Niall pointed out, a fiver a month already is a ‘Black Friday’ price. We cannot go lower than this, my loves. We thank and praise all our existing subscribers who have sat through this appalling hard-sell.

This is what you press if you want to subscribe.

And if you’re into sharing, press this little fella.

Anyway, on with today’s recommender edition which is a subscriber-only party. See you on the other side of the paywall, but if you want to hear what’s making us all boogie down there, here are the playlists:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

Enjoy the weekend, see you on Monday for a big chinwag with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood.

Ted and Niall

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Recommender Pt. 1

Ted Kessler

Just read a Pitchfork review of Kendrick Lamar’s sixth album GNX in which the writer describes my current favourite track, reincarnated, where Kendrick lives out a previous existence as a junked-out LA music exec in the ‘70s, as “unlistenable”. And here I am listening to it! Silly me. GNX dropped without warning last Friday so I guess we’re all getting used to its contours in real time. It’s too soon to rank it next to his other work, as all his albums unfurl slowly, revealing more angles and lines of genius over time. But I’ve listened to it every day since it came out.