Chronicle 2021: More Highlights
After many delays, we get back to our regular programming with albums to live for.
This wasn’t really my plan. After my last post detailing the highlights of Q1, I made it a personal goal to try to do these articles every month and a half or so. But life got in the way, so you’re getting only parts of albums I’ve wanted to talk about for the past 3 months. Most of them came out during Q2, some of them didn’t. And that’s somewhat the way it’s going to be for a while. I can’t complain about the quality of the year thus far, although I will say I tend to forget things more often. So the fact that these albums held my attention should say something about how special they are. And even then, I tend to forget myself often, so don’t take anything fully for granted. That being said, let’s get started.
Erika de Casier - Sensational (contemporary R&B)
The hidden, uncredited guest vocalist on every 2000s R&B song comes out of the shadows and has something to say. Mostly platitudes about not wanting to make a fuss, or the interests of needing to be nice and tender when going out with her, or the lack of interest she finds in bragging, or what turns her on, and what turns her off. All meanwhile the gentle sounds of those lost radio staples come back refined with modern production, in that way that it feels like watching through someone’s third eye. You can see and feel the strings in each conversation breaking or expanding, and you’re allowed to pass through every tiny crack in the space between every lover. It feels and sounds like pastiche rain that rings in a B-list porn movie, except it’s the closest you can get to A-list in the world.
But what makes this extra special is the meta aspect of it all. Erika de Casier, whether she’s trying or not, is recreating 2000s R&B with every note being just right, so tidy, to the point where it’s leaving the listener out of the equation. It’s all so pristine and divine, you’re bound to feel filthy by trying to step into this world. There’s never a moment where the facade breaks, and you’re bound to step in. The drama’s always at the right time, in the right place, the subtle and sweet cooing voice never cracks, and even if there are plenty of moments where she seems to invite you in (which will surely attract many creeps out there), it’s all for show. It’s all a show to demonstrate sounds of the past, a true love of what once was. Somewhat like going to an art gallery, except you need to be 2 meters away from every piece. That artistic distance, while it may seem off-putting and unattractive as a concept, actually enhances the project a lot more, since you’re constantly trying to cross the line, try to be moved beyond the superficial - and yet you can’t. Those downtempo beats are meant to be danced to by no one, but you sure can try. The streets weren’t meant to be walked. Isn’t that enticing?
Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR (singer/songwriter pop)
The kids aren’t alright - but then again, when have they been? Olivia is certainly not the first to try to become the poet of a generation, and she won’t be the last, but this first attempt is certainly nothing to scoff at. We’ve been told that this was melodrama a long time ago, so we should have been prepared for this. Sure, it’s easy to laugh at a 17 year old coming to the conclusion that “You betrayed me”, but a betrayal is a betrayal if one feels like that’s what something is, so yeah, he betrayed her, whether he wanted to or not. And the waltz in which most of this album lives in is a dazzling one, even if you’re grown up enough to stare at from a distance, as if you were a chaperone.
Big props to Olivia for learning how to pace an album correctly (something that even her mentor, Taylor, has struggled with her entire career). The one-two punch of “brutal”’s teenage angst manifesto and “traitor”’s confusion is perfect to set up the centerpiece of the album and Olivia’s career, “drivers license”, one of the best debut songs from a new artist in a long time - yearning, longing, and without the need to be self-aware about the longevity of its own sadness. As a songwriter, she doesn’t stray much from the literal and the carnal, and that’s fine - she’s got plenty of room to grow. Yet, the best moments come from the few bursts of realizing there’s more to look ahead, like the flip of the final chorus of “enough for you”, a song that, had she written it a couple years later, would have been worthy of being a new American classic (as it is, she’s still got that bluntness in her voice that is both her biggest asset and biggest weakness).
There’s really not much to complain about here - if anything, everything still needs to go a little bit further in order to be fully transcendental. “jealousy, jealousy” takes from alternative rock in a refreshing way, “happier” doesn’t land its resentment too well but the feeling resonates, and “hope ur ok” is a fine way to realize there is a lot more in life than this one relationship. But the best deconstructions of all this melodrama are the 2 follow-up singles. “deja vu” is a piece in constant crescendo, a realization that moments are just that, moments, and they can be replicated with someone else, as the production crunches through to feel the slightest bit better. And as a pop punk revival song, “good 4 u” is a punch in the face, where the beauty punches land even harder with all these moments of silence (“Remember when you said that you wanted to give me the wooorld…”) that put Olivia front and center in front of a black-and-white instrumental in search for color. And that’s where you realize this isn’t revenge: this is vindication.
