- The Retrographer
- Posts
- The Retrographer: Issue Two (February 2015)
The Retrographer: Issue Two (February 2015)
February 2015
The Retrographer: Issue 2
I had no idea when I started writing The Retrographer that it would be so hard to distill any given month of music to ten tracks and one album. Now that I've focused in, I've found a world of songs screaming to be heard. And this month in particular has been bountiful. Natalie Prass' eponymous album and Drake's If You're Reading This Its Too Late alone could have furnished most of the picks in the playlist. Hell, plenty the songs I cut could still wrestle their way onto the year-end best-of (I'm looking at you, Aphex Twin, Ava Luna, and Title Fight).But in cutting out songs you like, you notice patterns about the songs that do make the cut. This month's issue, I found, is all about love and hate (or maybe love n' haight). These songs deal with protest and reconciliation, jilts and jolts, self-doubt and the feeling that nobody is on your level.This is theme is counterbalanced by this month's album, Eric B and Rakim's 1987 Paid In Full. This album elevated craft above the eternal tussle of love and hate, evolving the terms of the genre forever.As with last time, the rules are:
Tell me what you liked and didn't like
Share it with your friends
Make recommendations of songs and albums you think deserve the attention
Tell me a story
I haven't quite figured out how to share this discussion yet, but you can expect the Tumblr to be a part of it somehow eventually. As for now, it's just a good way to get feedback and continue the conversation. Also, I know I said my rule was to do the album reviews in 10 sentences but this month I got a little... carried away. For an album like Paid in Full, however, I can be forgiven.Finally, to quote Rich Conaty, "Live fast and dye your hair, but always remember that rhythm saved the world."- CharlieNote: I'm changing the monthly naming convention to reflect the previous month of music, rather than the month the issue comes out. You may not care, but it just means OG readers will have two "February 2015" issues.
Ten Songs for February, 2015
"Chiri Hari", Samba Touré (Spotify / YouTube) - The Malian bluesman invokes Ali Farka Touré, his mentor and musical, though not genetic, father with spare guitar harmonies and lyrics mourning the crisis in his home country. The album title, Gandadiko, translates to "Burning Land."
"Know Yourself", Drake (Spotify / YouTube) - Say what you want about Drake. He's heard it all already, it won't deter him. He dropped an album with no hype and every single track charted. He got us hooked on a lyric we barely understand, over a wind chime piano, in the presence of Rastas, with me laughing on the intro.
"Bird of Prey", Natalie Prass (Spotify / YouTube) - Natalie Prass may strike you first with her voice, which is sweet, high in the mix, and as quiet as if she were talking only to herself. Then you see how she records, crouching, alone, as if she's been kicked in the gut. Next Matthew E. White's lavish Memphis-style production, right from the Dusty Springfield cookbook, like something J Dilla would sample. She wears her pain with head held high.
"The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.", Father John Misty (Spotify / YouTube) - Josh Tillman is a real dick, enjoying the company of other assholes who simply lack the narrative pulpit. But at least he's got a sense of humor about it. And why, then, is this song titled from the view of his hosts? It’s that special kind of assumed omniscience that befits an ornery, slightly paranoid fake mystic who loves hallucinogenics.
"Don't Wanna Fight", Alabama Shakes (Spotify / YouTube) - With an opening squeal, Brittany Howard bares the travails of a life lived check to check. How can she claim she's giving in when she sounds so resilient?
"The Blacker the Berry", Kendrick Lamar (Spotify / YouTube) - Here's what Kendrick has to say to those who stare at him too long at the gas station, whose hate he can see in their eyes, whose< society let his people choose between jail and death, and protest for Trayvon while killing their own.
"Multi-Love", Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Spotify / YouTube) - For just a second, you can be convinced you're listening to a resurrected Freddy Mercury; transgender visions keep up the illusion; an opening fugue dresses it; a refracted guitar line walks it into the night.
"Kelly", American Wrestlers (Spotify / YouTube) - Listen to how closely this song sits to your ear. It's like it was recorded in a carpeted basement, even when it opens up, with piercing guitar licks and far-off drum loops, in dreamy visions of broken bones and rock and rollers. So maybe it was.
"Made My Mind Up", Mikal Cronin (Spotify / YouTube) - Cronin moonlights as a bassist in Ty Segall's Black Sabbath-aping touring outfit. But at home? He's a big-hearted and loving flag-carrier for the church of Chilton. He elbowed you in the mosh pit but then got you an ice pack.
"Pedestrian at Best", Courtney Barnett (Spotify / YouTube) - The likeliest story is Courtney Barnett wrote this song in a panic after "Avant Gardner" leapt to many of 2013 and 2014's best-of lists, so she does the thing she does best: confesses the truth ("I've got no idea how I even got here!"). Great music video, too.
One Historic Album for February, 2015
Rap was invented at block parties in the Bronx of the 1970s. DJs and MCs looped hit songs to keep the party going and used the mic to keep the people engaged. The most charismatic DJs turned their crowd control into its own thing and soon at events like those, the performance became just as big an attraction as the dancing.So rappers basically sounded like zealous DJs for the first decade or so of the genres existence - it was a lot of "Clap your hands, everybody!" and the like. But, as always happens, the next generation grew up seeing rapping as the focus, rather than a feature, of those parties, and wanted to see what could be next. No artists meant more to them than Eric B. and Rakim.Paid in Full, the duo's first album, essentially created rap as a genre distinct from its boogie-down roots. In the cadence of a mobster explaining the caper to an accomplice, Rakim cooly coined scores of rap's archetypal adages. Almost none of this record's proverbial lines, now almost 30 years old, has gone unquoted by another rapper, and, for rap fans, listening to Paid In Full for the first time is a bit like flicking on a blacklight: you'll start seeing its mark everywhere. To paraphrase the idiom, it made everything that preceded it obsolete, and left its mark on everything that followed. Or to quote Rakim himself, "The rhyme gets rougher as the rhyme goes on."Part of what made Rakim so singular was his assertion that rap needed no gimmicks to be a complete and stunning art form. This comes into sharpest relief when contrasted by his rivalry with one of the period's other foundational figures, Big Daddy Kane. Where Kane - Rakim's true equal as a rapper - festooned his iconic singles and one-of-a-kind smoothness with loverman tunes and tight choreography,, Rakim undressed the art form with a cold, precise focus on craftsmanship, both in subject and practice. The album's bristling opening and thesis statement, "I Ain't No Joke", paints the newness of his monomania in the first verse: "I write a rhyme in graffiti and every show you see me in deep concentration, because I'm no comedian." "My Melody" is, at first blush, ironically titled; Rakim is to this day the genre's most monotonous rapper. But the title's significance comes into focus with the slice of each lyric: the melody, insofar as there is one, is a long, unbroken laser, boring Rakim's inevitability deep into the listener, the competition, the form itself. "Pucker up and whistle my melody," he raps on "I Ain't No Joke". "There'll be another rough rhyme after this one."Check Out: "Paid In Full"; "I Ain't No Joke"; "Eric B. Is President". Skip: "Chinese Arithmetic" and "Extended Beat".
Best-of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to streamBest of 2014 (Honorable Mentions)Best of 2013 (Honorable Mentions)Best of 2012Best of 2011