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- The Retrographer, Issue 87 (February, 2 0 2 2)
The Retrographer, Issue 87 (February, 2 0 2 2)
Big Thief, MJ Lenderman, Pinegrove, Sharon Van Etten, Beach House, Saba, Amber Mark, Yung Kayo, Huerco S., caroline, Stephane Grappelli, Stuff Smith, and more!
The Retrographer, Issue 87 (February, 2 0 2 2)
Bulletins
I played my first full-band show on March 9th! If you were there, thank you for coming. If you missed it, watch the whole thing here.
I’m putting out new music every Tuesday for the next four Tuesdays (starting tomorrow). Stay tuned!
“Flower of Blood”, Big Thief (Spotify / YouTube) – One of the most distinctive colors in Big Thief’s long, variegated, multifarious new album, an explosive saturation of sound, overexposed and dripping, pregnant with emotion and yearning to drink in precious life.
“You Have Bought Yourself a Boat”, MJ Lenderman (Spotify / YouTube) – Funny sad honky tonk that rips with a sense of humor that lands as early as the very first lyric. Lenderman is sad and funky like Levon Helm, lovelorn like Gram Parsons, a twang and a twinge.
“Iodine”, Pinegrove (Spotify / YouTube) – Slow, patient, throbbing with pain, only occasionally encumbered by Evan Stephens Hall’s usual predilection for grandiloquence; Time trudges on and living with the way things are is infinitely harder than making them change.
“Used To It”, Sharon Van Etten (Spotify / YouTube) – Van Etten has gravitated toward stadium-scale gothic synth pop over the course of her last few albums, and it suits her enormous, sonorous baritone beautifully. It seems to pick up matter in its eminence as this song progresses, growing truly massive by its close.
“Masquerade”, Beach House (Spotify / YouTube) – For decades now, Victoria Legrand has found melody after melody as good as this one, elegant and timeless, shuttering in slow motion among twinkling harpsichord, laser beam bass, and tittering hi-hats. There is no bottom to it.
“One Way or Every N***a WIth a Budget”, (Spotify / YouTube) – Meditative psychedelia, rife with gnomic paradoxes, pitfalls of celebrity, what Joni called “the perils of benefactors, the blessings of parasites”; or as Saba did, “New crib by the seaside, on the one way street though.”
“Darkside”, Amber Mark (Spotify / YouTube) – It’s Mark’s “Thriller”, a perfect showcase for her powerful voice and even better ear. If Three Dimensions Deep is already a contender for album of the year, this song sets the firmament as her ceiling: “Your astronomical kiss / Constellations shoot sensations through me to the sky.”
“Save Her”, Yung Kayo (Spotify / YouTube) – Swirling, twinkling, dreamlike, a mobius strip of distorted bass and angelic singing, with Kayo’s autotuned warble punctuating above it.
“Plonk VI”, Huerco S. (Spotify / YouTube) – At almost ten minutes, Brian Leeds builds a scintillating world from an almost immobile bassline, synthesizers and drums popping up around it like crocuses.
“Dark blue”, caroline (Spotify / YouTube) – Like Explosions in the Sky, Hex, or even Talk Talk, caroline build a naturalistic landscape from woody, nonlinear instrumentation and band arrangements that billow to sails the size of the sky. The chantlike vocals are luminous, and light the instrumentation around it ablaze.
One Album for February, 2 0 2 2
Jazz was born in America, but it crossed the ocean with soldiers and took root in Europe. Musicians who strove and struggled stateside were welcomed with open arms in Paris and Stockholm where Dixieland took on new life and melded with continental traditions. As a boy in Belgium, Jean “Django” Reinhardt fell for the music Americans brought with them after the first world war and, at first on violin, then later on banjo and historically on guitar, birthed a new branch of jazz sometimes called “Gypsy Jazz”, a reference to Reinhardt’s Manouche Romani background. In 1931, the guitarist met a French-Italian violinist named Stéphane Grappelli and, in 1934 cofounded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, undoubtedly one of the greatest ensembles in the history of the genre.
