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- The Retrographer, Issue 13 (January, 2016)
The Retrographer, Issue 13 (January, 2016)
January, 2016
The Retrographer, Issue 13
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Spotify users, please go into settings and check “show unavailable songs.” If you don't, you won't see all the songs in this month’s playlist.
Bulletins
Welcome to new subscribers! If this is your first issue of The Retrographer, here’s what you're getting: An album guide and new music monthly. Every month I make a playlist of my ten favorite songs from that period, and write about one older album that needs its story told. I'm here to try to help listeners feel oriented in the sometimes-overwhelming world of music. I listen to a lot of the new music that comes out, and pick out the best for you.
My friend Ian is going to put out an album under his pseudonym CEREAL. Here's the first track you can listen to.
Last month I put out my Best of 2015 playlist. Check that out here.
Ten Songs for January, 2016
The Range, “Florida” (Spotify / YouTube) - Ariana Grande, maybe one of the five biggest and most relevant pop stars in the world, sounds positively forgotten, like a newly unearthed childhood toy, as the centerpiece sample in this dizzying phantasm of an instrumental.
Anderson .Paak feat. Talib Kweli and the Timan Family Choir, “The Dreamer” (Spotify / YouTube) - Ian made the point that this song is sort of conspicuously not cutting edge. Not retro, just not 2016. It has more in common with the music the Soulquarians and co. made five or six years ago. That off-kilter bassline is all Georgia Anne Muldrow and D’Angelo; The 70s black revolutionary chant is right from the Erykah Badu and J Dilla cookbook. Illustrious company. Andy belongs in it.
Swell feat. Shiloh, “Sorry” (Spotify / YouTube) - Early candidate for Headphones Song of the Year, just based on the big drop 30 seconds in. You could compare it to plugging your headphones all the way in, or putting on your glasses, or having your first coffee of the day. It has an intensity that sharpens its loungey environs.
Kanye West, “Real Friends” (Soundcloud / YouTube) - I promise I made this point before it showed up in the Pitchfork review: This song’s similarity to “Deep Fried Frenz” and the presence of Madlib on “No More Parties in LA” (snippet at the end) suggest that if it was Death Grips for Kanye in 2013, it’s MF DOOM for 2016. 19-year-old Chas is doing backflips.
Rihanna, “Needed Me” (Tidal, I guess?) - Sort of a sleeper, but a close listen to this slow-burner encapsulates sort of exactly what makes Rihanna such a revolutionary. She wants nothing with classic romancing; He was just another dude she wanted to hit; He needed her, and not even close to the other way around. She flips the power dynamic with effortless finesse.
Zayn Malik “Pillowtalk” (Spotify / YouTube) - Malik left One Direction because he wasn’t allowed to make music as black as the character he was drafted to play in the group. While “Pillowtalk” doesn’t stray too far from the 1D sound, it’s squarely in Miguel territory. There’s a lot to be excited for on his album, and damnit do I wish I was his manager.
A$AP Ferg feat. Future, “New Level” (Spotify / YouTube) - With a beat only just shy of TNGHT’s “Higher Ground” in sheer tonnage (remember, Kendrick could barely rap over it), Ferg and Hendrix rap like they’re leveling Tokyo. Audience poll: How many pushups can you do to this song?
Young Thug feat. Quavo, “Fuck Cancer” (Spotify / YouTube) - Anybody close to someone battling cancer knows that everybody deals with it in their own way. But having strength in your circle makes it easier to have strength yourself. So after only a passing reference to their friend Boozie Badazz’s condition, Thugger and Captain America proceed to rap really, really well.
Spoon, “Never Let Me Down (David Bowie Cover)” (Soundcloud) - The original, sung in the same register, dressed this gorgeous song in an ill-fitting dance groove and trotted it out to a jaded audience. To say goodbye to 20th century music greatest character actor, let’s have a look at how splendid he was without makeup.
David Bowie, “Lazarus” (Spotify / YouTube) - Maybe it’s because I know what it looks like when it takes you. It gave me such peace to see Bowie control our image of his passing. Not frail, not emaciated, not destroyed, but vigorous, wild, and weird. He knew that we didn’t know him, we simply knew what he gave us. So he gave us his life.
One Album for January, 2016
Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (Live) (Riverside Recordings, 2005) (Spotify / YouTube)
The story of jazz is in part the story of popular song. It's the only genre built on standards, meaning it's the sole art form where interpretation of existing work is considered indiscriminately from the creation of new ones. The infinity of jazz is the infinity of perspective; Simply hear something unique in what's already there and you've found the path to creating something new.
I have a cockamamie theory about Bill Evans, and that's that he had an emotional irregularity that caused him to feel things deeper than others. It's why he was so shy and reserved in his ensembles. It's why he had to dull and control his feelings with the heroin and cocaine that eventually killed him. And it's why his music has the potency and tenderness of a watercolor.
Evans, perhaps known best for his residency in Miles Davis’ first great quintet and performances on Kind of Blue, had a rich and important career as a bandleader. The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings’ three live sets, recorded on June 25th, 1961, first released as Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961) and Waltz for Debby (1962), and then compiled in 2005, is the most indelible document his seminal trio.
Bill Evans rendered his blue in green melancholy in modal jazz, a style of playing associated early with the pianist Ahmad Jamal, as well as impressionist composers Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. Starting in 1959, he found the perfect accompanists for this music in drummer Paul Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro.
LaFaro was just 23 when he joined, and had only started playing the bass when he was 18. But he was an utter prodigy, and his compatibility with Evans and Motian was miraculous. Through The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, Evans stages an affecting scene between his right hand (playing melodies beautifully) and his left (framing those melodies with softhearted and moving chords). Motian matches this palette with brushes and a light touch on the ride cymbal. And LaFaro, playing with providential discretion, both guides the melody with reservation, and introduces harmonic diversity through ambling lines.
With “Some Other Time”, as he similarly did elsewhere “Peace Piece” and “Flamenco Sketches”, Evans provides both primer and prime example for modal music, exploring harmonic directions over a droning pedal point. With “Solar”, LaFaro and Evans make quiet conversation around a complex idea without ever overcomplicating it. “Gloria’s Step”, later one of Evans’ best-known compositions, is as golden as an autumn walk in the park, as is “Waltz for Debby”. But it's their rendition “My Foolish Heart”, a title that articulates the tragic poignancy of Evans’ music succinctly, that is this compilation’s most essential piece. It comes together haltingly, before ascending to a simple but exultant climax about 2:51 in with a brief and perfect phrase, drawing everything else into focus, and gone before you even realize its clarity.
Gone before you realize its clarity, like Scott LaFaro, who died in a car accident a week and a half later. His death was an injustice to jazz and devastated Evans, who stopped performing for months in grief.
On The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, however, the trio completed an invaluable document, one that consummated a movement in jazz that understood heartbreak and empathy better than any other. It finds the glimmer of love in sadness, and proffers the quietude essential to introspection. Given the tragedy that was about to befall it, the trio plays to its most sublime heights and perfects the vision it approached for the genre, preserving in amber a delicate and fleeting idea, too tender and rare to persist.
Thanks to my uncle Jimmy for buying me this compilation when I was 18 or 19.
Best-of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream.
To see what tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."