Albums of the week: Robyn, Raye, Flea, Irreversible Entanglements

Robyn

Sexistential

(Konichiwa/Young)

The 00s are back, and a cohort of that decade’s most rebellious pop voices are making some of the most unapologetic records of their careers: Lily Allen, Peaches and now the Swedish star Robyn. On the pulsating title track of her ninth album, she sings of having IVF while pursuing casual hookups, no longer in thrall to myths about how to best become a parent or get her thrills.

Robyn has made a career of crying on the dancefloor and returns again to move her body to lubricious music that sits somewhere between Kraftwerk and Madonna, Abba and electro. Finding pleasure on her own terms is the main thing on her mind, as Really Real lays out, turning dance-pop staple phrases (“Is it really real?”) into a strobe-lit existential inquiry. The anthemic Dopamine wonders to what extent biochemistry makes us who we are.

There are other nostalgic flashbacks as Robyn reunites with collaborators such as Klas Åhlund and the Scandinavian pop titan Max Martin, who worked on 2010’s Body Talk. Blow My Mind, meanwhile, is a reworking of her 2002 track, now dedicated to her young son. Kitty Empire

This Music May Contain Hope

Raye

(Human Re Sources)

Raye’s second album is ambitious – 17 songs taking us through four seasons – but the scale is what makes it so euphoric. We open with our heroine drunk and heartbroken in autumnal Paris, before she battles online trolls who “spit through their keyboards” and toxic south-London lovers on Lime bikes. The London Symphony Orchestra swells  around her (Vivaldi gets a nod), while elsewhere there’s swinging jazz, swaggering soul and uplifting, soft house. Raye’s grandparents, sister and even Hans Zimmer and Al Green (the last of these in glorious, tender form on Goodbye Henry) all appear, supporting her efforts to find delight and contentment with herself.

Sometimes this can feel corny, but her frankness is still compelling, elevated by her powerfully versatile voice: she moves from sorrow and rage to mellifluous scatting and untethered, operatic delivery. Per the retro lead single Where Is My Husband!, this is a singer craving romantic connection while waiting for self-actualisation. Yet over the course of this playful, full-hearted album, Raye begins to celebrate her life as it is. For the most part, it’s a joy to hear. Tara Joshi

Honora

Flea

(Nonesuch)

There is something endearing about Flea’s debut album, despite its flaws. As his 60th birthday approached, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist resolved to practise the trumpet, which he had largely abandoned since high school, every day for two years, then make a “trumpet album”. The result is far from perfect, but it is fascinating to hear an artist in his  seventh decade push himself so far out of his comfort zone.

Flea has leafed through his contact list to recruit elite musicians – the guitarist Jeff Parker, the Mars Volta drummer Deantoni Parks – and call in features from Nick Cave and Thom Yorke, a bandmate from the erstwhile supergroup Atoms for Peace. That is both a blessing and a curse: in such exalted company, it’s clear that Flea the trumpeter is a relative novice, particularly on Morning Cry, with its scrappy bebop.

But A Plea is an urgent and sincere call to arms, and the gorgeous Frailed holds the listener’s attention for its near 11-minute runtime. A series of four covers in the second half of the album halts the momentum, but as Flea brings Honora to a close with the mantra-like “I’m free / Free as I want to be,” you can’t help but cheer him on. Lewis Huxley

Future Present Past

Irreversible Entanglements

(Impulse!)

At their formation a decade ago, the east coast ensemble won immediate accolades for their improvisational sass – the freest of free jazz – and their protest politics. They were impressive – the future even – but a little uncompromising for the present. This fifth album shows how far the quintet have evolved. Their playing still boasts vigour and freedom but is more focused, resisting the temptation to bundle up and honk away, while compositions such as Juntos Vencemos are short, slinky, delicate.

The move to a big label, Impulse!, has helped, as has the choice of Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio – a veritable temple to analogue perfection. And the Trump era has validated their politics. The vocalist Camae Ayewa, whose verbal cascades carry a heritage somewhere between Gil Scott-Heron and Walt Whitman, offers practical advice for a world gone crazy: Don’t Lose Your Head and Vibrate Higher.

Hold On is a sashay of cool bop with 50s roots. Keep Going and The Messenger are modernist and urgent, the trumpet of Aquiles Navarro leading fierce flurries of sound. The Spirit Moves arrives with a hush of temple bells and conch leading a whispered vocal. A singular, thrilling creation. Neil Spencer

Xavier Lopez, AKA Xaviersobased, is a 22-year-old from New York carving out space in the underground rap scene. He built a cult following online with fragmented, diary-like tracks and has fast become one of the most talked-about new voices, dropping raw, unpredictable EPs.

His debut LP, Xavier, released earlier this year, marked a turning point. The buzz has moved beyond corners of Reddit to coverage by US publications Pitchfork, Interview and the Fader, whose first documentary release since 2021 centres on his Riverside Tour.

Xaviersobased’s output is prolific and he refuses to stick to one sound: the album has a restless energy and surprising twists, somewhere between cloud rap, jerk and blown-out rage beats, with the off-kilter energy of Playboi Carti or Lil B. The standout single iPhone 16 runs for nearly four minutes with several beat switch-ups, it is ambitious yet intimate.

Meanwhile, the Skrillex and Dylan Brady-produced Party at My Place crackles with warped house party energy, layering clipped vocals over chaotic, bombastic production. As Xaviersobased told the Fader: “I just make what feels real in the moment – I don’t overthink it.” Georgia Evans

Xaviersobased plays EartH Hackney, London, on 2 April. Xavier is out now.