plaint

Produced by Pheelz, a Nigerian songwriter who adds a rap verse, “Ruin” deploys the shakers, deep log drums, soothing keyboard chords and open spaces of amapiano as Usher mixes accusation, plaint and humblebrag.

O’Connor’s, with its silence, turns the original plaint into a jolt.

“What seemed to be political fanaticism,” he writes there, “was only an excuse, a parable, a manifesto of fidelity, a coded plaint of love.”

Instead of breaking something open, and for all its self-conscious daring, “Beau Is Afraid” stays in a relatively safe lane as one more Portnoy-esque plaint about Mom’s inhumanity to man.

Labrinth intones the title as a falsetto plaint above hollow, puffing organ chords that hark back to Brian Wilson; the beat is slow, sporadic, almost stumbling.