Of The Music: April, May & June of 2022 round-up
3 albums released during the second quarter of 2022 that struck a chord & thoughts on sharing thoughts.
If older generations are critiquing music around the axis of nostalgia and younger ones only for an audience of their peers and largely prioritizing a superficial sense of identity/aesthetic over the actual content, then who is driving this plane?
I’ve delayed this post partly because of a busy month, partly because I feel like I’ve been struggling to really connect with the pieces of work I’ve listened to as of recently. What’s more, a few questions that have been brewing at the back of my mind for a while are coming forth. I’m lucky to exist in circles- both online and off- of like-minded people who care about music a lot, or enough to pay attention, listen wholly, go out of their way to explore and share their findings. I’ve decided to use this space to share my point of view because I care about something. Caring about music brings me joy. But is that caring useful to someone other than myself to take joy in- and perhaps a few like-minded friends? Generally, who needs music critique nowadays and what should a music critic’s job- or the agenda of a person like any other who happens to put some more time, effort and thought into reviewing music and share the outcome in public spheres- entail in the current climate of music as background sound, financial disengagement and heavy time constraints on staying informed?
Between waiting for music to progress according to one’s taste vs tastes progressing according to the music that’s being made/pushed, can we say one is better than the other? Just as favorite doesn’t equal best, I think a focus on the individual approach might prove more useful than any other viewpoint.
The era of mere people being able to shape music tastes by opinion alone is long gone and social media is oversaturated with words like “good”, “terrible”, “masterpiece”, “trash”, “mid”, when it comes to spaces where music is a main topic. It’s clear to see how social media and music, two concepts that are formed, lead and propelled forward by identity, can be detrimental ingredients to a cocktail that causes endless discourse, as soon as people from different echo chambers happen to cross algorithm-generated paths. Discourse of apparently no real impact, since albums and shows seem to sell out for the audiences they’re meant to please anyways, despite any potential grudge the anonymous mass of “the internet” might be holding against them or the artist in each case.
I really do believe critique is- or should be, first and foremost- an act of love. While that means taking on the political responsibility of pointing out wrongdoing where it’s present, I feel as though, when it comes to music, empty negative takes have become the first example associated with criticism. Which is no surprise when it’s obvious that, aside from older generations simply being too set on what they see as good based on the consequences of the inaccessibility of their times, years of exposure to the trendy angry, quick-witted, shallow, and very often sexist outsmarting of pieces of media and their fans labeled as “criticism” has morphed its actual definition into a tool used to solely tear down a work for Twitter and Youtube-raised generations, urging consumers to look for flaws before anything else.
The widely agreed upon as cataclysmically intelligent, online argument go-to, end-all, mic drop phrase of “it’s not that deep” is echoing in my head as I’m typing this, which I will pointedly choose to ignore. Of course, everybody is allowed to dislike things, even wihout fully understanding why or feeling the need to share that reason. I want to believe people who clicked on this music review post collectively agree on the need for more fruitful discussions about music to some degree. So I would like to emphasize that this is an effort at, first and foremost, highlighting the love; saying “this is how this made me feel, thus I hope it can be an addition to your life that leads to interesting emotions or discoveries”. A move to bring something worthy of attention in my eyes to someone else’s rotation. What should come from a place of curiosity, honest engagement and appreciation instead of entitlement. A low place, rather than a high one.
I know that what I don’t want to do here is maintain a space to act as a calendar of releases. No judgement whatsoever if first impression reviews work for you. To me, it’s too much of a hustle, a sentiment I wish to never associate with my music listening if I’m able to. As I said, I happened to not feel significantly moved by a lot of recent releases this time around, so I didn’t want to half-blindly pick a few apples that seemed nice to have a “decent-sized” list to present. It’s hard to get a good taste of something when you’re somebody who likes to try a bit of everything. I don’t know how to work around that yet- my interest in all different kinds of music and desire to keep up is not diminishing any time soon- but I feel that time is necessary, at least in terms of having an opinion to offer. Let music settle, age, try and try again in a different context, explore, see what works for me overall; those are the things I’m trying to keep in mind.
Today I’m sharing with you the 3 albums released during the second quarter of 2022 that- like, really- struck a chord with me. Brought to you by the brilliance of Ursula K. Le Guin (apparently).