BRUIT ≤ - The Machine Is Burning and Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again (post-rock)
Every work of art is inherently political, sure, but post-rock is not political like that. It’s not political the way it thinks it’s political. It thinks it says something through the paratext of the actual music, but for the most part, the songs being attached to certain song titles only get to generate certain moods and feelings, and not an actual, concrete political speech. So, yes, seeing a new post-rock band with a powerful album title taking cue from other post-rock acts coming back this year, it feels easy to know where this is coming from, and where it’s gonna go.
And then, you’re absolutely knocked off your feet. No, there are no surprises here, all the 4 pieces ebb and flow the way you expect them to. But the tenacity and intensity of these pieces is something the genre has been lacking for years. The opening minutes of “Industry” should already set you up for something different: long, distant calls from the lighthouse, distant seas slow burning and turning into ashes… and then the drums kick in and the marching beat is just the start. Crashes feel like ocean waves, the turning electronic strings hint at a gathering of thoughts to not be pronounced, and anger and resentment built from the insatiable. It takes a long while to properly explode, to the point that it might be hard to realize when it is exploding, since it always seem to reach a breaking point. The band works like a proper machine, as if everyone was staring at each other’s movements, not trying to one-up each other, but to enhance their performance. The use of space in the mixing is potent, as all the liminal spaces of composition are used to their advantage. And what’s the point of it all? To expand on a text about a society “built without competition”, without the burden of needing to go over the other, where every person’s intent matters as much as the next one’s. It makes sense, then, why this band feels so democratic.
They’re also democratic not only in the sense of every member getting to shine, but also in how to expand their own, wonderful melodies. For a band that feels so angry, they certainly have found a lot of beauty that can come out of being misused and replaced, like on “Renaissance” and “Amazing Old Tree”, especially the latter, which gets to explore their ambient leanings very well. It’s a reminder to always see what can come out of nature being nurtured, as they explore and comprehend the beauty in the minimal.
But, like it was just said, BRUIT ≤ are an angry, ferocious band, and realizing that what they used to love has been burned due to a mishandling of the system is something they won’t let slide, like on the final track, “The Machine Is Burning”. Something has been broken, and they won’t let it slide. During their incredibly well-paced moments of climax, they feel like standing in the eye of a misty hurricane, where the wind has become damaging and only what can be held in one’s hands ends up being saved. They’re sinister and bitter, but they take a hold of that which has been rotten and use it against the enemy. They even approach the epic and the sublime for a moment, as if they were superheroes.
But they’re not. They’re average people who have been fed up. In that sense, yes, this is political, even in its abstract musings. Finding crescendos of this caliber is something that can’t be seen as a novelty. Explosion as an act of resistance.
Ghostpell - Ghostpell's Olga Kórbut (jazz rap)
As a piece of Spanish jazz rap, it’s not quite the easy-going album you would expect from a newcomer. Ghostpell conceptually takes cues from the groundbreaking technique of Olga Kórbut, one of the most acclaimed Olympic gymnasts of all time, whose routines, the intro track claims, “were based on explosive jumps and pirouettes of great difficulty and risk”. She would “prioritize the technical aspects above the artistic ones”. Ghostpell claims to tell her story through his eyes, but it’s only conceptual; the album’s never about her, or in anyone in particular really, besides maybe himself, sometimes.
Most of the album does, indeed, consist of these lyrical and literal pirouettes where he turns a word inside out and connects it to another one in a free-flowing way not too far away from someone like late-era Eminem (without the shock value), but delivered in a calm, smooth tone like R.A.P. Ferreira, so it’s never rushed or miscarried; it’s all under control. Most of the album’s fun is listening and finding several quotable lines - as of right now, my personal favorite is “I live in parallel universes like H.P. Lovecraft / And there’s no Sex on the Beach without vodka”, and I couldn’t tell you why! He says it all with an incredible amount of confidence, in a way you can tell he’s a bit too full of himself - he even admits it, “Ego to me is like heroin”. He loves coming up with convoluted puns and nonsensical rhymes for the sake of saying something, because he does seem to love both the Spanish language and the English language, as there’s a good amount of Spanglish that should make this a lighter listen to non-Spanish speaking listeners.
