The Retrographer, Issue 79 (June, 2 0 2 1)

July 13, 2021

The Dark Shed, Soccer Mommy, Lorde, Rostam, Tyler, the Creator, Youngboy Never Broke Again, Ty Dolla $ign, Prince, Migos, Megan Thee Stallion, Deafheaven, Sir Orfeo, Novos Baianos

The Retrographer, Issue 79

Bulletins

Ten Songs for June, 2 0 2 1 | Listen to these songs on Spotify and YouTube

“Coast”, The Dark Shed (Spotify / YouTube) – Temperatures soared past 100 in the typically temperate Pacific Northwest last week; On the other side of the continental shelf, New York sous vided in a muggy soup of humidity. Just before the ocean immolated, Winston sang over a tropical shimmy: “There were no lovers on the beach, fruit left in the trees, outlines in the sand, no fairness to the present, no holes left in the plan.” 

“Wide Open Spaces”, Soccer Mommy (Spotify / YouTube) – Betwixt the burning coasts, Sophie Allison still finds hope for small town kids looking for a bigger future: “It takes the shape of a place out west, but what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed. She needs wide open spaces, room to make her big mistakes. She needs new faces, she knows the high stakes.”

“Solar Power”, Lorde (Spotify / YouTube) – Some people don’t care much for this irreverent song, especially following the gleeful nihilism of Melodrama; Some are just sick of Jack Antonoff. Chill out, we all miss George Michael.

“Unfold You”, Rostam (Spotify / YouTube) – “I can see you smiling underneath that jacket” describes the sheepish charm of Rostam music nicely. Standup bass, acoustic piano, flutters of synthesizers, choralists, and his own beatific coo muddle together in a fragrant cocktail.

“WUSYANAME”, Tyler, the Creator, Youngboy Never Broke Again, and Ty Dolla $ign (Spotify / YouTube) – One of several tracks where Tyler’s flow seems to pay tribute to his late successor Pop Smoke; And by inviting two of music’s most unmistakable voices into the fold, he convenes one of the best convocations of come-ons since Ty Dolla’s turn on “OTW”.

“Born 2 Die”, Prince (Spotify / YouTube) – A cautionary tale halfway between “Dororthy Parker” and Curtis Mayfield; and while Prince’s latter-day admonitions can be decidedly less fun than the carefree licentiousness of his prolific youth, this masterful jeremiad, tumbling from leaving the church to suicide has all the drama and elegance of the blaxpoitation it references.

“Avalanche”, Migos (Spotify / YouTube) – Barely any beat for a minute, delaying gratification like a classic soul group, Migos frame themselves with The Temptations and make the comparison click. The trio haven’t changed much, but if it ain’t broke...

“Thot Shit”, Megan Thee Stallion (Spotify / YouTube) – This is what you get for pissing off Megan Jovon Ruth Pete. Hem her in and she’ll burst at the seams; Try to control her sexuality and she’ll just get raunchier. The contradictions are her strength: “Hot girl but I’m still the coldest, I’m the big homie but I ain’t the oldest.”

“Great Mass of Color”, Deafheaven (Spotify / YouTube) – George Clarke forgoes his black metal peals for a new color wheel, showcasing a vocal range somewhere between Morrissey and Neil Halstead. Kerry McCoy’s delicate lattices of plucked guitar mean something new behind these milder vocals; less imminence and more arrival.

“So Long”, Sir Orfeo (Spotify / YouTube) – With little pings of the drum machine tittering like a radiation monitor, synthesizers gauzing through space like luminiferous aether, Max Wareham drifts beyond the heliosphere into a placid unknown. 

One Album for June, 2 0 2 1  

“Acabou Chorare”, Novos Baianos (Som Livre, 1972) (Spotify / YouTube) 

When Novos Baianos’s second album Acabou Chorare was released in 1972, singer and guitarist Moraes Moreira was 25; singer and percussionist Baby do Brasil was 20; singer and tambourinist Paulinho Boca de Cantor was 26; guitarist Pepeu Gomes was 20. Despite their youth, the group had already been playing out for years and developed an opinion on the world they were inhabiting. It was too dour, too dark. Brazil had fallen under military coup in 1968, soon after the band started, and devolved into dictatorship soon thereafter in no small part thanks to American intervention. But at the same time, the country’s economic fortunes began to change, and a young generation of artists seized upon new opportunities to suggest a better future. Under these fast currents, Novos Baianos released Acabou Chorare, or (in English), “No more crying”.

The group were acolytes of João Gilberto, having met the north star of bossa nova through their lyricist Luiz Galvão. Behind the pyrotechnics of Gomes, Novos Baianos was originally set out to create a rock opus of twisting guitars in tribute to his late hero Jimi Hendrix, as they had on their first album, 1970’s É Ferro na Boneca. Originally from Salvador, they had moved to Sao Paulo, and then ultimately Rio de Janeiro’s Botafogo district to record, but despite drafting a great band in A Cor Do Som, they couldn’t get it going. Sometime during their third try, a knock came at the door and, unexpectedly, Gilberto walked through. He sat in, played guitar through the night, then came back the following day to do the same.

The wit and ebullience of their elder Gilberto’s music changed the band; before leaving, he taught them Assis Valente’s “Brasil Pandeiro” – or, “Brazil tambourine” – which became the opening track on the band’s second album. Starting such a brilliant album, so full of originality, innovative ideas, melody, ideas, and most importantly encouragement for a beleaguered nation, with a thirty-year-old bossa nova song planted it perfectly in the very musical culture it was about to transform.

“Brasil Pandeiro” gives way to “Preta Pretinha”, a Moreira composition with lyrics from Galvão that goes four minutes before unleashing exploding gang vocals, only the first of Novos Baianos’s myriad superpowers, and then riffing on choice melodies and lyrics (“I was going to call you / while running the boat”). The group’s arsenal expands on “Tinindo Trincando”, a duet between Baby Consuelo’s lead vocal and Pepeu Gomes’s virtuosic guitar. It’s at this moment that the album seems to have simultaneous consonance with brilliant music from across the world: It is rumbling samba in the vein of Gilberto; It harkens Gomes’s fascination with Hendrix; It seems a spiritual cousin to Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life four years after, especially “Another Star” and his guitar workout “Contusion”. 

Acabou Chorare’s centerpiece is a three-song swing starting with the title track, which expounds on its exhortation by contrasting a lover’s sorrow with the beauty and kindness of nature – bees making honey, frogs in a pond – and ends with a guitar riff so shimmering it seems to float off into the air. It’s followed by “Mistério do Planeta”, whose skipping samba gives way into genuine hard rock, Gomes’s lead guitar firing off rounds of riffs in a puff of psychedelic smoke, followed by Consuelo’s return on “A Menina Dança”. On ‘Besta é Tu” (or, “Beast is you”), Moreira seems to ask: whether there’s another life after this one or not, why not live in the moment? It’s simple endorsement of freedom and love encapsulates the ethos of the album, and obviates the need for much after it: The album closes with an instrumental flex from Gomes on "Um Bilhete para Didi" and a recapitulation of "Preta Pretinha", wishing the listener well before its close.

Acabou Chorare, with its soaring melodies and expert musicianship, is unsurpassed by any other album in its core enduring message of optimism and joy in a society that can seem needlessly beleaguered. Novos Baianos were young, talented, and bursting with ideas; they found novelty in their forebears, and inventiveness in their contemporaries. They saw no sense or reason in the dourness of their moment, nor did they indulge it with patience. Inspiration bloomed around them, a future theirs to seize.

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