Chronicle 2021: The Highlights #7
Final normal chronicle: queer angst, distortion, comedies, and tragedies!
When you think you’ve seen everything, the time of your life, she wears her crown; where is moon, where the starlight? So we’re gonna play some basketball!
Nick Lutsko - More Songs on the Computer (comedy rock, synthpop)
You can pass this off as a joke - mostly because it is! Nick Lutsko, in between releasing some real interesting progressive pop in 2019, has been making high-effort comedy music since the mid-2010s, from “Alex Jones as Indie Folk” to “Elaine as a 60s Motown Pop Song”, each time hitting a lot of accuracy regarding the genres he tackled. In 2020, though, he found himself in a much more committed and committing position. Through the gift and curse of YouTube, creating the character of “Nick”, a fan of Spirit Halloween who lives with his grandma, Lutsko got to build a whole universe regarding, among many things, the (until now) inexistent Gremlins 3, a one-sided relationship with politicians, an animosity with Jeff Bezos, and ever-present figures hiding in grandma’s basement, all in the form of short pop songs that even got him some brand deals and some moments of viral success. The compilation of a year’s worth of songs, Songs on the Computer, from last year, was one of the best items of music of the year, with many songs bordering on low-hanging fruit political commentary that made a mark because they bordered on the lyrical and musical absurd so often, it felt like it could all crumble any second.
More Songs on the Computer, the incredibly well-assembled compilation of the expansion of the world-building he put out this year, might be even more impressive: Lutsko, as a musician, locks into the 80s Americana-tinged synthpop sound and goes through multiple pop culture moments throughout 2021, through “Nick”’s eyes, and recontextualizes them, to point out how absurd it all is. He also gets to demonstrate a tremendous ear for melody and lyrical wit in the ordinary and the mundane, as everything that we’ve internalized bothers the character he created so well, it becomes a moment of pop catharsis. This goes beyond ‘merely’ being comedy pop, and veers into music for, admittedly, a very specific audience, but one who could use a slap in the face or two and not become reliant on the world going to hell. Nick’s got something to say about that.
Musically, this is excellent, as most songs already start off loud and abrasive, and they just get even louder, with artificial percussion and gleaming synths (that shine even further on this compilation than on the actual videos, excellent mastering job on behalf of Adam Brown). And again, Nick’s eye for a melody is indisputable, and may be the best independent YouTube-centered music to come out these past few years (if we’re not counting Bill Wurtz, mostly because he doesn’t want to be counted). This entire review could just be spent compiling the best melodies of each song - because there are several in every song - and it would be enough, simply because he’s grown such a rich catalogue, and judging from the last song, which includes a medley of most of the main melodies here, he’s aware of that.
There’s no clear winner here, but in order to set the tone, we need to discuss the proper opening track, “Pay Me $100k to Play at Biden’s Inauguration”. To set it in context, this is after the January 6 riots, and before Biden properly assumed the presidency, and the tension in the air was there. So seeing Nick show up with a broken neck with a hard rock groove going, “It’s been a long week / I feel I could use a vacation” and “It’s getting harder to believe / That we’re ever gonna find a way to heal this nation” must have done something for a good amount of people. So when he inserts himself into that narrative, being the one who can save the country by “making the Theme to Spirit Halloween the new National Anthem”, for the low price of $100,000 (it’s cheaper than a lot of artists!), only to reveal he needs the money with the introduction of Mel, a brand new character in his storyline (“Grandma’s back, her new boyfriend is a maniac / He thinks that I killed his birds”, all that needed to be said), it gives into that full ridiculous feel of everything going to hell fast, and the solution not being there immediately, even if it needs to. So the further he goes along, the more the joke doesn’t break, the imminent cry of the title line at the end of the bridge is powerful, physically powerful. It’s frantic, and a lot to digest, and he does it in the span of a Twitter video.
