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- The Retrographer, Issue 42 (June, 2 0 1 8)
The Retrographer, Issue 42 (June, 2 0 1 8)
Dennis Wilson, No Rome, Tierra Whack, Snail Mail, Kanye West, Young Thug, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Ty Dolla $ign, Kamasi Washington, Father John Misty, Sam Evian, Hatchie, Panic! At the Disco, Beyonce, Jay-Z
The Retrographer 42 (June, 2018)
Bulletins
What a month for music: Beyonce and Jay-Z, Kanye, Nas, Kamasi Washington, Drake, Ariana Grande, Snail Mail, Kids See Ghosts, Father John Misty, Death Grips, John Coltrane, Shawn Mendes, Oneohtrix Point Never, Lykke Li, Jay Rock, Natalie Prass, Gorillaz, Prince, and who knows how many others released new music. Each month I put every song I like in a playlist and cut it down to a lean 10: This month I had 87 candidates, 30% of the songs I’ve dogeared so far for the year. Whatever music you’re into, it is a good time to be listening.
It was a cool month for me, too: I published my first piece for Pitchfork.
In honor of NBA free agency, here’s Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Jeff Green lip-syncing “Say Ahh”
Shout out to Andrew for putting me onto Margaret Glaspy and Julian Lage
Stevie doing “Do I Do”, one of the all time classic basslines
Listen to this playlist on Spotify and YouTube“Seventeen”, No Rome (Spotify / YouTube) – Matt Healy’s new Manilan muse sounds a little like Frank Ocean, a little like Justin Bieber. This refrain captures nostalgia for adolescence for someone just on it’s other side: “Now I’m getting older and it makes me think about how things used to be so easy.”“Hookers”, Tierra Whack (Spotify / YouTube) – Look at Drake and Migos, and you’d swear albums are getting longer; Look at Kanye and you’d be sure they’re getting shorter. Every song on Tierra’s 15-track album is exactly one minute long, just enough to wish you had more – it might win the argument itself.“Anytime”, Snail Mail (Spotify / YouTube) – Maryland’s Lindsey Jordan with a divine send-off to a relationship she wishes wouldn’t end: “In the end you could waste your whole life, anyways / and I want better for you.” Its heavenly guitar and synths arrangements carry it out behind her, “Still for you anytime…”“Wouldn’t Leave”, Kanye West, Young Thug, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Jeremih, and Ty Dolla $ign (Spotify / YouTube) – Despite turning into the relative you don’t want to run into at holidays, Kanye is still capable of eliciting sympathy. A MAGA-sized mea culpa for “slavery was a choice” from the guy who once railed against institutional racism and conflict diamonds. Weird.“Connections”, Kamasi Washington (Spotify) – Employing the same maximalism of 2015’s The Epic, Heaven and Earth is demanding and gratifying. Too long to really listen to in one sitting (still worth it), but too intense to put on in the background, it’s an odyssey on every song.“Hangout at the Gallows”, Father John Misty (Spotify / YouTube) – Once derided as a troll, the lesser antagonist of his Fleet Foxes bandleader Robin Pecknold, now Josh Tillman – once J. Tillman – is an artist unto himself, though occasionally still sometimes given to clunky metaphor, but undeniably here.“IDGAF”, Sam Evian (Spotify / YouTube) – Evian always seems apart from the world – on “Sleep Easy”, he sang, “You’re up baking bread / I’m still sleeping.” That liminal presence lives here too, in his lullaby singing and in this threadbare attempt to move on heartbreak.“Sure”, Hatchie (Spotify / YouTube) – Shining, shimmering splendor, the kind you’d hear from Heaven or Las Vegas-era Cocteau Twins. Harriette Pilbeam’s EP iridesces through its 19 minutes, starting here setting a tone that lasts throughout.“Dancing’s Not a Crime”, Panic! At The Disco (Spotify / YouTube) – Brendon Urie is among the most energetic people to ever live (if you haven’t seen his Vines, take a seat). This song captures all that energy in a cavalcade of cultural references and dirty horns.“713”, Beyonce and Jay-Z (Spotify / YouTube) – The Scott Storch-aping key stabs make the “Still D.R.E.” interpolation inevitable. Jay reminisces about wooing Bey from her last flame a decade and a half ago, and Bey flexes the invulnerability of their tested relationship.
The 1960s wore on and its idealism wore off. Nostalgics blamed Altamont, or the attrition of the Vietnam War, or the assassinations of King and the Kennedys. But there are innumerable smaller, stranger, more-private stories that helped erode the moment – stories of disillusionment, burn-out, violence and abuse. Big ideas shrunk on closer examination: Free love, Joni Mitchell soon declared, was simply a ruse for the guys; The “Can’t Buy Me Love” Beatles broke up amidst financial squabbles; Richard Nixon was elected.
At the dawn of the decade, a 16-year-old Dennis Wilson founded the Beach Boys with his brothers Brian and Carl, as well as his cousin and future father-in-law Mike Love. The group popularized a mythology of California with dozens of beloved songs that captured youthful longing and joy in heartbreaking, gorgeous tones. Part rock band, part vocal group, and blessed with a transcendent songwriter in Brian, they opened the blinds to the 1960s in a way that perpetuates a sunny memory of the era to today.
