The Retrographer, Issue 83 (October, 2 0 2 1)

October 31, 2021

Pat Kelly, Indigo De Souza, Coco, Hand Habits, Prince, Zack Fox, SCHWILSON, Tirzah, Wiki, Young Thug, For Against, and more!

The Retrographer, Issue 83

Bulletins

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

“I’m On TV”, Pat Kelly (Spotify / YouTube) – Last year Pat released Creatures, this year Bored Mortician. Both are as good chronicles of the aimlessness and displacement of unemployment as I can name. It’s like barely knowing who you are, “I lost my tattoo”; “None of my keys fit”; “I’m keeping my eyes down.” 

“Darker Than Death”, Indigo De Souza (Spotify / YouTube) – This song unfolds, and its story reveals itself, lyric by lyric, part by part. Its musical development mirrors its narrative. Just listen to the drums: Just hats and snare, then the kick comes in, then, with terrible realization (“You wouldn’t look me in the eyes”), the full kit. 

“One Time Villain”, Coco (Spotify / YouTube) – Maia Friedman’s voice couldn’t be easier; it’s almost absent, like she’s singing to herself when no one is listening. “I was having lunch with you in a vinyl booth when I was 22,” she remembers. “When I was 24, people told me what to do, I don’t need it anymore.”

“More Than Love”, Hand Habits (Spotify / YouTube) – Meg Duffy starts this one patiently, but pieces fall in place one by one, denser and denser, until this song is somehow racing while moving at the same speed. When the lead guitar breaks through, it’s like a fissure of lightning breaking the sky - and briefly the song - in half.

“Do Me, Baby (Demo)”, Prince (Spotify / YouTube) – One of Prince’s most iconic songs, as core to his legacy as any of his biggest hits. The working version of one of his sultriest and most seductive songs, now exposed to the public; Raw, yet fully-formed, and so purple.

“fafo”, Zack Fox (Spotify / YouTube) – Teased initially as a lost track, Fox surprised his fans by including this song on his record. It’s his typical juxtaposition of comedy and darkness: “Came up in Atlanta, me and mama had the struggle” he confides, before referring to himself as the “Zone 6 McLovin”. The duality of man.

“Splashdown Spillway”, SHWILSON (Spotify / YouTube) – Deep in the pandemic, Kyle Wilson set down his saxophone and decided to beat the video games that had vexed him as a kid. Then he picked up his synths and took these games past their maps, writing scores to levels that were never made, the childhood fantasy living on forever and disappearing into ghostly, pixellated tendrils in its final moments.

“Sink In”, Tirzah (Spotify / YouTube) – Slow motion, the metallic clink of its programmed cymbals and gated snares hanging like lanterns in the air. There isn’t much music that sounds quite like this.

“Grape Soda”, Wiki (Spotify / YouTube) – “No more bad dreams,” Wiki raps. “Keep having one took a Toyota Camry to the grand prix like there must have been a mistake – and when I win, I wake.” So why was it a bad dream? He won. “Whatever it is that’s mine I'll make the best of it, so the dream I had I'm starting to make sense of it.”

“Fifth Day Dead”, Young Thug (Spotify / YouTube) – Are Thugger’s eccentricities eccentric anymore? Music has been so transformed by his influence that his rhythmic phonemes and warbled melodies are ubiquitous now. A toast to an artist who remains singular in a sea of imitators. 

One Album for October, 2 0 2 1  

“Coalesced”, For Against (Words On Music, 2002) (Spotify / YouTube)

“Heave a heavy sigh,” Jeff Runnings sings. “Say that it’s alright.” Not exactly a hallelujah of deliverance for a song about finally finding the one who will understand and accept you. Heaviness defines his band For Against; They always recall the size of a weight lifted. Hardship and alleviation are entangled. “I make this promise here and now,” he sings. “As long as oxygen allows, I want to be with you and find the kind of love that transcends time, an everlasting peace of mind.” And what does that love mean in Runnings’s personal story? “I need someone to prove to me this planet still revolves,” he explains toward the end of the song and, unclear if he’s repeating himself or confirming that indeed it does, he repeats three times, “This planet still revolves.” Resolution doesn’t even appear on arrival.

For Against’s 2002 album Coalesced illustrates, in as wide-open tones as the band’s Nebraska origins, the glory of love and the darkness that makes it so essential. Steve “Mave” Hinrichs’s chiming, delayed guitar shimmers like the sunlit wheat on the album’s cover; Drummer Paul Engelhard’s pummeling, driving playing, machine-gun snare and twinkling ride, shake the earth beneath the band; Mike Mogis’s production makes every sound sparkle. And Runnings, with his hoarse, desperate voice and pacing bass playing, describes the varying loneliness and belief of this album’s internal life.

“So Long”, one of the album’s strongest moments, is wrought in some of its sunniest colors, even as it seems enshrouded in darkness. “Daylight arrives, you never felt so assured, and now every day is a great big blur for so long,” he sings in desperation, before grimly reassuring himself, “Nothing this bad can ever last so long.” This is Runnings’s core perspective: Don’t say things are good without paying tribute to how bad they have been, and how great the hardships overcome were. Meaning comes from context, strength is qualified. “Let’s string some lights on that half-dead dream that lives across the street from me,” he offers. “Some say that timing is everything; you were everything for me for so long.”

For Against’s expressions of sadness are never without gratitude; expressions of love are never apart from the desolation they relieve. “I’ve been so afraid – afraid of thinking anyone could find relief in me,” Runnings says, knowing that relief is not what he can ever earnestly deliver. He is always rooted in realism, doing his best to represent life’s alloy of ups and downs, sadness and happiness, losing and finding, altogether.

He questions, endlessly, what really matters, what’s real, what even exists. “Intangible things don’t mean so much – isn’t that sad?” He wonders on “Fuel”; “The things I hide, they have no value, but now I’m afraid to care,” he says on “Coalesced”. That song is where he displays the depth of his insight, arriving at a soaring chorus, soaring over sparkling guitar and cymbals: “Through time and test, we’ve coalesced, there’s nothing we can do. Through storm and stress, I still love you best, I don’t want to be without you.” The very duality, the pressure cooker that creates all the complexity of Coalesced, is the very derivation of its meaning.

Were Runnings’s lyrics and performance divorced from the rest of his band, the import of his soul-searching might not land for the listener. The grandness of the music – the scintillation shining from this group – shows just how deep the conflicts and resolutions pondered therein are. And when darkness falls, the glint turns into a smear. “You’re not the reason my sun shines,” Runnings admits on “Shelflife”, before revealing he “Cried about passionate longing over a very long time.” And yet, he concludes, “Left alone, realized – haven’t felt so free in such a long time.” For almost two minutes until the song’s conclusion, drums rumble, bass charges, guitar dives, a torrent of wordless emotion giving voice to that particular coincidence of longing and freedom.

When the final track, “Love You”, comes in – a calm instrumental under flickering “Ticket To Ride” guitars, lyrics aren’t even necessary. The story, and For Against’s deep inner life, are implied in every pick and hit. Merely saying the title of the song no longer carries the simplicity and purity love so often does in popular music; The conflict, sacrifice, longing, and history that precedes it surrounds it, infuses it, is unmistakable. Its weight, meaning, and worth sit there plainly. Intangible things may not mean much to Runnings, but love and its costs couldn’t be more tangible.

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