Our music critic names his top picks of the month

This list of the best and most notable music (and music-related media) of February begins with Philadelphia’s own pop superstar Pink, who returns with her ninth album, and also includes a new song by Philly rising star Devon Gilfillian. Then there’s a Dionne Warwick documentary, a fine new album by indie rock veterans Yo La Tengo, a Bob Dylan Bootleg Series box, and a collaboration between Adam Weiner and a late great Philly DJ.

“Picture a place where it all doesn’t hurt, where everything’s safe and it doesn’t get worse,” Pink sings in the title song on her ninth album. The message as imparted by the Doylestown, Pa.–raised singer is that you shouldn’t trust those places, and would be far better off without them.

Trustfall mixes upbeat, electronic-driven triumphal numbers like that title song and party starters like the Whitney Houston name-checking roller disco celebration “Never Gonna Not Dance Again,” with the quieter, earnest interludes the versatile pop star also excels in.

She makes room for guest spots from the Lumineers and Swedish duo First Aid Kit, as well as ubiquitous country singer Chris Stapleton on “Just Say I’m Sorry.” But if it’s a good cry you’re looking for, watch the video for “When I Get There,” a song sung to her late father James Moore released on Valentine’s Day. Pink’s Summer Carnival Tour comes to Citizens Bank Park, with Brandi Carlile, on Sept. 18 and 19.

The release of Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here has caught hip-hop fans by surprise this month. It’s an out-of-the-blue foray into psychedelic rock and funk from an artist who had previously hewn closely to pop-rap orthodoxy. The unexpected turn has earned Yachty praise from the likes of Questlove, who’s said the album has him “hyped about music’s future,” while others have been irked by the artist implying he needed to reach beyond rap to make serious art. Listen for yourself.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Devon Gilfillian — who grew up in Morton in Delaware County — has been relatively quiet since putting out his debut album Black Hole Rainbow and a full-length cover of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” in 2020. But he’s about to get busy. He’ll be pushing his new album, Love You Anyway, which comes out on Fantasy Records on April 7, at SXSW in Austin, Texas. He goes on tour with an as-yet-unannounced Philly date and a spot at Bonnaroo in June. “All I Really Wanna Do” is an irresistible slinky and soulful, candy-colored invitation to “a place where we can be as weird as we are.”

Yo La Tengo have been the model of indie rock consistency as they have moved from Velvet Underground squall to gentler, more contemplative moments sung by either guitarist Ira Kaplan or his drummer wife, Georgia Hubley. This Stupid World, the first album in three years from the trio that also includes multi-instrumentalist James McNew, seamlessly fits into the band’s 40-year body of work. The Hoboken band plays Union Transfer March 17.

Washington-born Ethiopian American singer Kelela rose to prominence making club music starting with her 2013 mixtape Cut For Me. Raven, her first album in six years, is in some ways of a piece with that earlier work. (The title is a pun: She’s ravin’.) But it also marks an evolution with songs like “Closure” and “Contact” drawing on the skittering beats of British dance styles like jungle and drum and bass, while bathing the listener in ambient, sensuous beauty.

This TV series, airing on PBS during Black History Month and developed by Chuck D of Public Enemy and Lorrie Boula, tells the story of hip-hop from a sociopolitical perspective. The first episode opens with Killer Mike of Run the Jewels speaking in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. From there, it reaches back to the 1960s and 1970s to consider the conditions in urban America that led to the birth of the music whose 50th anniversary was marked by a Questlove-curated celebration at the Grammy Awards. The four-part series, which concludes on WHYY Tuesday, can be streamed through PBS.org.

Deepest condolences to Dionne Warwick, who lost a lifelong advocate in the Philadelphia DJ known as the Geator with the Heater and Burt Bacharach, the cowriter of her greatest songs. Both Jerry Blavat and Bacharach are heard from in the 95-minute HBO doc that tries to make room for everything in the life of the vocalist, who scored more Billboard Hot 100 hits than any woman not named Aretha Franklin.

Speaking of the Geator: Piano man Adam Weiner of Philly band Low Cut Connie recorded this jaunty New Orleans-flavored romp with the assistance of the Boss with the Hot Sauce in 2015 as a B side, but Weiner waited till now to release it as a tribute to Blavat. “Yon teenagers, gather round,” Blavat riffs with his typical joie de vivre, “we got Low Cut Connie with the brand new sound in town.” Geator, Philadelphia misses you more than we can say.

Bob Dylan’s method of recording lots of slightly different versions of his singular songs has yielded reams of after-the-fact material for decades now. This five-disc box — Vol. 17 in the Bootleg Series — is pulled from the sessions with Daniel Lanois that yielded the scalded-heart masterwork that was a watershed moment for the inscrutable bard. The new mix of the original Time Out Of Mind yields few revelations, but the subsequent four discs of alternative takes and live cuts are a marvel. Available in fancy LP and CD sets, but also on streaming services.

Soul was a pioneering Black music and pop culture newspaper founded in 1966, predating countercultural publications like Rolling Stone. The Los Angeles-based paper that featured Philly acts like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and Labelle on its cover chronicled Black music, film, TV, and gossip and went out of business in 1982. But it has now been brought back to digital life. A treasure trove of cultural history is available at the self-proclaimed “Black-owned and intergenerationally run archive/blog” at soulpublications.co. Issues that originally sold for 35¢ can be perused for free online. An archive of 82 issues can be downloaded for $2.95 each.