P.S. Sorry, April.
(Note: in no particular order.)
MARINA SATTI - YENNA
This is going to be quite lengthy because, given that prologue, you can imagine the state of excitement I was in when eventually something of resonance this striking knocked on my door. Though Greek, I must admit I don’t listen to Greek music all that much- for my own enjoyment, at least. That’s not to say I’m not familiar with whatever’s popular: the classics, the songs spanning generations, the hits hailing from each genre, or the party songs, what you’ll typically hear on a night out or the radio. More like I can’t help but notice a large gap of substance as far as current top hits in Greece go- a list oversaturated by standard, overdone catchy-formula pop, the trap wave, and occasions of both worlds coming together in club hits aiming at ephemeral virality- or, I guess, a type of substance that speaks to me enough to pay attention.
Enter Marina Satti, the 35 year-old singer and songwriter of half-Greek, half-Sudanese descent who gained international attention with her 2017 single, Mantissa (: fortune teller), a standout internet and radio hit, rich in harmonies and optimism and trading the mainstream sound of the time for prominent bagpipe and handclap percussion, manifesting the artist’s clear traditional music influences- her debut and only other single at the time being a cover of traditional song Κούπες (: cups)- into something completely new and exciting.
YENNA (: birth) came an entirety of five years later, after a spaced out run of singles, such as the intro to the record, YIATI POULI M' (DEN KELAIDIS) (: why my bird, don’t you sing)- a haunting rendition of yet another traditional song, this time a lament from the region of Thrace referring to the fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) through a metaphor of a bird having its wings cut off and therefore not being able to sing like it used to- melismatic and menacing, ending on the abrupt sound of a closing door, then followed by an instant mood change in PALI (: again), a danceable, radio-friendly record with its lively rhythm and gentle vocal delivery over layers of backing harmonies reminiscent of the sensibility of Rosalía’s El Mal Querer, about a one-step-forward-two steps-back relationship. PONOS KRIFOS (: secret pain) later echoes the same sentiment, leaving however no room for questioning the thematic repetition in such a short runtime (half of the album’s tracks don’t surpass the three-minute mark), by featuring the singer at her most ethereal and alluring vocal performance.
YENNA is a tasteful and visionary amalgamation of Satti’s Greek, Arabic and Balkan influences conversing and exploding next to each other into polyphonic shapes never quite seen before in the Greek scene, able to summon collective memory through the traditional elements, while the record feels like a litany of sorts; PROSEFHI (: prayer) is one of the most intimate moments, where Satti equates a lover to a holy figure and ASE ME NA FIGO (: let me go), following the atmospheric INTERLUDE, draws the listener in with a quiet, almost threatening repeated chant. KRITIKO (: Cretan) tells a chilling and cinematic story from the perspective of a bride-to-be anticipating her violent death over a slow-brewing beat, evoking the intensity of a traditional Cretan wedding with interjections from gunshot sounds, yet autotune-heavy and featuring a trap-inspired drop in its second half. ADII DROMI (: empty streets) is my personal favorite on the record, mixing moody nighttime electronic production with sudden handclaps and a piercing clarinet leading into sections that, for just a few seconds, manage to recreate the drunk atmosphere at the peak of a Greek glénti (: festivity/party in the traditional sense).
SPIRTO KE VENZINI (: match and fire) borrows lyrics from the famous laïkó (: song of the people/popular song)/tsifteteli (: a loose Greek variation of belly dancing) Rixe Sto Kormi Mou Spirto, offering the most sensual moment of the album- also the track that, shortly after the release of the record, infiltrated the Greek top hits playlists. The tender NANI (: lullaby- or the typical word used in song to lull babies to sleep), penned by Sokratis Malamas, a household name among Greek musicians in the genre of contemporary éntekhno (: art song- a genre characterized by its poetic lyricism and folk instrumentation), precedes the album’s, one could say, surprising closer, given the title: MIROLOI (: lament), a track treading the lines of traditional Greek funeral songs combining elements from the regions of Roumeli and Macedonia- a passionate expression of grief through a repeated choral chant and lingering, accelerating percussion up until the record cuts off, leaving the exhale to the listener.