In 1968, Dennis was led to Charles Manson’s house by two hitchhikers. Like many, he fell under Manson’s spell, welcoming him and his acolytes into his home, paying for their niceties, vestments, and venereal medications. Manson turned the ballooning harem of women he lured to the house into servants. He even co-wrote a song with Wilson, the ebullient, “Never Learn Not To Love” that the Beach Boys later played on TV.
That Manson/Wilson composition was originally called, “Cease To Exist.” The nihilism its working title portended was horrifically realized soon after, as Manson and his cult murdered a total of nine people across the Beach Boys’ golden Sunshine State. Wilson fled the home he shared with the Manson Family months before, and ordered his manager to evict them. But it was too late. His complicity, or at least proximity, to the horror they precipitated had been revealed in papers and news reports across the country.
As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, Wilson’s behavior began to materially affect his health. The band took an acrimonious hiatus after their 1973 album Holland, leaving Dennis to his own devices, where he fell into substance abuse. His famously clear voice was damaged by extended alcoholism and heroin use, but he claimed he’d been in a bar fight which had left it haggard and raw. His boyish haircut and chiseled chin became lost in a brambled mane.
He was quiet for three years until 1976, when he approached the Beach Boys’ manager, backing singer, and Caribou Records head James William Guercio about a new set of songs he wanted to release: A searching, lost, profound album called Pacific Ocean Blue.
The Beach Boys’ association with the water is well-established but not unalloyed. For every “Surfin’ Safari”, there’s a more-complicated “Don’t Go Near the Water.” Pacific Ocean Blue begins with “River Song”, a sweeping, lush piece of music that begins with a sort of baptism:
Walking down by the river
Water running through my knees
River moves so freely
Oh, mighty river, endlessly
And then gives way to a panic about the life he’d come to live:
I want to cry, I want to cry
You got to do it, do it, do it
You’ve got to run away, you’ve got to run away
You got to do it, do it, do it
Against angelic backup singers, Wilson’s voice is revealed for the first time after its transformation as a tattered totem of pain, wandering, purposeful but lost, through the song’s soaring production. It’s startling to hear one of the previous decade’s beatific, youthful voices ran almost unrecognizably ragged – but no more startling than seeing his brother Brian wandering the pills aisle of his Radiant Radish health food store in a bathrobe, or Dennis’ own name alongside Charles Manson’s in news summaries of the cult murders. His voice is the sound of an illusion breaking apart to reveal a desperate truth, a price paid. It’s what makes “River Song” one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
Pacific Ocean Blue passes through a variety of sounds: Second single “You and I” is a 70s ballad in the style of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love?” of the same year; “What’s Wrong” is a jaunty blues not dissimilar from the Beach Boys’ “Student Demonstration Time”; “Friday Night” sounds like a lost Wish You Were Here cut. But these variables share a constant, as whatever pastiche or reference Wilson employs is enshrouded by the evil following him. It’s occasionally unsettling, and things seem somehow amiss. The way he sings “I'm the kind of guy who loves to mess around / Know a lot of women, but they don't feel my heart with love” on “Time” feels disturbed, almost like Oar-era Skip Spence – someone who has lost the ability to see those around him.
Pacific Ocean Blue also displays an abiding funkiness, partly thanks to unbelievable session musicians like James Jamerson, Hal Blaine, and Chuck Domanico. This groove – never natural to the Beach Boys – shocked his brother Brian, and add a seedy, stylish dimension to its darkness. “Time” ends with a gargantuan, stomping instrumental section, and isn’t alone on the album. The deep backup vocals on “River Song” are hypnotic, and “Dreamer” sits on a vibrating bass harmonica part as Dennis conjures bad memories from his past, singing about people who “couldn't get to heaven in their car.” In moments like this, the music seems lecherous, dirty. But this sound almost always breaks into some sort of healing mantra, solace from the demons that still pursued Dennis. “Moonshine” is sweeping and tragic; “Thoughts of You” is full of pain and distortions; “Farewell My Friend” is the album’s darkest hole. Even “Dreamer” breaks into a wholly different section, church-like, as he sings a prayer for peace and love, “Let the wind carry your blues away / That's all we're tryin' to say.”
Wilson was still hoping for the spirit of a bygone moment to save him, but it couldn’t. Pacific Ocean Blue sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but disappointingly only peaked at 96 on US charts, triggering finger-pointing from Caribou. A planned tour was cancelled, and later that year Dennis declared he had been fired from the Beach Boys. He was soon told he wouldn’t be allowed back in unless he went to rehab.
He tried, but Dennis couldn’t stay sober. He became homeless, wandering the west coast, getting into bar fights and checking in and out of hospitals, a ghost. Then one day he visited a friend with a boat in Marina Del Rey. After drinking heavily, Dennis decided to jump in the bay, to try to find items he’d thrown in the water three years prior. He dove in again and again, pulling up trash he said were his affectations, until he didn’t come up again.
The last song on Pacific Ocean Blue is called “End of the Show”, a private moment that fades soon: “Memories are real / It's wonderful to know you're alive.” It seems to summon Wilson, even decades after he was lost to the Pacific Ocean blue.
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."