It’s also important to notice how well-sequenced and packaged this album is. Instead of simply playing the songs in chronological order, Lutsko takes the time to handle this like a proper album, while also making sure all the succession of events occurring within its own world happen in the order they’re supposed to. That means a song I often would tend to overlook like “Here Comes the Gremlin Man”, comes in early and you already notice Nick’s maniac performance (“Gonna put ‘em in, JAAAAIILL”) or the moments of silence indicating a good punchline (“He could kick Spiderman’s ass!”, some empty bars, a descending piano fill, “…but HE WOULDN’T DARE! ‘Cause he respects him too much”), and by the end, with Nick’s fantastic vocals, it sets you up for “#1 Hit on Country Radio”, which is just one of the best pop songs released this year. The complete and total disregard of country’s actual sound, instead going for a synthpop vibe with harmonies that would make Brandon Flowers blush, with such an intense vocal performance (“That’s why I’m doing the DO-SI-DO”), only to show the real motives behind going on CMT - the “Go tell your friends and family” motif certainly becomes quite sinister.
His political commentary is hilarious, as he simply says something not too far out of reality for racist conspiracy theorists - “Joe Biden Wants to Take Your Meat” -, uses an ulterior motive to create such a song, such as a prophecy behind “the men in the tunnels”, and makes a punchy song out of it (with plenty of musical details: the “Joe, Joe, Joe, Jo-AAAAHH!” underlying melody, the backing harmonies in the final chorus, the digital pitching down on the word “meat”; it’s a lot!). “School Board Meeting” is surprisingly righteous, as “Nick”’s character gets better explored, with deeper anger and family issues that was once implied, and he represents the authenticity of those who can’t keep their mouth shut on petty things. And “Give Me Tucker’s Show” debunks Tucker Carlson’s entire methodology in less than 90 seconds, with a long, elongated melody and lyrics that simply would have to be posted in full for their impact to hit, although one-liners abound (“My murder charges have been dropped / And I’m not a xenophobe!”, well ain’t that most of us!).
Meanwhile, his jabs at pop icons (for better or worse) reveal how ridiculous and absurd they can be. He writes “the new “I Believe I Can Fly”” for Space Jam 2 in just about a minute, a punchy pop rock track where the main resolution to the conflict is “So we’re gonna play some basketball!”, basically shutting down both lovers and haters of the franchise all at once. He mispronounces Elon Musk’s name on “Let Me Host S&L” with a synthesized base as he declares himself the host of ‘S&L’ for Lorne Michaels, and it’s once again a fantastic pop smash, especially in the last chorus when Nick switches from his falsetto to his high range, as the hook takes more of a muscle. He invites Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to create “The Beatles Pt. 2”, where he’ll be the leader and will not masturbate, and “Nick”’s usual need of controlling everything while also making all the money gives him away incredibly well, as he insults anyone in his way - props to Nick for his excellent delivery.
To cap it off, while he had demonstrated his passion for holidays on Songs on the Computer, here he takes that love in particular for Halloween to the ultimate conclusion possible. After writing the theme for Spirit Halloween, then writing a pop song for them (“Unleash Your Spirit”), when he’s unable to stop the apocalypse (foretold by the ghost of Ernest P. Worrell - I’m skipping through a lot of lore here), he finally creates “Spirit Halloween Planet”, a song about a world where Spirit Halloween dominates every single street; a mandatory Halloween tax is imposed, and civilization falls as fast as it rose again. A fun song, yet it’s the opening lines that grabbed me: “Did I just live through the apocalypse? / Is there any sense in pretending things might be OK again?”
We’re not actually just talking about Halloween here anymore, right? We never were, and barring novelty bonus track “Leak Like Giuliani”, the proper closer, “2021 (Has Been So Fun)”, a “We Didn’t Start the Fire” recap of 2021’s viral memetic moments matched directly with proper moments of tragedy and respite, is a sobering ending. It’s the moment where Nick stops being “Nick” and starts presenting himself as the person behind it all, with a sad vision of the world affected by everything he’s put his characters through. “The same show’s on every channel and it’s always a rerun” marks an allegorical sense of lyricism missed in this highly literal album. And of course, “2020 never ended, it’s only begun” feels like an obvious statement, but being said in this context, it means something different; something more immediate, something more hitting, something so tragic even comedy can’t hide it. So yes, you can pass this off as a joke, but every joke has a bit of truth to it. And Nick’s truth, as detached as it may seem on the outside, is filled with a lot of humanity and a lot of empathy. And after all, isn’t that the place where the best comedy comes from?
