• The Retrographer
  • Posts
  • The Retrographer, Issue 119 (October, 2 0 2 4 / "Eternal Repeater")

The Retrographer, Issue 119 (October, 2 0 2 4 / "Eternal Repeater")

Waxahatchee, Market, Daryl Johns, Marji Shemanski, the Smile, Jamie xx, Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, Panda Bear, Sam Wilkes, Dylan Day, Thom Gill, Chris Fishman, Craig Weinrib, Kacy Hill, Nourished by Time, Panda Bear (again), Cindy Lee, Kelly Lee Owens, and my third album "Eternal Repeater"

Author

Charlie Kaplan
November 01, 2024

The Retrographer, Issue 119 (October, 2 0 2 4 / “Eternal Repeater”)

Bulletins:

  • My new album, “Eternal Repeater” is out now. Listen here!

  • Buy an LP here.

  • Thank you so, so, so much for listening.

  • If you’re looking for my October playlist, that’s at the bottom!

The story of “Eternal Repeater”

My third album, “Eternal Repeater”, is out today.

I love these songs and I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of recordings or gotten closer to getting the sound in my head into the real world. In a way everything else is gravy for me from here on out. 

Thank you so much to my band - Andrew Daly Frank, Winston Cook-Wilson, Frank Meadows, Ben Wagner; My producer Nico Hedley; Jason Bartell, who did the art, and Jules Evens, who handled layout. Thank you, as always, to Emma.

I felt a darkness in “Eternal Repeater” from the moment I started writing it. By the time I finished, I saw what that was: Each song makes me think, in microcosm or macrocosm, of the base instincts that civilization emerged to resist. The music electrified with meaning when I saw in it the concept of “eternal return”, the idea that all events have happened before and will happen again. For the Stoics, this was a theory about physical reality; It allowed Nietzche to remove god from phenomenology and encourage humanity to think of its own ascendance as our only and sole aim. But this dominating supremacy afflicts mankind, so for me it described our inborn and esurient instinct.

Eternal return is embodied by the entropy of human nature, our deathless impulse to treat one another cruelly. Our sole hope in escaping this cycle is to seek openness where we would otherwise give way to mistrust. In songs like “Everyone Calling Your Name” and “Mescarole”, I see our private fears and jealousies; in “Idiot” and “Now That I’m Older”, I see these impulses manifest in their invidious agglomeration: demagoguery, prejudice, subjugation. And on “In a Little Bit of Time”, I see the strange reality that these impulses live within us even after their vessels expire. Can our resolve to resist viciousness perpetually overcome it?

I’m a hopeful person and I face the light. These songs name the threats, they don’t surrender to them. Human nature tempts us to darkness and consumes those who give in. We are our only way out.

Ten Songs for October, 2 0 2 4 | Listen to these songs on Spotify and YouTube

“Much Ado About Nothing”, Waxahatchee – Of the revelations at Katie Crutchfield’s show at the Beacon last month included her idolatry of Tom Petty and Lucinda Williams, the compatibility of trucker hats and sequined pants, and the early sneak peak of this gorgeous ballad.

“Water Spilling Test”, Market – More so with every album he releases, every song he mixes, every performance he gives; Nate Mendelsohn knows how to make a recording. The arpeggiating synths burble like a living creature below the surface and his voice sounds so much like air, which is of course, what it is.

“I’m So Serious”, Daryl Johns – Johns is a virtuosic polyglot who, in 2009 at the age of 13, finished 3rd at the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition against players 30 years older than him. Now his facility is applied to perfecting this Betamax-ready fabricated memory of Ford administration power pop.

“Anger Issues”, Marji Shemanski – This whole album achieves the odd and bewitching effect of presenting raw, unprocessed emotion in delicate, sophisticated arrangement, as if the feelings were caught in a jar and then painted. These string arrangements, in particular, are wonderful.

“Tiptoe”, The Smile – Jonny Greenwood told the NME the goal of the Smile is to make music 90% as good as Radiohead, but twice as often. It’s been eight years since the last Radiohead album, and we’ve gotten four albums from the Smile since 2022, so the math doesn’t support how good songs like these are.