Death and birth (or rebirth), therefore, become one in YENNA, under a dark veil of multicultural sound, deeply rooted in the pain of tradition yet emerging forth carrying an air of novelty and freshness. In Satti’s words (by POPAGANDA), the album “tells the story of its own creation”, encompassing all the emotions felt and lessons learned throughout the painful process of giving birth to something new. “Polyphony is not just meant in the literal way that there are a lot of voices. It also has a metaphorical aspect, the exchange and communication with others. Music is the thing that brings us together.”, she tells NBHAP and I feel like that is true of all the intersecting elements of this record; coexisting and interacting with one another, perhaps not with a goal of creating harmony despite their differences, but instead merging into a triumphant, beautiful chaos where individuality and collectiveness are celebrated for what they both bring to the table.
The thing about how listening to this album made me feel is it reached almost too deep to be put into words simply and coherently. Similar to how our roots are always there even if we can’t see them from a sky-high point of view, having mightily grown far up above everything on the ground. Are there aspects of your culture you’ve tried to escape, mocked, found cringeworthy, kitsch, a little ugly, yet on occasion have found their way into your heart through a cellular type of consciousness you forgot could exist? That hit of realization was perhaps the strongest emotion I experienced with YENNA and its accompanying visuals.
Ursula K. Le Guin says in her speech at Mills College in 1983 titled ‘A Left-Handed Commencement Address’:
Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
I had the chance to see Marina perform the entire thing twice and both times the audience was left asking for more. Check this release out even if you don’t speak Greek (“please signify by nodding”!). It illustrates one of the most unique soundscapes I have ever found myself immersed in.
Perfume Genius – Ugly Season
Continuing with, coincidentally, another artist of Greek descent; Through much less melody, even sparser singing and moving away from previous indie rock sensibilities into fully avant-pop- à la Björk and Arca- territory, Mike Hadreas draws on earlier work to present the most experimental side of Perfume Genius to date, in a record that holds space for expansive, creative feelings, “filled with fantasy and drama” as he tells iNews. Ugly Season comprises of songs written for The Sun Still Burns Here, a dance piece Hadreas worked on with choreographer Kate Wallich in 2019. It was a process that took place before 2020’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, which Ocean Vuong described as “music to both fight and make love to”. Τhough Ugly Season takes a slightly different approach sonically, the truth of the songs being “made resonant through the body’s triumph” is still here, blending in with other defining elements of Perfume Genius’s musical identity, such as grey expressions of the queer reality, a distinct, unapologetic rawness-or nakedness- and always, a cinematic touch.
Just a Room, the otherwise symphonic opening is juxtaposed by a descriptive stanza whispered right in your ear (No pattern, no bloom / Where I’m taking you / Flat and static / Just a room, just a room), cutting off on timid, isolated glockenspiel notes and strings that rise along a big inhale. The space is set, the atmosphere heavy, the body electrified.
via iNews:
Hadreas says that “Herem” was inspired by research he was doing into Sparagmos, a Dionysian ritual that appears in Euripides’s The Bacchae where women pulled apart a bull with their bare hands.
The song- which Hadreas describes as an introduction to a utopian place- moves around interlaced wind instruments and lyrically features an array of (mostly) ancient male Greek names that tie into mythological figures at times, unfolding in a haunting, indeed ritual-like manner. Voice during the first half, instrumental crescendo in the second appears to be a formula that repeats throughout the record, contrary to the opener’s insinuation, since most of these tracks do seem to bloom in their own curious ways. Pop Song, unsurprisingly my personal favorite- I love a good twist of pop music on its head- offers the album’s first inorganic moment sonically, opening with a sprinkle of gentle, Prince-like synths, and progressively filling out with playful percussions, chimes and polyphony. Somebody in the song’s Youtube comments said it makes you feel like a woodland creature in a strangely visceral way. I honestly couldn’t have put it more accurately.