So, yes, while most of this album does consist of intellectual “sucker MCs” lines, there is potency in what is found. He wants to be credited for his wordplay, and he wants people to recognize where he came from - maybe that’s why he’s so insistent on reminding us of where he (supposedly) is right now, at the top of the game, loaded with success. He wants the pain he’s gone through to mean something. From the humiliation he would feel from wearing second-hand clothes to him taking care of his drug addict mother, it’s a lot to take in for him. So right now, this moment, where he feels every line is God given, feels earned for him. It all makes sense, in a pseudo cosmic way. Of course, he’ll never believe that, he’s too clever for his own good - but this album sets a precedent. Smooth yet sharp at the same time. And that contradiction is a whole lot of fun to play with.
Doss - 4 New Hit Songs (house)
Hit songs, you say? Sure, let’s think of it that way.
“Puppy”: Not completely alien. Trying to grasp the ending of what is essentially inescapable. Femme voices on top of synths that pop akin to old trance records you keep in your basement. It’s all dusty and gray, except for those parts you barely scraped. There, it’s a dark shade of pink, or even purple. Yet something’s too dark to remain hidden. “Holding on”... unfortunately, yeah. Peaked at #22.
“Look”: Only the clubs that opened 7 times a year played this one. But when they did, it was a small riot. These synths are looking at you in a funny way, where nothing exact happens but there surely is a bunch of strangers looking your way. Peaked at #84. God, I miss SOPHIE.
“Strawberry”: Not used to seeing something like this on the charts, huh? A small dash of honey to make it sweeter, even if the pain can’t be taken away from you. It moves like blue-ish waves of tonic until it’s met by those imposing 90s drums. I guess trip hop never really died if this is the state we’re in. And that indifference is also with us tonight. It looks at everything with detachment, without blink. Lots of sad nights that can only be described as sad, because that’s all there is to it. Never charted.
“On Your Mind”: You gotta wrap it up with something tender! Of course you do! “It feels so good when I’m on your mind” is written and sung as if the protagonist literally and physically got into their person of interest’s mind, and saw things from the complete abstract. Moving around inside someone else, like hot liquid passing through your sore body. Chest is booming. Peaked at #4.
These songs don’t really have anything to do with each other, and that’s alright, why should they? They’re all hits. It’s not about numbers, it’s about what hits a mind and a living person’s head that counts the most. Don’t get too wrapped up in that idea, though, or you’ll lose.
Sweet Trip - A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals (shoegaze, dream pop)
These are mysterious creatures. I say, ‘creatures’, because they certainly don’t seem to look or sound like humans. They appear to be from somewhere else, somewhere warmer, more tender, certainly more colorful. They’re in a different wavelength, I guess is what I’m trying to say, and the way they can channel that odd energy is through their moving mixture of shoegaze with indietronica, in a way that doesn’t sound forced or half-assed. It does mean that, occasionally, while the results are never bad, they do feel a tad distant - like, again, they belonged somewhere else, and not for our human ears to hear them.
Still, they acknowledge, after over a decade of being absent from the music scene, the fact that they have managed to attain such a fanbase after so many people emoting over their treasured hearts (“We’re cool! ...Because of you!”), and yet they don’t take the opportunity to do a victory lap. If anything, this is a reflection on the odd sound they’ve built for themselves, a place to rest and reshape at their own will. No sound is ever too strident or hitting, it’s all self-contained in a marvelous and precise way. The work of this album is the work of 2 musicians dedicated to their craft, moving in their own, red-tainted space. They sing and play as if they were looking at their own instruments, smiling at them. They’re not oddballs in their own minds, and they shouldn’t be considered as oddballs. That’d be fetishizing them way too much. They’re people who do what they love.
And they do it well! This album, maybe a bit too long (but that goes for all their releases), is, once again, not a victory lap, but definitely a comeback, centered as a way to see and reorganize themselves in the brand new world. They’ve largely dropped the futuristic view of the world and their music, as they now settle down and think about the time that is still available to change things. But the dive is deep, and the coziness never too cozy to turn into complacency. There’s always something else that can be changed, and their halls of oddly shaped figures feels inviting and refreshing. The compositions thrive on trivial dances that could be turned into a choreographed stage number. The vocals are always gentle, once again, smiling because they know who they’re singing to, and why.