Arca - kiCK iiiii (ambient, post-minimalism)
By this point, Arca’s a legend with a cause. Ever since her coming out as a nonbinary trans woman, she’s become a leading voice and face for the Latin ‘deconstructed club’ scene, where she gets to analyze the harsh and soft aspects of her newly expressed femininity and androgyny through expressive, nonlinear landscapes that seemed to present constant challenges towards herself and her listeners. 2021 mostly saw her dormant, until early December, where she released the last 4 out of the 5 installments on the KiCK saga, works where she used her voice and her influences a lot more willingly and with more prowess than before. Each project different than the last, Arca tried to find the limits in her extensive artistic range. She found some - the neoperreo scene seems to restrict her rather than enhance on her on ii, her attempts at ‘witch pop’ felt oddly strung out in iiii - but, right as it all seemed to end, she found in kiCK iiiii a new way of making music: somewhat going back to her old roots of short ambient pieces, this time with a higher emphasis on the small moments of intimacy to be gained from spare pianos and repeated melodic ideas. Rarely ever staring into the dark, but also acknowledging the darkness is still there.
“How does one coax in the face of pain?”, that’s the main question asked in one of the few songs with vocals, the intro “In the Face”. This album seems very much drawn to those moments of trying to find something out of nothing, of wanting to be held and sought after while also keeping those quasi romantic moments of staring into the distance (whether it be physical or digital) and not having love get out of the equation because of something as potentially ending as sex. “Chiquito” features that discrepancy: a small piano-led piece, closer to the boring edges of ‘modern classical’, which is immediately met by Arca’s voice double-tracked - one track left unaltered, while the other one in a highly acute chipmunk voice - showing both sides of the spectrum, as she offers sex in a somewhat creepy melody, as she tries not to get the other person to back away.
There’s an ache based on the physical that Arca tries to explore, as an open trans woman in the middle of a crowded, discriminatory world. As she meets someone who brings out such “cuteness” (ternura) out of her body, someone who excites her so much on the electronic string-based “Tierno”, and her fragile voice tries to realize how to properly express that infatuation, even if she only ends with heartbreaking sorrow. The cold becomes something she’s grown used to, and now she’s taken out of balance. Even more revealing is the long centerpiece, the piano-led “Mùsculos” with an eerie sense of melody carried throughout the track, even if the off-beat percussion tries to obfuscate it (and fails with delight) where Arca’s voice aches even more. The sexual connection is now taken over by her desire to feel held, beyond the sexual: “Please, let me touch your muscles”, “And if you’re strong, I’ll get to be weak / While still being able to survive”. It’s one of Arca’s most revealing and painfully striking performances, as all sense of poise or decorum is lost and replaced by unabashed yearning, queer yearning. The body matters here, and while Arca has used it to empower herself many times, she’s allowing us to see the moments of letting her guard down, especially when someone more confident with themselves and their shape comes along. The track trudges along, waiting for that answer that may never come, at least not in the way she expects it to.
However, the instrumental tracks are just as touching and revealing. A highly praised track is the comfort-turned-into-discomfort that is “Ether” that sounds indeed like a sort of gas infiltrating something: a soft, tender piano melody (the way the pianos sound on this album is incredible; Eno is nodding his head somewhere), that eventually becomes slightly more restless as it can’t seem to find a solution, but also can’t break loose. A fun one is “Amrep”, a highly generically melodic synth that could develop into a regular Arca smash were it given the chance, instead being told to expand upon itself, and growing slightly larger in atmosphere, almost floating through an air of fog, until that fog becomes more visible and overpowering, and the fog starts crystalizing, and then it turns into pouring rain (by way of heavy distortion) that shatters the comfort one had felt they’d found. One of her best pieces in the KiCK saga is “Estrogen”, a short moment of self-comfort with a powerful mandolin digitalized and processed, yet still so clearly being played, the imperfections of the instrument rise above, and the feeling of trying to find contentment reaches out for a better sense of comprehending the natural of that own search for body autonomy. The final minute, where all the reverb is stripped out and it’s just that strong musing for a melody, is quiet and stagnant, like staring at something you know can change your life… before coming to a resolution.
