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- The Retrographer, Issue 57 (September, 2 0 1 9)
The Retrographer, Issue 57 (September, 2 0 1 9)
Grimes, i_o, Angel Olsen, Soccer Mommy, Danny Brown, Brittany Howard, Post Malone, Meernaa, Ana Egge, Molly Sarlé, Sturgill Simpson, Bonnie Raitt
The Retrographer, Issue 57
Bulletin(s)
Office Culture’s second album, A Life of Crime, comes out November 1st. Please come see us play our release show at Union Pool that day, and then see us on tour!Dates:11/2 - Kingston, NY - The Beverly w/Will Stratton, Alexander Turnquist11/3 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool w/Renata Zeiguer, Alena Spanger (ALBUM RELEASE SHOW!)11/8 - Cambridge, MA - Club Bohemia w/TBA11/23 - Pittsburgh, PA - Cattivo w/Mrs. Paintbrush, Cosmic Wind11/24 - Charleston, WV - Mountain Stage w/Fruit Bats, Cataldo12/6 - Portsmouth, NH - Button Factory Stage w/Righteous Bucks12/7 - Portland, ME - Sun Tiki w/Dead Gowns, Jeff Beam12/12 - Philadelphia, PA - Pharmacy w/Flat Mary Road, Distant VoicesOne date might have jumped out at you above – we’re playing NPR’s Mountain Stage! Get tickets here or hear it live on the 24th.We also put out our second music video for “I Move in Shadows”.Lastly: we pressed the album to vinyl! Pre-order it here.
Angel Olsen's video for "Lark" is unbelievable. It was made by Ashley Connor, who has made so much amazing stuff.
Grimes and i_o, “Violence” (Spotify / YouTube) – The first time Claire Boucher added the drums to this loop, Trent Reznor woke up in a cold sweat.
Angel Olsen, “Lark” (Spotify / YouTube) – Everything about this song points skyward: The subdued vocal performance, the distant guitar, the avian title, the mounting throb of the strings. “Dream on, dream on, dream on…”
Soccer Mommy, “lucy” (Spotify / YouTube) – “I look in the mirror, and the darkness looks back at me” Sophie Allison sings to “lucy”, a sweet moniker for the prince of darkness. Allison seems pointed toward Garbage, and this her “Special”.
Danny Brown, “Dirty Laundry” (Spotify / YouTube) – One of the most consistently-satisfying tricks in rap: Distract the listener with something absurd like “...so we did the humpty-hump in a Burger King bathroom” and, while the listener is chewing on it, blindside them by dropping the beat.
Brittany Howard, “Goat Head” (Spotify / YouTube) – “When I first got made, guess I made these folks mad,” Brittany says, before recounting a harrowing way her interracial family was terrorized, over a stuttering duo of Nate Smith and Robert Glasper. “I’m one drop of 3/5ths.”
Anna Egge, “What Could Be” (Spotify / YouTube) – Just an incredible recording: full of lovely imperfections. Scratchy guitar playing, audible inhalations, who cares? Egge is loaded with moments that couldn’t be replicated, and are, as such, just so.
Molly Sarlé, “Karaoke Angel” (Spotify / YouTube) – The most beautiful sounding song on a notably beautiful-sounding record. With Mountain Man, she’s one of three gorgeous voices, and even alone she needs no ornamentation to sparkle.
Post Malone, “Myself” (Spotify / YouTube) – Posty is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, in no small part because he’s been able to generally avoid seeming like a bigheaded egoist. He even seems humble here, his lamentation on how money and fame don’t give meaning, they rob it.
Sturgill Simpson, “All Said And Done” (Spotify / YouTube) – Sturgill’s predilection for psychedelics is well-documented, but who knew he could do Dark Side of the Moon on a dime? This trudging trip is, believe it or not, one of the lighter moments on a sludgy, but despite “It's all been said and done by now”, he still seems to find some originality.
One Album for September, 2 0 1 9
Bonnie Raitt dropped out of college her sophomore year to play with blues bands in the south. A slide guitarist, she backed up Mississippi Fred McDowell at the Philly Folk Festival and put out a solo album the following year, covering Robert Johnson and Sippie Wallace. Her blues were her credibility, her hall pass, the grain of realness that endeared her to a small but loving flock of fans.
She dared to give it up on her fourth album, 1974’s Streetlights. Listeners wanted blues and didn’t get it. Rolling Stone blamed production: “while it sets off Raitt’s voice as a beautiful artifact, [it] fails to exploit her great strength as a blues singer.” Robert Christgau didn’t like the arrangements: in his words, Raitt “pays her tribute to schlock four times over… when the strings and woodwinds rise up, they dispossess her.” “It may be easy to lament the suppression of the laid-back sexiness and organic feel of Raitt's earlier records,” Allmusic wrote a bit more charitably, “but there's still enough here in that spirit to make this worthwhile.”
Other artists had pivoted away from what they were beloved for and were spanked for it, too. Many fans didn’t get Bruce Springsteen’s theatrical Born to Run. Folkies didn’t like Bob Dylan’s electric Bringing It All Back Home. Like on her first three albums, Raitt is an interpreter on Streetlights; Unlike the first three, she made no allegiances to the signifiers fans had fallen for. Because she appeared adorned – made-up – so many missed that she was as open as she had ever been.
Today, when you hear John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery”, you likely hear Raitt singing it. For Prine to have written a song that began “I am an old woman…” and concluded as profoundly as he did took brilliance; Raitt’s rendition – as a then-25-year-old – is his equal. She sings easily, wisdom framing the song’s consternation and reflection: “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come back in the evening, and have nothing to say?”
Part of what makes Streetlights affecting is that it was truly a modern soul album for its day. Raitt is as indebted here as ever to her idols at Atlantic Records, and several of her arrangements, like ”Ain’t Nobody Home”, “You Got To Be Ready For Love (If You Wanna Be Mine)”, or “What Is Success”, could easily be handed to – or duets with – Aretha Franklin.
Streetlights is Raitt’s soul album, and even lightly wades into the ascendant disco that was just becoming en vogue in its moment on tracks like “Got You On My Mind”. Yet part of the album’s brilliance is the seamlessness with which varied tones, from Laurel Canyon to the Berkshires, sit nearby. It begins with a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “That Song About the Midway”. If it wasn’t clear, critics didn’t like the thermal strings producer Jerry Ragovoy nestled throughout the record. But Raitt’s voice is so clear and light, focusing on those accoutrements seems live a diversion. Same with the title track, a composition from Little Feat’s Bill Payne, the Carole King impression “Got You on My Mind”, and an unmistakable James Taylor composition “Rainy Day Man”. Raitt’s voice coasts and flies when she rises to her upper range, emerging as freely as if she were letting go of a deep breath.
It paved the way for what Raitt had coming, too. 1989’s Nick of Time and 1991’s Luck of the Draw saw her reach a peak that would’ve been impossible were she still cloistered in the genre that launched her. That change – painful at the time – opened the door for the artist she became: A child that wouldn’t grow old.
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