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- The Retrographer, Issue 45 (September, 2 0 1 8)
The Retrographer, Issue 45 (September, 2 0 1 8)
Lucinda Williams, Noname, Yves Tumor, Young Thug, Elton John, Joey Purp, Ravyn Lenae, Jack Red, Action Bronson, Lil Wayne, Ava Luna, Pinegrove, Lana Del Rey, Sandro Perri
The Retrographer 45 (September, 2018)
Bulletins
IAN WAYNE’S FIRST SINGLE / VIDEO. Watch it now!
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“Self”, Noname (Spotify / YouTube) – Fatimah Warner is making serious points, don’t get it wrong, but she’s enjoying herself as she does, continually stopping to check that you’re seeing what she’s doing; “You really thought a bitch couldn’t rap, huh?”
“Noid”, Yves Tumor (Spotify / YouTube) – Even given its earworm hook and soulful string loop, the shadow in Tumor’s lyrics hangs over everything, just as it does throughout this brilliant, uncompromising album.
“High”, Young Thug and Elton John (Spotify / YouTube) – The jubilation around this song is well-deserved but look, kids, it’s been on YouTube for a while now. It just took Elton’s blessing, plus a choice photo-op.
“24k Gold / Sanctified”, Joey Purp, Ravyn Lenae, Jack Red (Spotify / YouTube) – We’ve seen Joey have fun before, and watched him cut it up, but it’s wonderful now to see him treat a song like it’s just a playground for him, or a church, or a confessional, or a love letter.
“Demon”, Lil Wayne (Spotify / YouTube) – I love to see Wayne smile; I love to hear him rap like it makes him smile too. For all his misadventures and bad instincts and occasional guitar playing, there’s really still nobody like him when he decides that’s what he wants to do.
“White Bronco”, Action Bronson (Spotify / YouTube) – It’s not that Bronson is sick of natural wine or aged gruyere, but it isn’t a coincidence that food doesn’t come up at all here; Now it’s all music, clothes, women, music again. “I’m just out here, living my best life”, however that goes.
“Centerline”, Ava Luna (Spotify / YouTube) – The sprawling corps de Luna dons their Devo Energy Domes, analog synths, and motorik drums (not for the first time) for a romp.
“Paterson & Leo”, Pinegrove (Bandcamp / YouTube) – I missed the warmth and homeyness of Evan Hall’s songwriting, even after the pall fell over it. It’s back here: “Here’s another place in our town / Here’s a loophole / Here’s the steeple / Here’s another, underwater / Here’s our friendship / Why, I ought to.”
“Venice Bitch”, Lana Del Rey (Spotify / YouTube) – So much ink was spilled half a decade about Elizabeth Grant’s artifice. What did it mean? How did her collagenized fantasy reflect upon us as a people? What if, with the romance of this song, the fascination with the facade was just that: Surface?
“In Another Life”, Sandro Perri (Spotify / YouTube) – Impossible Spaces loomed like a lone desert monument in the musical country of 2011. In Another Life is more like a tunnel into the sky.
One Album for September, 2018
One of the great American myths is that, just walking the streets here, the thermals of history could sweep any one of us up from obscurity into a glittering salvation. That’s the hook in the mind of an actor that tows them to Hollywood, or the songwriter playing the late slot at Pete’s Candy Store. Hold it at an angle and it’ll glint in the light.
Nashville is a town of striving expats, but it’s got no such serendipity. You become a local to Nashville by putting the time in, and that popcorn machine of a music town won’t barely look you in the eyes if it doesn’t recognize you from a bar the weekend prior, not to mention the year prior. A songwriter pulls herself up there.
From Lake Charles, Louisiana originally, Lucinda Williams spent time in Jackson, Mississippi and Los Angeles before making her way to Nashville in the 1980s. She worked slowly, an album out once or twice a decade. 1992’s Sweet Old World, her third, splayed twelve torrid, dark songs – heartbreak, loss, destitution, societal ills – in a sweet, vibrato voice above the warm tones of Nashville production. The contrast was beguiling and mysterious. Here and there, however, Sweet Old World hinted at something more unified. “Pineola” and “Hot Blood” abandoned that album’s pretty face for something more honest.
Then she was gone again, for years. In 1995 she came close to releasing a follow-up recorded in Austin, but canned it, left her producer, and had her label sell the rights to Mercury. She returned to Nashville and, with a perfectionist’s ear, re-recorded the whole thing. It stayed in her hands until 1998 when she finally released her worn-in masterpiece: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
On this new album, Williams seemed to shed all pretense, airs, presentation: On her title track, she sings, “Broken down shacks, engine parts / Could tell a lie but my heart would know.” The whole album is a bit like that. Rough and worn, but honest and genuine. Her lean ensemble – Donald Lindley on drums, John Ciambotti on bass, Gurf Morlix on lead guitar – is augmented by a number of boldface Nashville names in Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Ray Kennedy as well as the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan. Together, they paint a picture of a well-rehearsed bar band in rehearsal. Laid back and with no more strut than what comes naturally, which happens to be a lot.
Williams’ songwriting is as spare and direct as ever, but there are new views – natural and familiar even as they are new. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is speckled with tributes to the places Williams came from, or that it seems like she might know: Lake Charles; Jackson; Greenville. It’s not clear what her connection to the last is, but she cops to it in the wry way that her lyrics often do: “Don't wanna see you again or hold your hand / Cause you don't really love me, you're not my man.” If Greenville isn’t a place Lucinda knows, she might be telling you in a way only someone close would understand.
As country as Lucinda could be, she’s really a rock singer: “Joy” is a thumping juke joint jam like Dylan’s “Meet Me In the Morning”; “Still I Long For Your Kiss” calls to the boardwalk like early Springsteen; “Drunken Angel” opens like Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May”. But each time, whatever their bar band redolence, Williams takes it someplace different, homey, and new, down a country road like the one on the cover and in the title.
Lucinda Williams is not a great American myth; She’s not even the storyteller spinning it. On Car Wheels, she’s the story of someone not even waiting for the myth to apparate before her. She’s the stone-real days and nights, the spirit of the prosaic – or, as she sings, “Smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon / Car wheels on a gravel road.”
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."