As the album wraps up, the songs unfortunately get a tad too long, even if “Fireprayer” (an instrumental co-written with Sia! She’s still got something left in her!) is a somewhat celestial instrumental work, with plucking strings that suddenly get shifted by a swift, pop piano melody (that’s where Sia comes in) that tries to interact with the strings to create something dislocating - trying to touch a cloud and being constantly dragged down to Earth - and “Crown”, the most conventional Arca song on here, is a victory lap of sorts for her, as she, once again, takes the issue of her body and turns it into something that could be triumphant and graceful (“She wears her crown”) and the fuzzy distortion comes back again: an ending, not just to the album, but to the saga in general. If anything, kiCK iiiii demonstrates and expands upon what the first 4 albums of this saga didn’t do, which is the vulnerability a trans woman like her can find herself upon, as she demonstrates how she’s still affected by a lot of demons around her. It’s a subject she somewhat tried to avoid, but eventually it all had to come to a showdown, even if it was in the final hour. She’ll come to confront her demons again, though in what shape, that is unknown. Still, seeing her thrive like this is a remarkable achievement, and her way of telling her own experience is immensely valuable and a reminder that the personal will always be political.
dltzk - Frailty (noise pop)
The moments of hitting contemporary youth on Frailty are far too many to count. An eager 17 year old also troubled by their own traumas and botched by a system relentless to slow them down, artistically and personally. dltzk wipes the slate clean, takes the ‘emo’ and ‘pop’ components out of ‘hyperpop’ and goes out to make a long, flat-out noise pop album, with flair in the distortion and fuzz in the guitars, so much color in the former and so much textore in the latter, and musically reaches a troublingly high accomplishment: pain through the motions of not knowing whether you’re growing up naturally, or you’re being forced to. Also, you’re on a digital roller skate rink.
Important to denote how well sequenced Frailty is, as said moments of falling apart are always accompanied by big, striking glorious anthems that still denote that same hurt, but in a way you get swept up by it all. As an album, it elevates those strange moments of trying to put into words the hurt caused by others, that might result in hurt that you cause yourself, because you still don’t quite know how to react to it all. dltzk crawls and hides in emo-leaning vocals throughout the album, but they never come off as clingy or melodramatic, let alone bored - just a constant feeling of teenage weariness. They can ride the highly influenced ‘bitpop’ moments since their own production allows their vocals to be enhanced and almost like an instrument. The words are more direct on the quiet moments, but the louder, stronger electronic pop rock tinges make dltzk’s tone take a more poetic tone, and their voice never becomes too intense - they let the music take charge.
Throughout Frailty, the many passages of indie music that wear themselves off like glitched grooves from the 2000s are highly evocative, because the sonic landscape that’s built is simply enormous. You realize from the second track, “Your Clothes”, as the DIY drums are masked by synthesized guitars and a surprisingly live bass, and all of that is covered by digitized sounds that border on the edge of EDM the way they seem to be galloping the sound to higher extremes. An entire arena in the shape of a bedroom. That makes moments like “Search Party”, a could-be sing-along that’s only reduced to the incredible reds and yellows haunted by the fuzz of the synths, something special: nothing ever entirely fits. But also, it makes a song like “Can You Tell?” fit on the album as well, a sonic space built by a collage of different voices in different dimensions, spinning around 360, as a recollection of memories flushes all in, a true achievement of production. Everything gets to make sense within this world, since dltzk is tired of being pushed over by those who love them, and is now going to show the rest of the world what they’ve built out of all of that.
