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- The Retrographer 37 (January, 2 0 1 8)
The Retrographer 37 (January, 2 0 1 8)
Beck, Troye Sivan, Justin Timberlake, the Shadowboxers, Superorganism, Kali Uchis, Tyler, the Creator, Bootsy Collins, Amen Dunes, Jay Som, Car Seat Headrest, Migos, 21 Savage, Jeff Rosenstock, and moreThe Retrographer, Issue 37 (January, 2 0 1 8)
Bulletins
Did you know that King Krule was once an extremely cute musical child prodigy?
Slowed-down Ty Segall set to Yellow Submarine feels right.
Jerrod Carmichael and Tyler, the Creator on Scum Fuck Flower Boy for an hour.
A$AP Mob is onto something really cool with AWGE.
SNL has been an utter failure in the Trump era, save for this union between Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton.
Isaiah Sharkey, guitar icon.
Thanks to PW for this video of baby Joni!
“My My My”, Troye Sivan (Cymbal / YouTube) – Troye has confidence that creates an easy control over the listener – he never rushes himself, or hides too much how he feels, which is dirty and sexy and probably best summed up by the song’s title itself.
“Runaway”, The Shadowboxers (Cymbal / YouTube) – After years of planning and developing, the Atlanta trio, under Justin Timberlake’s aegis, brought this song to the Today Show and left Hoda and Kathy Lee – well, nothing would leave them speechless. But they liked it a lot.
“Filthy”, Justin Timberlake (Cymbal / YouTube) – Okay, lots of people are not happy about JT’s concept for Man of the Woods; also not happy about his music video concepts; maybe not happy about his Super Bowl schtick. But how could you be unhappy about this bass sound?
“Everybody Wants to be Famous”, Superorganism (Cymbal / YouTube) – Goofy, cartoonish, and unstoppably catchy, Orono Noguchi’s eight-person pop monster has produced fun before, but never at this scale, or with this virulence.
“After the Storm”, Kali Uchis, Tyler, the Creator, and Bootsy Collins (Cymbal / YouTube) – One of those songs that’s kind of made by its music video. Kali has a very appealing Minnie Riperton thing going on, Tyler’s verse has so much style, and Bootsy is the icing on the cake.
“Miki Dora”, Amen Dunes (Cymbal / YouTube) – This song takes you with it where it wills you to go. No prisoner to verse/chorus/verse/chorus, Damon McMahon’s melody ascends higher and higher as the drama of its legendary namesake grows with each passing line.
“Pirouette”, Jay Som (Cymbal / YouTube) – To paraphrase Kanye: Melina Duterte has forgotten better shit than you’ve ever thought of. This cast-off from last year’s standout Everybody Works furnishes itself with an instrumental closing title sequence that fills half the song and makes it twice as good.
“Nervous Young Inhumans”, Car Seat Headrest (Cymbal / YouTube) – Will Toledo is re-recording Twin Fantasy, a 2011 album he never felt was truly finished. Contrast the two versions, seven years apart, and you’ll observe what separated the most promising voice in rock from his destiny.
“BBO”, Migos and 21 Savage (Cymbal / YouTube) – Culture II is a monster, sitting at a truly indulgent 105 minutes. Amid its many faces is this undeniable detour, reuniting 21 and Offset from last year’s excellent Without Warning, under the watch of Kanye West and DJ Durel.
“TV Stars”, Jeff Rosenstock (Cymbal / YouTube) – Rosenstock’s POST– is riddled with anthemic barnburners (also check out “Usa”), but this one has that wheelhouse stadium Queen-meets-the-Killers feel that, in all likelihood, will never stray far from the DIY clubs he’s always crushed.
One Album for January, 2 0 1 8
Year after year, for almost a decade, Beck Hansen released music that spoke to his preternatural eclecticism. When his breakthrough 1994 album Mellow Gold came out, critics sang their praise in unison for the music’s conspicuous integration of styles. Throughout the decade, releases like Odelay and Midnite Vultures showcased Beck’s unique ear, where songs could be as mismatched and fascinating as any aisle of a consignment store, and as odd, too.
Then, in 2002, he released Sea Change, a sparse, desolate, and, improbably, consistent work that convened stylistically with the alt-country style that had become en vogue thanks to ascendant work from Wilco and Ryan Adams. Track to track, Beck’s diverse sound had become flattened, placid and soft where it had once been jagged and sexy.
All of Sea Change’s songs were written in a week, soon after the end of the Midnite Vultures tour ended. Not long after, a tabloid reported that Beck’s 9-year relationship with his fiance had ended when he discovered she’d ran away with someone from a band called Whiskey Biscuit in LA. The engagement had broken off.
The ensuing suite of songs stand alone in his catalogue in its openness – “Ripped from the soul, or whatever” – in his words. But Sea Change is as much an original work as it is a collaboration between Beck, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, and Beck’s father, David Campbell, a composer whose arrangements had just recently adorned Michael Jackson’s comeback Invincible. On songs like “Paper Tiger”, “Round the Bend”, and “Lonesome Tears”, Campbell’s string arrangements are psychedelic and twisting, curls of sound as bewildering as the pain they describe. Everywhere, Godrich’s minimalist touch – check out the reverse vocal effects, like ghostly backup singers, on “Lost Cause”, or the resounding pianos on “Sunday Sun” – protects the album’s honesty by keeping it unobscured.
On songs where Campbell’s orchestra is absent, however, Beck is restrained and paced. “Guess I’m Doing Fine”, “The Golden Age”, and “Side of the Road” place Sea Change within a larger canon of albums – think Joni Mitchell’s Hejira or Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska – about not knowing the way forward, where the writer learns that, no matter how far they wander, they can’t escape the pain that’s all in their mind. Sea Change’s place within this body of music is a testament partly to Beck’s prodigious, natural ability to land his music wherever he’d like it to sound, and partly to the unmediated intensity of his heartbreak.
The best music about brokenheartedness evokes just how prosaic it is; the way an average thing can make you want to cry or run for the hills. “End of the Day”, with it’s blinkered bass line and cracked car window synthesizers, is a bit like a drive to the store that ends with a breakdown in the parking lot. Beck puts it simply: “It’s nothing that I haven’t seen before / but it still kills me, like it did before.” The album hinges, both in tracklisting and in message, on this feeling, best expressed in its closing lyrics: “You owe nothing to the past but wasted time / To serve a sentence that was only in your mind.”
Best-Of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream. To see which tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."