The Retrographer, Issue 66 (May, 2 0 2 0)

June 02, 2020

Moses Sumney, Perfume Genius, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Lucinda Williams, Adeline Hotel, The Soft Pink Truth, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Kehlani, Massego, Drake, Future, Young Thug, Ka, the Meters

The Retrographer, Issue 66

Bulletins

Ten Songs for May, 2 0 2 0 | Listen to these songs on Spotify and YouTube

“Bless Me”, Moses Sumney (Spotify / YouTube) – Sumney has never used his changeable, towering voice to explore a song as epic and ascending as this one. By its end, above stately horns and exploding drums, he’s streaking through the sky, then warping out of sight like a dispersed cloud.

“On The Floor”, Perfume Genius (Spotify / YouTube) – Fighting heartbreak, running from it, striking it from your mouth, doing everything you can to keep your mind elsewhere, but you’re no match. It’s faster than you, perseveres longer, cares less for your solace than you do.

“Running With Our Eyes Closed”, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (Spotify / YouTube) – This song’s circling mistrust is somehow written into its guitar riff. Isbell is a crack guitarist, and his slide playing has become the emotive secret weapon that brings so many of his songs into relief.

“Good Souls”, Lucinda Williams (Spotify / YouTube) – A lullaby about togetherness for a time of shaken confidence and an unknown future: “Keep me with all the ones who help me to home, who guide me along when I'm feeling hopeless, who help me stay fearless, and help me stay strong.”

“Trying For You”, Adeline Hotel (Spotify / YouTube) – Dan Knishkowy played with Devra Freelander in Adeline Hotel up until her tragic death. Hear her here again, especially as the song swells back for a final coda, one last reminder of a beautiful artist lost.

“Sinning”, The Soft Pink Truth (Spotify / YouTube) – This song swells and squawks, glints and glistens, rises higher and higher in vibrant cacophony until a kind of aural population crash blows it away like pollen in the wind.

“Rain On Me”, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande (Spotify / YouTube) – Ariana specializes in turning lemons into lemonade, second only really to her counterpart’s fellow telephonist Beyonce. Sometimes stepping out into the deluge is better than staying dry where you are.

“Hate the Club”, Kehlani and Masego (Spotify / YouTube) – A truly universal feeling: “Tired of going out, scared I'll run into you.” Doing something you know you shouldn’t, but you just can’t help yourself from. 

“D4L”, Drake, Young Thug, and Future (Spotify / YouTube) – 2015’s dream trio links up for a tribute to the group that did “Laffy Taffy” in 2005. And as long as they’re stretching time, “I been in the cut for thirteen thousand months...” Relatable!

“Old Justice”, Ka (Spotify / YouTube) – Kaseem Ryan isn’t often wistful or nostalgic, but here he looks back on the struggle and the sense of mission it brought. When he reminisces on how he used to “pull solo missions, wishing to get off mass transit”, you can almost hear him smile.

One Album for May, 2 0 2 0

The Meters, “Rejuvenation” (Reprise, 1974) (Spotify / YouTube) 

The annals of pop history are pinnacled by groups that gutted it out in the clubs, backing artists before breaking out on their own. Groups like these have untold hours delivering energy and performance to bar patrons; Refined musicianship and the ability to “serve the song” (meaning, don’t try to sound good yourself, try to make the whole thing sound good); Huge memorized songbooks to take requests from the crowd, and stretch them out to keep people dancing. The E Street Band, the Attractions, the Revolution – the known names that came after the “and”. The rare group among these – The Beatles behind Tony Sheridan, the Band behind Ronnie Hawkins – became the main attractions themselves, surpassing the leaders they once supported.