Ugly Season to Hellbent is a terrific run. The titular song sports a reggae rhythm Hadreas’s voice hides underneath- twisted, muted, possessed, at times crying out in pain (I turn from God / Slick with rot / Thick as Vaseline / I turn from love). “Bitch, it’s ugly season” takes me back to the majestic Queen off 2014’s Too Bright and “No family is safe, when I sashay”. Provocative and triumphant in their vulnerability, declarations of what Ursula K. Le Guin writes of in ‘The Dispossessed’: “to make a virtue of your peculiarities” or, in the words of Hadreas, to reimagine dysmorphia and ugliness as “a source of power instead of things that cannibalise you.” The body- Hadreas’s fascination with it carrying on strong from his previous work- is the centerpiece of this record, its exploration and transformation palpable throughout- almost like the songs come together by a shapeshifting, skin-pulling force melting through them and deciding their direction.
Psychedelic, 9-minute-long Eye in the Wall features the euphoric chant of “Give it up”, its second half feeling like the sighting of blinding white light at the end of a film, before bass and percussion take over, raising tension into jazzy Photograph, which builds with soaring wind instruments mixing with their own distortion, then quieting off behind airy choral melismas. Hellbent- seemingly a callback to Set My Heart On Fire Immediately’s character-inspired Jason, though apparently the repetition of the name is simply a coincidence- is a chilling track, setting the tone with a helicopter drone and heavy distortion of what seems to be an electric guitar, underlining the storytelling with a meticulousness reminiscent of programmatic music; a peak cinematic moment that works best in the album’s context.
Operatic, atmospheric and rich in tension, Ugly Season in its entirety possesses the intimacy and vulnerability of every other Perfume Genius project to date, while offering a variation in style that is more than able to proudly hold its own among the artist’s catalog. A bit of a left turn that feels undoubtedly right, down to its chaotic core.
Florence + The Machine – Dance Fever
From Queen to King and more reveling in the power of dance; Fresh off the High As Hope (2018) tour and in a heady rush of inspiration, in early 2020 Florence Welch set off to New York City to prepare for the next Florence + The Machine project with acclaimed producer and songwriter- among other things- Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey). It was going to be a concept album, recorded at Electric Lady Studios and based on Welch’s newfound at the time fascination with the phenomenon of choreomania, the medieval European “dancing plague” that involved groups of people dancing erratically until they collapsed from exhaustion or injury, leading some to death and others to a state of ecstasy. Today, Dance Fever is the band’s pandemic album, which Welch describes as a mature twin to debut, Lungs (2009) or, in other words, a horrific fairytale.
The plot twist enters the scene as soon as mellow, melancholic Back In Town- referring to none other than New York City- wraps up, both in terms of its recording and place on the record. Welch’s stay in New York barely lasted a week after the outbreak of the virus and having to return home to multiple sick family members, resulting in an on-and-off creative process spanning two years, the album being split between two producers- Antonoff and Dave Bayley of Glass Animals- and it morphing into an amalgamation of analog and digital moments as, in Welch’s words, the songs recorded during lockdown refused to be “tamed” via re-recording with Antonoff- an inconvenience that ultimately proved reflective of the times, as she quickly realized “there’s no smoothing this out”.
Welch has always rhetorically capitalized the “s” in Song, has treated music as somewhat of a god, a divine presence or power that exists above her and what may even be her personal wishes at times, that she is a servant to and a vessel for. Gigs are a church, a place where she’s been able to find spirituality and a special kind of absolution during the roughest days of struggling with addiction while touring. Dance Fever is a sober album. And thus, one where the mythology is antagonized and prodded at like never before. Dreamy harmonies turn into ragged breaths, as “cathedrals flatten” in Cassandra, loud thumps and battle cries echo throughout Heaven Is Here, a feral number which has the band at their most stripped instrumentally, yet pulsates with concentrated rage. The lilting, Maggie Rogers-assisted Girls Against God is where the humor in that self-awareness kicks in: “crying into cereal at midnight”, while waving an aggressive fist at the sky in the same breath. “When I decided to wage Holy War / It looked very much like staring at my bedroom floor” may pose the record’s most revealing line, an artist’s statement telling of the silent doom in balancing between those different worlds: the mundane and the divine, the girl and the myth. “A golden heart or a golden voice”.
“This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” Ursula K. Le Guin writes in ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ and indeed, at the very center of this disturbance around self-perception lies the idea that perhaps the Song itself has always been a beast, instead of angel. “The deal you make being a songwriter is that […] you have to feed the monster all the time. […] No one has been spared in my life.” Welch tells Zane Lowe.
