The Retrographer, Issue 15 (March, 2 0 1 6)

April 10, 2016

The Retrographer, Issue 15 (March, 2016)

Bulletins

Ten Songs for March, 2016

Listen to this playlist on Spotify and YouTubeZayn, “LIKE I WOULD” (Spotify / YouTube) - I don’t know if it would’ve been better for this to be the first single – “Hey what’s up it’s been awhile” plays the “Hello, it’s me” game of blurring the line between talking to the song’s subject and talking to the listener just as slickly.Rostam, “Gravity Don’t Pull Me” (Spotify / YouTube) - Speaking of which: Always a safe bet to leave your lillywhite pop group to make blacker music. More importantly, these cringing, repentant lyrics: “The worst way I ever felt” and “The worst things I ever did” always track back to one person, don’t they?Ariana Grande, “Be Alright” (Spotify / YouTube) - For months, maybe longer, my musical confidant PW sent me YouTube clips like this one carrying snippets from Snapchats that hinted this song would be as light, yet sophisticated, as it so clearly is. She never oversells her voice, either. Gotta lose those ears, tho.Mura Masa, “What If I Go?” (Spotify / YouTube) - This one plays by PW’s maxim that nothing is more important in a song than the beginning of the second verse. That’s when you decide if the components of the song, now that you’ve seen them, have anywhere to go. “Is it really like that?”Mitski, “Your Best American Girl” (Spotify / YouTube) - All the glory, all the thunder, all the American armageddon you’ll remember this song for after the first time you listen to it is only hinted in its opening minute, only implied by its beautiful self-abnegation. “You're the sun, you've never seen the night / But you hear its song from the morning birds / But I'm not the moon, I'm not even a star / But awake at night I'll be singing to the birds”Nipsey Hussle and YG, “Fuck Donald Trump” (Spotify / YouTube) - I’m ready to piss off a bunch of adults. This song has all the relevance and fire, but more unity, as celebrated protest songs of yore. Nipsey sums up the whole election right here: “You build walls, we’ll probably dig holes.”Young Thug, “With Them” (Spotify / YouTube) - Not sure if we’ve reached Peak Young Thug yet – This song plays on a similar palette to recent work on “Hercules” and “Power”, and yet is still as fresh and original as anything he’s done. He has so many ideas, and such fluency between them.Kendrick Lamar, “Untitled 02 06.23.2014.” (Spotify / YouTube) - Some know, others don’t, that David Bowie’s farewell Blackstar was in part inspired by Kendrick Lamar. So it’s fitting tribute that Kendrick’s standout Untitled Unmastered track channels the same eerie eminence of the titular track from Bowie’s final album.A.K. Paul, “Landcruisin’” (Spotify / YouTube) - The Paul brothers’ styles are so similar to one another, and yet so unique compared to everyone else. Sure, A.K. has tended toward more energetic songs than his brother Jai, but I wouldn’t believe they were different people if there wasn’t (limited) photo evidence.Hundred Waters, “Forgive Me For Giving Up” (Spotify / YouTube) - Take this song’s beautiful arrangement, or the band’s relationship to Skrillex, and you’ll conclude production is central to Hundred Waters’ music. But the best way to understand the band is stripped down, with everything else far out of the way.

One Album for March, 2016

Prince, Prince (Warner Brothers, 1979) (iTunes, sorry)From 1980 to 1987, Prince would make legitimate claim to not only being the biggest pop star in the world, but the most transgressive, too. Creating an image and sound that captivates the world is one thing; building it on real originality that speaks to a widespread, hidden truth takes something more. Control.In his infectious music, provocative themes, shapeshifting voice, fluid identities, cultivated image, pyrotechnic musicianship – Prince controlled the attention of his audience. Controlled how they talked about him, how they looked at him, how they loved him and how they hated him. He controlled Tipper Gore in 1985 when she ballgagged “Darling Nikki” with the first ever Parental Advisory sticker. He controlled Mick Jagger’s crowd in 1981 they booed him off stage after performing three songs opening for the Stones in thigh-highs and women’s underwear. He controlled everything.Before Dirty Mind birthed his moment in earnest, Prince’s obsession with control was, while less enabled, less finessed, too. True, later on he would write, perform, and produce whole albums of music, some for fictional bands like Vanity 6 or The Time that he’d cast friends to play. But on his first two albums, For You and Prince, Prince controlled a world that was much more finite. His influence crept to the edge of the speakers and just beyond.Prince, his last album before ascendancy, is different from its successors only in that way. Prince exercised his control as far as his reach allowed him at every stage of his career, and in 1979 his one true domain was the studio. Save a backup vocal somewhere on the album, every sound you hear on this album is created by Prince. Every instrument, every vocal take, all the production, the songwriting - it's all him, exactly the way he wanted it. Listen to the choked synth stabs on “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” or the airtight, envelope filtered bass on “Sexy Dancer.” It's all perfect in placement, execution, and, most importantly, message.As he would later, most famously on songs like “Head” or “Darling Nikki”, Prince embodies a transfixing sexuality by deviating from pop music’s well-trodden sexual themes and roles. For so much of the album, he vacillates between a quavering naif over delicate strings on “With You” to the audacious dynamo begging a lesbian to bat for the other team over metal guitar on “Bambi”.  On “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, he wants to fuck you and be your mother too. He seems to mock the whole enterprise on the divine “I Feel For You”, singing bluntly, “I wouldn’t lie to you, baby. I’m physically attracted to you.”Prince, if anything, was arousing. He had to do little other than be himself, or some version of which, to transform the world around him.  “I don't wanna pressure you baby,” he sings on this album, and he doesn't need to. To his fans he aroused sex, but for everyone else, it was disgust. There was hardly any middle ground, particularly as his star rose. The irony - and the power - in Prince’s relationship with his listeners was that this control was ultimately freeing. He gave a face to sexual roles America chose to ignore or discredit, but presented it in so perfectly crafted a form that the music had to be ignored for the message to be rejected. Prince was the last moment before his control became common to audiences everywhere. Eventually, when he attempted control how and where his music was consumed by policing reproductions of his work on streaming and videos services online, this control would tragically erase him from the public consciousness. But that would come later, in 1979 he still had a world to change. That this change was so fully-formed then shows how inevitable it would be.

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."

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