In that sense, yes, they may be creatures, but they shouldn’t be ostracized for that. There’s just as much humanity in here as you’ll find on many of the best albums of the year. Think about holding a lover’s gentle hand, and believing for a second that that’s all you could do for the rest of your life. This album doesn’t retain that feeling all throughout, but for the times when it does, it’s enough to make one smile. What if there was hope?
Porter Robinson - Nurture (EDM, synthpop)
Talking about this one is difficult. Talking about art that is about the making of itself is always difficult, but especially when this is (or was) meant to fill massive concerts worldwide. There’s a universal appeal that an album like this has that’s, in a way, inherently against the context in which it’s meant to be played at: basically, how do you make an album about overcoming your own demons to make the music you’re making right now that both flows as an album and also can be played out of context without losing that personal resonance?
That seems to be the question that plagued Robinson himself for years. All this talk about doing and making something good, something grand, something comforting, it clearly got to him. Hence the 7 year long delay between this and his debut, the magnificent Worlds. I appreciate that he doesn’t give an answer directly to the listener, who may also be grappling with their own problems that prevent them from being who they want to be. He just tries to make people still believe in him, even though he may already be aware he still has that comfort. Comfort from his fans, his family, his colleagues, love that he needs in order to create that “something good”. He’s got so much of it that he uses his own voice a lot more here, he’s more comfortable in his own skin to do that, and can even shut down those who want him to give up on his dream. He’s got that support system, and he’s counting on it. He can’t go through it alone, not again.
Which is what makes this such a warm listen. EDM is a very complicated genre to make those epic synths feel also personal and at home, and Porter has the ability to do that, not only by getting to those tones, but also by juxtaposing them with natural passages that bleed into the big breakdowns. There’s the wonderful piano glistening in “Look at the Sky”, or the folktronica inspired semi instrumentals like “Wind Tempos”, a piece that tries to get out of that stock place portrayed by that frightened piano; or “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do” that feels like an electronic field being glitched and flawed, but liking it that way. In that sense, Porter keeps in mind the importance of nature in his work, and this album is a lot more space-y than Worlds, that was more focused on the grand sound of its time. “dullscythe” is probably the moment where this new approach meets the older one, and it feels like a really conflicted piece because of that (it also might be the lowlight of the album, but even still, it’s a captivating piece of music).
In that sense, there are more straightforward pop songs that stray away from the electronic approach. There’s “Sweet Time”, a fusion of Porter’s pitched-up vocals and his natural voice that feels like an ode to eternity itself, to understanding and getting someone more than you do yourself. It digs through the surface to find solace in someone that could be another, but it could also be Porter himself. He could be the one saying to himself, “All the world is lucky to be your home”, and now that he’s getting to know himself, he likes what he’s found. And of course, the career highlight, the precious acoustic ballad “Blossom”, a whisper in someone’s ear wishing a life together far from any complications, a holding of hands while laying down staring at each other with deep passion. “I’m sorry for crying”, he sings filtered; mask off, hands down, “It’s just that I love you”. That’s the one thing he’s certain in this world.
Then again, the songs meant to appease the EDM crowd are more than enough. “Mother” tells a comforting, motherly story that feels as if Porter himself was taking the role of his mother to talk to his audience, as the vocal samples cheer on in the background. “Mirror” is a lot more straightforward, even if it could be heard outside of a festival, but as it eases up in its intensity, it finds some kind of solace amidst the busy meadow, with brilliant percussion to boot. “Something Comforting” perhaps may be the most complex piece of them all, an acoustic deviation that suddenly turns into a trance anthem, as Porter’s natural vocals and his filtered vocals enter a war of supremacy, where neither wins. The thing that does win is the music, with a stomping breakdown that feels like that something comforting it’s been looking for, something to dance and cry to. It’s as if what Porter was looking for was deep inside himself all along. It’s a battle against depression; the war may not be won, but that battle certainly is.