They’re aware they’ve formed a community around them, a family beyond the nuclear family, yet that causes cracks too: “And why don't you respond to our texts? / You know, you have a family that loves you” from opener “goldfish” is a universal feeling for those who have a friend who’s gotten lost, and realizing that inadequacy through a filtered acoustic guitar only makes things hurt more. A revealing moment comes in the brief “Buzzcut, Daisy”, carried by an amazing vocal-sampled-buried-as-a-synth that calls for a feeling of androgyny explored in more subtle ways throughout the album, a moment of confrontation with a former closed one, as the moments of intimacy caused when they were 16 (now they’re 17, and in a strange occasion, the music makes it feel like an actual immense difference), now estranged, and while dltzk was deeply hurt by them, they still don’t know what else to do, and hope for those moments back, especially as the feelings of dysphoria start becoming more intense; any friend might do. “Your Clothes” exemplifies this dichotomy beautifully: one of the poppiest cuts on the album, a true questioning of what they’re looking for out on someone (“Was it all for a show? / Now I look so stupid for casting the roles”) that might have been caused by something as pure (and teenage) as envy: social status envy, wealth envy, sexual envy, gender envy. It’s all there in the title line: “I wish that I was in your clothes”. A world of teenage ennui in a single sentence.
dltzk gets to tell and reshape the urge (that does, unfortunately, go beyond the teenage years) of trying to be pleasing for everyone, even if that means undermining yourself. “Movies For Guys”, which picks up early MGMT guitar tones in a moment of earned nostalgia for something that never happened, shows the tragic experience of being ignored and neglected by those you’re trying to impress, and no addictive pop hook can soften that blow. Eventually, it leads to one of the first true moments of something breaking inside dltzk’s narrative: an instrumental breakdown akin to a slowed down metalcore band without any of the effects (it sounds straight out of someone’s shitty garage), being looped and always trying to reach for a bigger sense of catharsis through the classic sounds and ideas that doesn’t succeed. The transition into the final part is too abrupt, as the final section is too downbeat, but the sentiment remains: that indifference on the others’ part has been turned into outright violence on behalf of dltzk, pure resentment coming out of their jaded voice. The feeling of inadequacy regarding their own gender comes straight into the forefront, as their own art won’t get to be appreciated even by themselves: “When they come to your house, I'll turn the TV on / And you'll be there on Channel 9 / Then you take the remote, I'll get kicked out the house / 'Cause you said this movie's just for guys”. They realize they’ll never get that redemption out of that mistreatment. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes: for the worst. The other gets their way.
A big question the album makes, after so much brooding, is “Why try at all?”. That’s why “Search Party” is one of the most hitting pieces of the album: the depiction of a mysterious figure willing to help and not trying to judge, and even then, that friend’s lack of personal judgement or self-care drags dltzk down anyway, as they get off the car with them after a messy ride, and they realize they engage in the same lack of self-care as their friend: “Dialing numbers on my phone / You might die while in the moment, but nobody really lost you”. Trying to keep a normal teenage life while being terrified of those moments of facing the music, as the hi-hats come from both sides of the mix. “How To Lie” depicts one of the most artificial soundscapes on the album, with MIDI synths and strings being echoed (distracted by a breakbeat of a live Ariana Grande sample), as dltzk shows the stages of routine found in depression, how it all becomes so cyclical so simple.
All of this makes one of the centerpieces on the album, “Kodak Moment”, a midtempo clash of piano, guitars and crystal-like synths (with a stellar hook, too), is a collection of many moments of shame and personal embarrassment that further slow down the way dltzk communicates with others, which makes their lashing out at others chase a different meaning, one of real resentment mixed with a dash of projection, as the music begins to internalize that central line, “It’s all your fault”, and mixes in with pixelated breakdowns (sampling from Pokemon to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl) and there’s never a clear answer within the sound. It’s one of the true few moments of despair that the production gets to show, since it’s never too comfortable knowing how and when to stop. It’s a stark moment of music, where the digital fully takes over and the sound needs to be built back up again. The final passage, a misty piano with rapid vocal samples on top of it, might be one of the most aggressively modern moments in music of the year; it all glistened, with motifs to be scattered throughout the album, through once again MIDI synths, and the grasp on what can be kept hidden.