The Meters’ emergence as one of these iconic bands wasn’t immediate. Soon after high school, keyboardist Art Neville formed the Neville Sounds with his brothers Aaron and Cyril, as well as George Porter, Leo Nocentelli, and Ziggy Modeliste. When his brothers left the group a few years later, the Neville Sounds decided to back artists rather than disband. Allen Toussaint made them the backing band for his label, Sansu Enterprises, in the mold of the Funk Brothers at Motown. Touissant enlisted the group for his own recordings, as well as Lee Dorsey’s Yes We Can, and Betty Harris’ “There's A Break in The Road”. They worked records, bars, and clubs all throughout the Bayou, bringing New Orleans’ jazz and blues sound into its next moment: funk.

When the group produced its first, eponymous album in 1969, they opened with “Cissy Strut”, a song that would become their best known, a riff and groove imprinted on the sound of funk forever. Through 1970, the group would produce two more albums of largely instrumental tracks – peaking with 1969’s Look-Ka Py Py – united in sound and feel: Nocentelli’s clean, hiccuping guitar, Porter’s singing basslines, Neville’s whirring organ, and Modeliste’s one-man-drumline kit. These records have most in common with groups like Booker T. and the MG’s: endless, skipping grooves, with masterful playing and earworm riffs executed with smoothness that belied their complexity. The group had become not just a great band, but a band that could back anyone; Not just excellent instrumentalists, but a group that produced instrumentals as good as any that existed.

In 1972, on a new label, The Meters tried for another evolution: Becoming the frontmen they had for so long backed. Cabbage Alley jams, grooves, and, expanding on 1970’s Struttin’, really sings: The group wrote vocal hooks sung by Neville. They were challenging themselves and broke through to a totally new space that was spacey, proggy, and melodic. It was the first peek into the apex they’d achieve two years later on 1974’s Rejuvenation. 

Rejuvenation is the Meters’ first album with no instrumentals, and is as much a rejuvenation as it is a metamorphosis: No purely instrumental song would fit on this album by New Orleans’ iconic instrumentalists. Instead, the brilliant performing and arranging they lent to artists like Dr. John accompanies their own songs. They’d become the lead without leaving the backing band behind.

Take opening track “People Say”: Each player enters sounding indivisible from each subsequent player, as if they’re being unmuted from a board: First, Nocentelli’s sweeping guitar; then Modeliste’s light, propulsive drumming; then, Porter Jr.’s foundational bass, with shimmering tambourine behind it. Quietly, Neville’s organ chimes in, then again on piano. This would have made for a brilliant Meters song on albums past, or an apt backing for Dorsey. But instead, Neville’s voice cuts in, matching the drive of the band with the urgency of the problems of the mid-70s. Then, in harmony, the whole band joins for the chorus, a hook fit for Sly and the Family Stone, and a band fit for Aretha, all in one.

Rejuvenation spins through a diverse tracklist: Slow, loving ballads like “Love Is for Me” and “Loving You Is On My Mind”, psychedelic jams “What ‘cha Say” and “It Ain’t No Use”, first-ballot funk grooves “Africa”, and “Jungle Man”. Amid these tracks is “Just Kissed My Baby”, a song in the mold of “People Say” built around a handful of the funkiest riffs in any song. The obviousness of the parts are reflected in the purity of the sentiment: The rush of new romance. 

Among Rejuvenation’s best is “Hey Pocky A-Way”, which bears the hallmarks of the brassy main line of a parade: Modeliste’s rumbling set cooks, his snare drum tripping along the rhythm. The band knows when to make itself a part of the kit, too – Nocentelli palm mutes on his guitar in time with the march of the set. When Neville calls out “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey”, the whole band seems to call from an imaginary second line, “Hey pocky a-way!” They may have grown far from their origins as a backup band, but the DNA of New Orleans only became more evident in their music. 

The Meters, piece by piece, transformed themselves from being an incredible backing band, to becoming the main attraction. In doing so, they printed ideas into funk’s language, just as it was being written. It’s because of them that the rollicking sound of New Orleans is the genre’s most fertile corner. It was just like they sang it: “Feel good music, I’ve been told, is good for the body and it’s good for the soul.”

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