“Daffodil”, Jamie xx, Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, Panda Bear – this lysergic dream sequence is as much narrative as it is a drop of paint spreading through a glass of water. Every featured artist appears like a little memory, dissipating like a perturbation in consciousness.

“Girl”, Sam Wilkes, Dylan Day, Thom Gill, Chris Fishman, and Craig Weinrib – The core of this ensemble (Wilkes, Day, and Weinrib) have been on a tear of late, and the music they released earlier this year is reprised and expanded upon on this beautiful live record.

“My Day Off”, Kacy Hill and Nourished by Time – Marcus Brown’s production style is so distinctive, like how you remember Jodeci more than how they sounded. Kacy Hill is a floral perfume alongside his syrupy stream, each flowing and wafting past you in a moment of potency. 

“Defense”, Panda Bear and Cindy Lee – two masters of sun-soaked melody, each of whose voices sound younger and fresher than their songbooks belie. This song sounds continually as if it’s building to some great release, but the beat fittingly goes on ceaselessly.

“Trust and Desire”, Kelly Lee Owens – KLO loves club music, but here she is temporarily more like Jon Hopkins, the National, Sharon Van Etten: Ethereal, fading, remembered. Rhythm is no concern in this album closer, just the vibrant vibrations of strings and “the trust that a higher love will come”.

MONTHLY

#118.5.2 “In a Little Bit of Time”

#118.5 “Edie Got Away”

#117.5 “Mescarole"

#116.5 “Cloudburst”

#105.5 “Country Life in America”

#105 August, 2023 | “Rockaway”

#104 July, 2023 | “Gas Station Bathroom”

#103 June, 2023 | “Talkin’ French” 

#100 March, 2023 | The Feelies, “The Good Earth”

#99 February, 2023 | Judee Sill, “Judee Sill”

#98 January, 2023 | Pink Floyd, “Meddle”

#96 November, 2022 | RIP TOM PETTY

#95 October, 2022 | Cannonball Adderley, “Cannonball Adderley's Fiddler on the Roof”

#94 September, 2022 | Sheryl Crow, “Tuesday Night Music Club”

#93 August, 2022 | D’Angelo, “Live at the Jazz Cafe, London”

#92 July, 2022 | Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “Southern Accents”

#91 June, 2022 | George Harrison, “Living in the Material World”

#90 May, 2022 | The Wild Tchoupitoulas, “The Wild Tchoupitoulas”

#89 April, 2022 | Joni Mitchell, “Taming the Tiger”

#88 March, 2022 | Young Thug, “Barter 6”

#87 February, 2022 | Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith, “Violins No End”

#86 January, 2022 | Nas, “God’s Son”

#84 November, 2021 | Milt Jackson with the Thelonious Monk Quintet, “Wizard of the Vibes”

#83 October, 2021 | For Against, “Coalesced”

#82 September, 2021 | Pat Metheny, “Bright Size Life”

#81 August, 2021 | The Chicks, “Fly”

#80 July, 2021 | Allen Toussaint, “Southern Nights”

#79 June, 2021 | Novos Baianos, “Acabou Chorare”

#78 May, 2021 | One Direction, “Four”

#77 April, 2021 | Bob Dylan, “New Morning”

#76 March, 2021 | Ty Dolla $ign, “Free TC”

#75 February, 2021 | Ghostface Killah, “Fishscale”

#74 January, 2021 | Minnie Riperton, “Minnie”

#72 November, 2020 | Sufjan Stevens, “Seven Swans”

#71 October, 2020 | Common, “Resurrection”

#70 September, 2020 | Herbie Hancock, “Thrust”

#69 August, 2020 | Special Issue

#68 July, 2020 | Cam’ron, “Purple Haze”

#67 June, 2020 | Jorge Ben, “A Tabua de Esmeralda”

#66 May, 2020 | The Meters, “Rejuvenation”

#65 April, 2020 | Eddie Kendricks, “People… Hold On”