The main moment, at least before everything breaks one final time, is the subtly titanic “Champ”, a confessional moment of personal opening, as dltzk tries to understand how others will react to their musing, their depression, and their journey through gender and puberty. Images of fire as something enticing (not immediately harmful, but the implication is there), the fear that those around them are tired of their self-pity, enthusiasm turned into angst and insomnia, the feeling they’ve been gone for their entire life, and the ultimate realization that it’s not all because of someone else: those internal issues are there. The two key lines that stand out are: “But tonight I'm feeling brave, I think I'll act my age / Until a kid says that there's something wrong with me”, a wonderful encapsulation of that teenage self-awareness, not knowing how to mature yet not being able to be a proper kid anymore; and the final lines, “When I picture your face, it comes up as someone else / Someone who's treated me the same way”, the final conclusion to the (not everlasting) inability to move on, and seeing the worst of everyone immediately, because you’ve grown so used to it. It’s all still hurting.
The best thing to do, maybe for now, is to try to sing a pop tune to express their feeling and go home. So, “Let’s Go Home” indeed features that light-on-its-feet bitpop production (with melodic ideas already explored in previous songs) and, as that production wears off for the same fuzzy distortion comes back, sees dltzk explicitly attempting to reach out for help, before they spiral into their own thoughts and sentiments. Trying not to “make out with the devil on their shoulder”; a difficult conceit, but again, the reaching out for help, alongside the reassessment that “it’s okay to cry” (god, do I miss SOPHIE) are steps forward, branching out and not entirely getting lost in what could happen. So, when the peppy instrumental comes back in, this time fractured and far gone, like a distance, it’s a signal for trying to keep the good moments with you and leave the others behind. Emphasis on ‘trying’. Growing up is all about trial and error, after all. Frailty isn’t simple, but it’s not held back at all.
Sparks - Annette (Unlimited Edition) [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] (chamber pop, art pop)
Massive spoilers regarding the movie Annette by Léos Carax.
Cutting some things out of the way: Annette, the movie directed by legendary French cult director Léos Carax, written by the Sparks brothers, released in 2021, was a fantastic achievement, both personal - the first movie Carax directed since 2012 (and his first one in English), the first movie Sparks ever wrote - and to the culture in general - in a year with so many fraudulent musicals coming out, this one stood apart from the rest in an arresting fashion. Nonetheless, it was too shaky to be perfect. Adam Driver is no Denis Lavant (Carax’s eternal muse) in terms of physicality and vibrancy, some scenes could feel repetitive and overstuffed, and the editing was often a nightmare. But on the other hand, Carax’s use of the color green remained eye-arresting and served for a good visual metaphor for both Driver’s and Marion Cotillard’s characters and arcs, the meta angle was well delivered, with a strong presence of the ‘authors’ (Carax and Sparks) throughout the movie itself, and yes, the music, courtesy of Sparks, was outstanding. Treating the movie like a modern opera of sorts, these veterans took every opportunity they had in order to bring in not only ideas they’d been developing since Lil’ Beethoven in 2002, but also bring forward a narrative regarding the ways we view artists which was something they’d been struggling with for most of their careers. In many ways, it was a triumph.
However, before we get into the highs and lows of the soundtrack to Annette, I’d like to focus for a second on how this serves not only as a soundtrack, but as an album, a proper album. Most soundtrack albums are keen on putting all their songs in a row, maybe follow it up with pieces of score if you’re Disney, and that’s it. There’s always a certain toss-off nature when it comes to how they compile the music of a movie. And ignoring the “Cannes Edition” of this soundtrack, which only featured highlights (only 40 minutes of 2 hours of music; quite a struggle to live with for a while), this “Unlimited Edition” does indeed give you every minor and major piece within the movie, yet it takes some odd choices that make this a patchier album listen than it probably should. The demos and hidden songs at the tailend are fine, but they take all the miniature pieces that make up the standup show of Adam Driver’s character, Henry McHenry, and put them after all the songs on the movie - including the ones on the credits! - have passed through. Given that both sets are quite defining when it comes to understanding Henry’s infantile shock value, overall disdain to his audience, and resentment for his wife, Anne (Marion Cotillard), they’re key moments in the movie… so, dragging them right at the end cuts the flow of many moments that come from Henry’s feelings of inadequacy and flat-out anger.
