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- The Retrographer: Issue 1 (February 2015)
The Retrographer: Issue 1 (February 2015)
February 2015
The Retrographer: Issue 1
A Long Introduction You'll Only Have to Put Up With Once
Almost three and a half years ago, when I was an intern at NPR Music, I got to write for a since-discontinued feature called "You've Never Heard?". The idea was to get the youngest people at the office to listen to a classic album they didn't know, and get their impressions down in writing. We were encouraged to be raw, opinionated, and uninfluenced by critical consensus. I chose Patti Smith's "Horses".
A little more than half a year later, a kid named Austin Cooper was holding that internship when he was asked to write a piece in the same series. He chose Public Enemy's acclaimed "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back", and he didn't like it.
People didn't just have a problem with the fact Cooper didn't like "A Nation of Millions". They also didn't like that he brought his contemporary perspective into play, that he was honest about the limitations of his experience, and that he came to a different conclusion than the arbiters of history. Music's establishmentarians demanded Austin to burn an effigy to P.E., and instead he invoked Drake. Heaven forbid.
I love Public Enemy, and I don't know Austin Cooper, but I felt the need to hit the comment boards and defend the guy. Here's an excerpt of what I wrote in 2012:
"when you tell the bosses at npr you want to do a 'you've never heard,' they put an album guide in front of you and ask you to pick one that, well, you've never heard. they then ask you to listen to the album and specifically NOT read any of the criticism and commentary on the work. that's the single most important -- and for my money, the best -- element of this feature: it forces the npr interns to react to a piece of art without being influenced by prevailing opinion.
if you're 23, like me, or 19/20, like austin, and you love music, you have a lot of heavy lifting to do to even begin to feel oriented in the culture and feel your opinion is valid. and more often than not, your choices of what to listen to are prevailingly influenced by the ossified popular consensus of older generations. it is incredibly difficult to develop an opinion about music that you feel like came wholly from you.
i see why it's important to npr listeners to feel 'nation' is acknowledged, but we need to see how adoration can be suffocating. give austin a chance to have his own experience."
That's where the Retrographer began. Each month, I decided, I'd pick an album that I think is worth hearing, and recommend it. No sacred earth or cultural imperatives. I'll pick an album I love or think explains something else well, and you give it a listen and decide if you see it. My goal is to help listeners feel oriented and better understand what's out there; to discover music they love for the first time, and help explain more deeply music they already know by exposing its influences and forebears.But doesn't the whole idea of an album guide kind of depend on historical bias? I mean, you've got to choose a perspective, or a handful of perspectives, and by definition those choices will satisfy someone else's idea of what happened, and maybe not yours. Plus, as far as hidebound navel-gazing goes, the album guide as a form is uniquely friendly to older music. It's hard to talk about how a great album fits into the big picture of musical history if it hasn't been around long enough to demonstrate an influence. So the other half of what this is about is putting amazing new music on the same footing as classic albums, in the form of a monthly 10-song playlist. We were all young once, after all.On my end, the rules are:
All the songs in the monthly playlist must be from the past calendar year (cutting out some new favorites from 2014)
As in my year-end playlists, the songs are sequenced to flow well, not ordered by how much I like them
Attempt to do one song per artist, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule
Keep the album guide reviews to 5-10 sentences
Archives are at Tinyletter and Tumblr.
On your end, the rules are:
Tell me what you liked and didn't like
Share it with your friends
Make recommendations of songs and albums you think deserve the attention
Tell me a story
And finally, as Rich Conaty says, "Live fast and dye your hair, but always remember that rhythm saved the world."- Charlie
Ten Songs for January, 2015
Stream this playlist at Spotify here (Future's "No Basic" isn't available, but download his mixtape "Beast Mode" just in time for the Super Bowl here).
"I Don't Mind", Twerps (Spotify / YouTube) - A serene and swelling view on the infinite freedoms of love.
"The Picture", Ty Segall (Spotify / YouTube) - San Franciscan hippie-satanist dons his occasional fake Bowie accent to write about heartbreak, perhaps for the recent death of a loved one.
"This Could Be Us", Rae Sremmurd (Spotify / YouTube) - Not the Prince song. The Kris's Kross-meets-Jaden Smith looking rappers turn soppy, lovelorn meme to raw courtship dance.
"Price Tag", Sleater-Kinney (Spotify / YouTube) - This portrait of slavish consumerism and the clockwork of modern life highlights the feminist icons' taut comeback record.
"Ray Gun", Ghostface Killah, MF DOOM, BADBADNOTGOOD (Spotify / YouTube) - nothing as good as their past work together, and hopefully not as good as their long-rumored collab, two of my top 5 dead or alive join with the viral jazz trio for a blaxploitation theme.
"No Basic", Future (YouTube) - The man who combined voice and auto-tune to create an instrument that hasn't existed before gives himself post-divorce pep talk. This thing is all about the contrast between each verse's introspective opening and galvanizing (as in, fortifying steel) conclusion.
"Mr. Noah", Panda Bear (Spotify / YouTube) - Are those dogs?
"Continental Shelf", Viet Cong (Spotify / YouTube) - There's a lot to love about Viet Cong ("Bunker Buster" made my best of 2014), mortality-obsessed homages to the late Wolf Parade among them.
"Asymmetrical", Cloakroom (Spotify / YouTube) - It's rare for sludge to be so harmonic, or for emo to feel piteous, rather than pitiful. Lead singer Doyle Martin sounds like he's mumbling into his voice recorder, while the band is a fireball, breaking up in the atmosphere but an inch from your ear.
"Brand New", Jazmine Sullivan (Spotify / YouTube) - A wounded, diaristic account of the settling dust of an ex's success. A great singer, but an even better storyteller.
One Historic Album for January, 2015
Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers' 1977 album L.A.M.F is an ambiguous image; You can view it as either a messy impression of the Rolling Stones, or a singular and foundational touchstone of the early punk aesthetic. Either way, L.A.M.F. (initialled from "Like A Motherfucker") connects punk's primordial 70s to both its rock roots and hardcore future. Thunders came from the New York Dolls, itself a Stones fanclub and the progenitor of a related but divergent style, glam rock. In its early incarnations, both glam and punk held onto the country, rockabilly, and blues influences that birthed the Rolling Stones. But in the Heartbreakers' case, "It's Not Enough" - from its bending vocals to its Mick Taylor-copping guitar breaks - can be recognized less as an attempt at AM country and more as an honest go at aping the Stones' country impressions. And this is because early punk strove to isolate and expand on the rawness and energy of rock's first generation, from Buddy Holly to the early Rolling Stones. Eschewing rock's American Songbook roots for its raw melodic quanta defined what many saw as the animality of punk; in truth, it was an attempt at exploring the relatively new possibilities of the power of the small electric ensemble, using Keith Richards as a starting point. Down to its base qualities - its complete lack of production, guitar tones, even Thunders' haircut - L.A.M.F. is early rock at heart, powerfully misinterpreted as the dawn of punk.Check out: "Born to Lose"; "One Track Mind"; "Chinese Rocks" (cowritten by Dee Dee Ramone!)
Best-of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream.Best of 2014 (Honorable Mentions)Best of 2013 (Honorable Mentions)Best of 2012Best of 2011