In essence, Porter knows where and when to pull the punches, and he puts himself and his allegories out there so buoyantly that it seems like he’s giving you all the interpretations you could think of all at once. He’s that upfront with his feelings, and that goes towards his music, that’s why he feels like such a reachable artist. You can almost sense him, as a feeling that goes beyond merely the music, even if it is all a parasocial relationship. But it feels like something else.
Extra note: Worlds had one moment of true, true genius, which was the breaking of all compression walls on “Hear the Bells” (just thinking about it takes me somewhere else). There’s one moment like that here too, on “Musician”: the adding of the famous “Woo! Yah!” break popularized by Rob Base and DJ E-Rock’s “It Takes Two”. You can hear all those other musicians who used that very same sample telling themselves to keep going, despite all the adversity and the pressure to stop. It’s a universal sound, and Porter is a universal artist.
Rauw Alejandro - Vice Versa (reggaeton)
It’s easy to say it now, now that Rauw is a fully established Latin superstar and that he’s being recognized with a second full-length project in less than a year. But saying Afrodisíaco was clearly and obviously one of the best albums of 2020 was something not a lot of people dared to say, not even me, even when it was clearly deserved, and has held up better than plenty of albums from that year. Filled with features, stacked with hits, it was a massive work that was a lot more thought out and profound than anyone gave it credit. At its core, it was an incredibly sad piece, about not understanding how to let go and giving into hedonism completely. The mood was sour, and Rauw’s terrific voice only gave way to saddened melodies, even in the supposedly joyous sex jams, and the conclusion seemed to be to give in to those poor habits and keep navigating the world all by yourself. Not many people caught the vibe it was going for, thinking it was just a collection of fun bangers, but I like to think I did, and I’ve mostly myself to blame for not singing its praises higher last year.
So, keeping that in mind, I kept track of how Vice Versa was being marketed, and what little details would come out of its production. “Todo de Ti” became an international hit, and it was the brightest and happiest Rauw had ever sounded; it signaled a more positive path in his life, and I was excited to hear how that would sound. But then, it was revealed that, beyond “Todo de Ti” being the rightful opener, a previous single would make the album and it would track #5: “2/Catorce”, a song I’d previously dismissed as a quick cash-in for Valentine’s Day. Yet, when I went to listen to it, I found the mood of it all to be even more dour than Afrodisíaco ever dared to be. It was a love song about fucking, but it was decaying, it was grey, it was… rather hopeless. Naturally, I gravitated towards that one more than “Todo de Ti” (after all, being sad is easier than being happy), but it made me think something entirely different was gonna happen than the hit seemed to offer.
So what we ended up getting is what Afrodisíaco didn’t get to say, its arc being put out to the open: the quiet part being said out loud. Vice Versa works as a front-to-back album in a frightening way; it’s a pre-announced meltdown right before our eyes. It’s tragic and concerning, and should get the attention of anyone with half a heart.
The first third of this album functions as some sort of dream sequence. “Todo de Ti”, indeed, is a splendid way to open your album: 80s synthpop vibes, clean sounds, like dancing on a roller rink, and Rauw singing about the love of his life seemingly without a care. Sure, there might be some lurking shadows in the second verse (“Micro… dosis… Rauw la… oxi”) that want to eat the protagonist out of existence, but they’re casted away rather quickly. The next 2 tracks establish some sort of distance yet make the relationship flourish in many ways. “Sexo Virtual” brings in Tainy for a thick instrumental, as an anthem to finding love through the distance, in more ways than one. Rauw is anxious too, he really seems to be into everything he’s singing. Meanwhile, while that song brought in a veteran genius reggaeton producer, “Nubes” establishes Calleb Calloway as a fantastic beatmaker, using spare sounds and playing with Rauw’s vocals to bring forward an ecstatic breeze that can also be danceable, and Rauw indeed uses that space to his advantage, as he dances around, singing in heaven after being put through too much.
But then “Track 4” happens. A brief interlude. “Loading… loading… loathing…”, into “2/Catorce”, where he and his lover finally meet in person and get ready to actually have sex. And once again, the vibe is sad, the synths never explode, Rauw’s voice cracks and slips in the main word of the main melody (“Baby yo te voY A chinGal…”), all while the synths repeat the same sour chords. Something doesn’t fit. The cracks are starting to show. Which takes us to “Aquel Nap ZzZz ”, which reveals the truth. The first half, the most pleasant part of this album, she’s sleeping on his chest, he’s got the girl of his dreams, he’s in an infinite moment, and the beat seems to be staring out the window, joyfully picturing out a montage where the found happiness never ends.
