Whatever’s in Brooklyn’s artisan bottled water right now, the borough is producing some of the best music to defy pop, indie and R&B’s boundaries. Just ask the Knowles dynasty, who have relied on BK residents such as Blood Orange, Boots, Kelela and Chairlift to hipsterise their sound in the last few years. Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly penned Beyoncé’s No Angel, and their new album suggests a band reborn, flitting between R&B, synthpop, funk-bass-fuelled soul and even breakbeat: Romeo, a song about Greek goddess Atalanta, could give Grimes’s recent output a run for its money; Ch-Ching (moodboard: Busta Rhymes, dancehall, Japan) is another global-pop banger to rival Major Lazer’s Lean On. But what’s most interesting is how Wimberly’s clickety but viscous production combines with Polachek’s diamond-sharp falsetto. At times the former can get confused and the latter a little indulgent, but when they nail it – see also No Such Thing, Crying in Public and Polymorphing – they don’t just fly close to pop’s flame, they ignite it.