To add to that, you get the fact that you won’t get to hear most of the performances on this soundtrack in the actual movie. Annette relies a lot on real-life singing as they film, and you can tell the sloppiness in the 3 main actors’ voices, especially Driver - who is very much not a singer. Yet, that creates a wasted opportunity: some moments - like the important motif “We Love Each Other So Much”, “Lalala” “All the Girls” - do, indeed, come off better in their recorded versions, while other moments - like the opening high-class number “So May We Start”, “She’s Out of This World!”, “Let’s Waltz in the Storm!”, “We Are the Police” - sound far better being sung live, since there’s a more spontaneous feel that happens with the actors moving around. Had Sparks gotten a proper mixer, instead of mixing their own material which has been their weakest musical point for the past 20 years, they might have found a way to take the best of both worlds, and reassemble a soundtrack where the best recorded moments would mash well with the best live moments. That way, the experience could have been more enhanced and enrapturing, instead of being aware you’re constantly listening to performers in a studio.
These are ways in which the listening (not the watching) experience could have morphed into something different, less amateur-sounding, more in place with a high-budget musical. The thing that separates Annette from most movie musicals (because this isn’t trying to compete with actual Broadway musicals) is the fact that, shaky sonics aside, the music really is astonishing, basically from beginning to end. The instrumentals are, for the most part, clearly chintzy and artificial, built out of hard-sounding keyboards and synthesizers, which adds an uncanny feel to the story that’s being told; it’s all happening on shaky ground, and it’s partially depending on the viewer/listener to hold on to themselves.
Russell Mael’s voice, the singer of Sparks, permeates the story and the vocals all throughout. Russell is both the Greek choir, plus the angel and the devil on every character’s shoulder; he doesn’t take a stand, he only gives simple, extra pushes to whatever’s going on, so each character can get to the consequences of their actions. Meanwhile, between the 3 main characters, while Marion Cotillard easily takes the crown as the best vocalist of the bunch, with a voice fit to both art pop and full blown opera (although props to Catherine Trottmann for stepping in during the most vocally intense moments), the one who understands the nuanced skill of being a performer is the one who doesn't perform: Simon Helberg, as The Conductor, who mostly has spoken word segments and goes through them with delicacy and viciousness, sometimes both at once. He's the breakout star in this, as a dramatic actor.
While it would be easy to simply list off the main plot points in the movie as they're accompanied by song… well for one, it would get tiring, and second, this isn't a movie review. What would be best would be to highlight the many great numbers to be found in this compilation, pretty much all of which make far more sense and resonate greater while watching the movie, once again a highly rewarding experience (currently available on Prime Video in the US and on MUBI in Latin America and the UK). It’s easy to notice just how much is going on from the opener. “So May We Start” sounds somewhat weird in its mixing, as Russell’s vocals are flaky for some reason and Driver, Cotillard and Helberg are placed right next to each other, but as an opening number, it’s enviable how well it sets the tone: the artists (Sparks, and Carax in the movie) stepping in, welcoming the main performers, acknowledging the shortcomings of the production, giving in to their own vanity, and promising something beyond one’s expectations: “We've fashioned a world, a world built just for you / A talе of songs and fury, with no taboo / We'll sing and die for you, yes, in minor keys / And if you want us to kill, too, we may agree / So may we start!” Who could resist?
The main romantic piece of the movie is basically an anti-love song: an economic composition where the repetition becomes something terrifying, something we should fear. “We Love Each Other So Much”, sung by Henry and Ann, contains the title line 14 times in a slow burning flame, where both sing in different keys in order to create a dislocating harmony, and when the second half of the album kicks in, with an electronic akin-to-rock groove rolls along, the sense of danger becomes more explicit - the ideals of love must be repeated until someone out there in the world believes it. Whether that be Henry, Driver, Ann, Cotillard, or Sparks or Carax themselves.
