Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers pay tribute to Eddie Van Halen

POP/ROCK

Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Eddie"

The Chili Peppers memorialize Eddie Van Halen and 1980s Los Angeles with what sounds like an old-fashioned, real-time studio jam. Anthony Kiedis sings biographical snippets — "My brother's a keeper/I married a TV wife" — while Flea's bass and John Frusciante's guitar chase each other all the way through the song, in an ever-changing counterpoint of hopping bass lines and teasing, wailing, shredding, overdriven guitar — the sound of a band in a room, still pushing one another.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Jamie xx, "Kill Dem"

It's now been seven long years since the DJ, producer, and longtime xx member Jamie xx released his beloved solo album "In Colour," but this year he's put out two rousing new singles: first the ecstatic "Let's Do It Again" and now the elastic "Kill Dem." Built around a sample of the dancehall great Cutty Ranks' "Limb by Limb," Jamie minces his source material into barely discernible syllables and launches it into hyperspace, leaving its component parts to ping off one another with a bouncy, exuberant energy.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

If Lil Nas X continues to play jester, expertly, on social media, his new single suggests that he is still interested in using his music as an outlet for feelings that complicate that persona, like anxiety, light melancholy and self-doubt. "They said I wouldn't make it out alive," he sings defiantly on this gleaming, synth-driven track, which serves as the theme song for this year's League of Legends World Championship. The one-off certainly doesn't rank among his most memorable singles, but it's further proof that he's figured out a reliable sonic formula to turn personal apprehension into steely braggadocio; by the end of the song, he asks, "Why worship legends when you know that you can join them?"

LINDAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

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