#64 March, 2020 | Thelonious Monk, “Solo Monk”

#63 February, 2020 | Cat Power, “Moon Pix”

#62 January, 2020 | Yusef Lateef, “Eastern Sounds”

#59 November, 2019 | Frank Sinatra, “In The Wee Small Hours”

#58 October, 2019 | Steely Dan, “Gaucho”

#57 September, 2019 | Bonnie Raitt, “Streetlights”

#56 August, 2019 | Daft Punk, “Alive 2007”

#55 July, 2019 | John Coltrane, “Interstellar Space”

#54 June, 2019 | Big Pun, “Capital Punishment”

#53 May, 2019 | Paul Simon, “Rhythm of the Saints”

#52 April, 2019 | Dirty Projectors, “Rise Above”

#51 March, 2019 | Kate Bush, “The Sensual World”

#50 February, 2019 | Sonny Rollins, “Next Album”

#49 January, 2019 | Sade, “Diamond Life”

#47 November, 2018 | Curtis Mayfield, “There’s No Place Like America Today”

#46 October, 2018 | The Blue Nile, “Hats”

#45 September, 2018 | Lucinda Williams, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”

#44 August, 2018 | Aretha Franklin, “Amazing Grace”

#43 July, 2018 | Teddy Pendergrass, “TP”

#42 June, 2018 | Dennis Wilson, “Pacific Ocean Blue”

#41 May, 2018 | Bobby Brown, “Don’t Be Cruel”

#40 April, 2018 | Amy Winehouse, “Back to Black”

#39 March, 2018 | Q-Tip, “Kamaal the Abstract”

#38 February, 2018 | Miles Davis, “In a Silent Way”

#37 January, 2018 | Beck, “Sea Change”

#35 November, 2017 | Slum Village, “Fan-tas-tic Vol. 1”

#34 October, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Two Against Nature”

#33 September, 2017 | Baaba Maal and Mansour Seck, “Djam Leeli”

#32 August, 2017 | Billy Joel, “The Stranger”

#31 July, 2017 | Big Daddy Kane, “Long Live the Kane”

#30 June, 2017 | Janet Jackson, “Control”

#29 May, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Aja”

#28 April, 2017 | The O’Jays, “Back Stabbers”

#27 March, 2017 | Wire, “154”

#26 February, 2017 | Professor Longhair, “New Orleans Piano”

#25 January, 2017 | Elvis Costello, “Live at the El Mocambo”

#23 November, 2016 | Erykah Badu, “Mama’s Gun”

#22 October, 2016 | Donald Fagan, “The Nightfly”

#21 September, 2016 | Aretha Franklin, “Young, Gifted, and Black”

#20 August, 2016 | The Dave Matthews Band, “Under the Table and Dreaming”

#19 July, 2016 | Clams Casino, “Instrumental Mixtape II”

#18 June, 2016 | James Brown, “Love, Power, Peace”

#17 May, 2016 | Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder, “Talking Timbuktu”

#16 April, 2016 | RIP PRINCE

#15 March, 2016 | Prince, “Prince”

#14 February, 2016 | Big L, “Lifestyles Ov Da Poor & Dangerous”

#13 January, 2016 | Bill Evans, “Live at the Village Vanguard”

#11 November, 2015 | Donny Hathaway, “Live”

#10 October, 2015 | Paul McCartney, “McCartney”

#9 September, 2015 | Talk Talk, “Laughing Stock”

#8 August, 2015 | B.B. King, “Live at Cook County Jail”

#7 July, 2015 | Miles Davis, “Filles de Kilimanjaro”

#6 June, 2015 | Joni Mitchell, “Hejira”

#5 May, 2015 | Kanye West, “The College Dropout”

#4 April, 2015 | MF DOOM, “Operation: Doomsday”

#3 March, 2015 | Bruce Springsteen, “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle”

#2 February, 2015 | Eric B. and Rakim, “Paid in Full”

#1 January, 2015 | Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, “L.A.M.F.”

 

ANNUAL

 

DECENNIAL

 

THEMED