Then, the second half. A beat switch, from pianos to guitars in minor keys. Rauw wakes up. She’s gone. The second third of the album begins. His voice changes, he’s accompanied by a backup band (that might be himself pitched down), his words start to dwell on themselves. It’s all out of touch, yet there’s no need to address anything too large. She’s just not there. Which brings us to the start of the loss of Rauw’s own identity. He fell from heaven, he’s trying to find a rebound on “Cúrame” but it doesn’t even last 3 minutes (“I got my ex crossed out”... oh no, you don’t). He tries to find some solace in all his contacts, but he can’t.
“Cosa Guapa” is where it starts to get dangerous. The tropical sounds are muted and ugly, and he’s now defining himself only by who she told him he was, and how she used to call him, and who he was when he was with her. Even if he realizes the situation, even in a melodramatic fashion (“You’ll never hear from me / To you, I’m dead”), he doesn’t realize how it’s eating him out. The second half is an angry lashing out placed to a dark house beat, where he both sings in English and pitches his voice so low you can barely recognize him. He’s gone by now. The lights are a dark shade of blue. By the time the 80s come back on “Desenfocao”, they’re no longer the peppy, ‘Michael Jackson’-esque vibes the opener portrayed; they’re the paranoid, flashed out, actual Michael Jackson vibes, as if Rauw was rolling in his bed, longing out to stop feeling that concentrated pain all the time. It’s no longer just ordinary pain. It all comes down to a crashing end on “¿Cuándo fue?”, a straight up drum-and-bass trance song (props once again to master Tainy) where Rauw gets lost in the beat. “I will never wake up next to you” might as well just be “I will never wake up”. It’s a sad tale of a man broken down by his habit of relating his sense of self to a relationship. The drop screams. It’s all gone.
...And yet, we’re 4 tracks down. What goes on in this final stretch? Well, 2 things happen on different spectrums: first one being the metatext, and the second being the text itself. What probably happened was something similar to Afrodisíaco: the last 4 tracks on that album are all previously released singles, added in to boost streams. What probably happened during the production of Vice Versa was that he was given enough artistic freedom, but he needed to include 4 potential radio singles at the tailend of the album. So, the final third is a bunch of disconnected party tracks, most of them likely label concessions for putting a drum-and-bass song on your reggaeton album, each one worse than the next, and they act completely detached from the rest of the album. In theory.
Now, what the text is telling us, as far as how these tracks can add to the story, well, we get something rather interesting. Rauw has lost all sense of self, he’s too far gone from reality, so what can you do when you have nothing left to give? Well, I don’t know about you, but what I’d do is turn on the radio. I’d hear whatever the world wants me to hear. And I’d project myself onto them. So, you get to hear Rauw finding comfort in hearing about “La ol skul” (the old school) with a bunch of vintage reggaeton samples, with a girl going out after being heartbroken and letting it all out. You hear another collaboration with Tainy, this time a melodic and energetic track about eating ass, maybe one where the horns let out some uncomfortable memories - you can hear traces of Rauw’s despair (“Regalame otRO BELLAQUEO!”). Rauw also gets along with his pal Lyanno to do a surprisingly convincing trap song called “Tengo Un Pal” about having too much time to fuck too many girls. And for the final piece, he hears himself in a pseudo Brazilian cross over song called “Brazilera” which fucking sucks, with poor vocal production, no understanding of a proper rhythm and a bad feature from Anitta. That’s the end of the album!
The final stretch should be a disaster - in many ways, it is - but it’s a reasonable disaster. It projects a form of detachment after losing something you love and diving deep into depression that few albums get to convey so openly, and it had to happen because of label interference of all things. It’s a rather incomprehensible and inconsistent piece of work, but again, Rauw seems to be working on a very special level of nuance that he seemed to understand even until the very end. What we got wasn’t harsh catharsis, it was just a pitiful and broken attempt at trying to make amends. It’s sad to see him repeat the same cycle over and over. But he’ll find a way out. If he could express it as succinctly and beautifully as he did here, it shouldn’t be that far away.