The questions, therefore, arising at the time-sensitive prospect of settling down with someone certainly aren’t easy to answer. Grand opener King- the world’s very first taste of the record and still, my favorite track- despite its assertive hook (I am no mother / I am no bride / I am king) and Welch snapping the neck of- and eating? - a lover in the music video, is not a rejection of motherhood, but rather a vulnerable scream of agony at the seemingly futile attempt to reconcile the contrasting feelings of a softening towards the concept of domesticity and the desire to preserve the rockstar. Crescendoing across invisible stadiums- you can so easily imagine thousands of women singing along at the top of their lungs- and exploding into one of the most excruciating cries in her vocal catalog, “King” is for confidence, for the humor in irony, for Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Iggy Pop; all the male icons Welch has followed in the steps of her entire career, only to realize she eventually has to make choices they didn’t need to.
Morning Elvis closes the album in an echo of King, with Welch reminiscing on past breaking points during her early days, perhaps taking the crown for the saddest song to ever make a Florence + The Machine record, as well as most outright self-aware. Featuring the gut-wrenching line of “If I make it to the stage, I’ll show you what it means / To be spared” and the audio of a cheering crowd in its outro (this reminded me of another closer I loved recently, Rosalía’s SAKURA, which I talked about here), the epilogue is an ode to performers turning their pain into something beautiful, as well as a product of Welch’s gratitude towards the impersonal thing- power, Song- that always seemed to care more about her than she cared about herself, even if surviving meant being propelled further into destruction at times; the double-edged realization of “I could always do the show”.
I tend to come to works that explicitly reference the pandemic, or any real-life event for that matter, with a sort of reluctance I can’t put a clear name to. I guess it has something to do with my inclination to using music as escapism- I’m a true pop lover after all, can’t help but feel safe in the open space pop music holds and the power it renders the listener. In Dance Fever, the disruptive occurrence of lockdown and its consequences hangs heavy as Welch sings about friends getting ill and being sent home packing. However, there’s room. It is a record that came to life on the brink of many things- Covid, the Russian invasion in Ukraine just a couple of months after music video shootings wrapped up in Kyiv, Welch’s potential withdrawal from the music scene to fulfil her wish for stability. Really, perhaps it’s how it’s always been. “To exist in the face of suffering and death / And somehow still keep singing” seems to me as universal and timeless as it gets, though its weight feels more current than ever. It certainly takes a special persona to deliver such a lyric in a way that doesn’t reduce it to its surface. Whether Welch achieves the purpose is up to each listener to personally decide. All I know is that much gets me through.
It so happened that this album got released around the time I was attempting to get back into contemporary dance after years of having quit and just as I was starting to doubt myself, Choreomania and its tense buildup of layered percussions rekindled the spark in an instant. Admittedly, this is not my favorite Florence + The Machine record, neither the most cohesive or evocative one, as the rest of the more optimistic or optimistic-sounding tracks like Free and disco- yes!- number My Love- I love this song as a stand-alone, but not necessarily in the context of the album- aren’t thematically on par with the much stronger ideas on its darker side, or in the case of the latter, sonically stray a bit too far from the whole body. At times the record feels sparse, which makes me think I wouldn’t mind if the shortest in length cuts weren’t there at all. Nevertheless, Dance Fever doesn’t aspire to do much for the listener in the first place. The catharsis, it achieves. But its strength is in Welch’s gaze inwards. It is not an experience that calls for self-insertion as much as quiet voyeurism, a peek into the artist- Florence without The Machine. If the project had one piece of advice to offer, it would be that sometimes you simply have to let the helpless optimism of spring seep in. And that- perhaps- could be enough.
Thank you so much for caring to check my words out! I’m so glad to have you here!
I hope this was an enjoyable read, and if you decide to give any of these releases a listen, I hope the music resonates with you.
My favorite track from each album I mentioned has been added to the ‘Of The Moment’ playlist, where you can find most of the songs mentioned on the newsletter.
Comments are always appreciated! Feel free to reach out to me via email for literally anything, as well. I would love to hear from you!
Have a wonderful rest of the summer.