Grappelli’s youth was defined by destitution: His mother died when he was five and, when his father was drafted into the Italian army the next year during the heat of the world war, was sent into an orphanage where food was so scarce he he scavenged for scraps. His father reclaimed him after the war ended and resumed their life together in France, where his musical career dawned. The elder Grappelli pawned a suit to buy Stéphane a violin, which his son learned to play on the streets of Paris by watching other players. His journey led him through brasseries, hotel orchestras, and the tutelage of classical players, all the way to a melodic style that festoons the Quintette’s best recordings.
Back in the United States, closer to the birthplace of the genre, Hezekiah Smith picked up violin from his father and traced the birth of the music with his own hands. Hezekiah – who went by “Stuff”, a name he gave others when he couldn’t remember theirs – played with Jelly Roll Morton in the 1920s, then Nat King Cole, then Ella Fitzgerald on his beloved instrument Big Red. His sound, reared in America, reflected the blues roots of jazz, and his instrument seemed to roar and groan especially when fed through an amplifier. He captured the sound of singing with his violin with great potency, making him one of the most-loved players of his era and genre.
Grappelli and Smith would meet many times, but perhaps never so sweetly as they did in a 1957 date at Paris’s Barclay Studios. That recording, Violins No End, sits with the best jazz violin recordings ever released, like Duke Ellington’s Jazz Violin Summit. The two round out the picture of possibility on the instrument, backed by the towering Oscar Peterson trio, including guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Ray Brown, and guesting drummer Jo Jones.
The group primarily tackles the American songbook, starting with “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”. It is a paragon example of a song done innumerable times, highlighting solos both from Grappelli and Smith, whose styles couldn’t be more distinct. Brown takes a beautiful, nimble solo himself, keeping the sweet melancholy of the song simmering even as the rest of the instrumentation fades away. Similarly delightful is their approach of “The Lady Is A Tramp”, taken sprightly and up, Smith’s violin screaming, skipping, and chattering, Grappelli’s peeling off long trains of thought, interspersed with Peterson riffing tightly over the beat, phrases piling up on one another. Listening to this quintet is like watching five men with very different strides somehow walking at the same pace, keeping conversation seamlessly despite their differences.
But perhaps even more delightful are the album’s lesser-known tunes, like the hooky “No Points Today”, which roils on Peterson’s rumbling five chord before leaping into birdsong solo sections, first from Grappelli then from Smith, sweet then soulful. As good is the ambling “Chapeau Blues”, which begins as an ace Peterson recording before inviting the title cards in about a minute and a half in. As the title suggests, this is the bluesiest passage on the album, but shows the two violinists evenly suited to stretch out over their twelve-bar circumambulations. Ellis takes a rather laconic solo, savoring every note, letting his statements sit in the air as Peterson offers occasional hallelujahs from the piano chair.
Interestingly, the remaining tracks on the album don’t feature Grappelli, but rather feature live performances from a gig Smith booked with the ensemble later the same day. Hearing his stentorian violin ring and groan in a hall brings his playing to life, showing the infectious electricity of not just his playing but his sound. Beside Ellis, one of the greatest guitarists jazz had ever known, Smith sounds the rightful progenitor of the inflammable psychedelic guitarists who would reinvent the instrument almsot exactly a decade later. Smith picks up heat and energy within bars of each solo he starts, guiding the group through wide dynamic berths on “Desert Sands” and “How High The Moon”, which opens with a gorgeous showcase solo from Smith; closing balled “Moonlight in Vermont”, contemperaneously owned by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on their collaborative recordings, takes on wholly new life under his nimble fingers and bounding bow.
Jazz spanned oceans yet didn’t fracture. Its language may have dialecticized, but its instrumentation, source material, and spirit shone through the terra nova it claimed. When great violinists held its melodies, it sung and shimmered, shouted and hummed.
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#87 February, 2022 | Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith, “Violins No End”
#69 August, 2020 | Special Issue
#29 May, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Aja”
#27 March, 2017 | Wire, “154”
#16 April, 2016 | RIP PRINCE
#15 March, 2016 | Prince, “Prince”
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