Marion Cottillard’s pieces, mostly stuck to the first half of the movie, are highly evocative, and they’re the ones where Sparks’ ever-present sense of theatricality get to shine, as her character Ann, an opera singer, passes through stagnant stages of slowly realizing there’s something wrong with the person she loves. “Aria (The Forest)” contains one of the main melodic motifs repeated throughout the movie, a melody that reminds you of the suffering that comes from that eternal despair, of not comprehending those contradicting feelings inside you. Nothing ever is quite that simple, and Cotillard slowly realizes the danger, even as her character is play-acting. But she doesn’t only do high drama; “Girl From the Middle of Nowhere”, a simple melody, lets us know Ann’s story from the start, one who moved to the big city and was never impressed by those who tried to tame her - “You’re a flame to me” might as well have been venom spit at her. She knows something’s wrong, but her child, Annette, is there, and so we get “Lalala”, with the main melody of Sparks’ own “Thanks But No Thanks” from 1974’s Propaganda, which does indeed serve as a fantastic lullaby for a child.
Simon Helberg, once again, is a highlight every time he steps into the mic. The spoken word “I’m an Accompanist”, a small, self-deprecating spoken word piece about his low status and his high ambitions, is carried by a destructive, erratic piano line and Helberg’s fantastic handling of his intensity (“I’m a conductor. I’m a conDUCtor!”, followed by the soft “In the end… in the end… I’ll lead orchestras near and far”). Once he does, indeed, get turned into a proper conductor in his title track, “The Conductor”, he can tell something’s deeply wrong regarding Ann’s death, yet he gets so caught up in the wonderful orchestration he has to keep going. He tries not to break, and when he does, it’s reflected in the shimmering music. But his best moment, one of the turning points of the movie, is his reprise of “We Love Each Other So Much”, as he sings it and stylizes it as a proper, intimate lullaby sung to his now “star pupil” Annette, revealing a deeper intimacy with the piece than Henry could ever have - because it’s his piece. He wrote it for Ann in a brief moment of an affair between them, and now dealing with the loss of her (the second time around), he brings out the tenderness and the melancholy in such a sinister melody. To him, it’s something different: to him, it is actually hard to explain.
And the main star of the show, Adam Driver as Henry McHenry, despite all his flaws, is a broken and fragile character that breaks at every turn. While his truly unbearable ‘stand-up’ bits happen, the public’s responses, fueled by backup singers on “Ok, Ready, Laugh!”, are highly bouncy and fun; they’re inentionally forced in a way that creates the uncanny nature of Henry’s antagonistic relationship with his own, adoring audience. You hear that better on “Laugh, Laugh, Laugh!”, based on Sparks’ own “Rock, Rock, Rock” from 2006’s Hello Young Lovers, where his intentions are quite clear: “Can’t stand to hear you / Laugh, laugh, laugh / ‘Cause you bore me, you bore me, you bore me”, which already sets the meta tone for Henry’s character and Sparks’ own resentment towards their critics and worshippers. And his “Introspective”, as he describes his relationship with Ann as something that’s moving real fast, yet the instrumental moves like a Badalamenti piece; slow, high melodrama carries on.
But when his audience finally turns his back on him, we get one of the most revealing pieces Sparks have ever written, one where the hidden resentment of albums like Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins and their latest album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, come out in full force. “You Used to Laugh” takes Henry’s character and properly fuels him with missiles: everything he claimed not to care about, suddenly matters a great deal to him as it’s for once not guaranteed, and the artificial production emphasizes just how rough his sentiments are. While Russell carries the audience and commands Henry to “get off, get off, get off the stage”, Henry lashes out in ways that I don’t think any artist hasn’t thought about doing to their loyal audience at some point: My dear public / Oh dear public, you fuckin' headless beasts / You make me sick! / You ruthless, unpredictable bеasts”, and little by little, every small piece of literary decorum gets lost, and it all turns into a rant of unmanaged “fuck off”s, each one harsher than the next. The conclusion to this merciless middle finger as his star finally declines, once and for all, is the true turning point for Henry as an antihero, but is also the moment where Sparks stop playing coy: as artists, they stop pretending like what they have is enough, and in a moment of capricious anger, deprive themselves of what they have and what they could be. The demons of hating your own artistry come to fruition, and they’re as sick as they come.
Following a key moment in the movie, “Let’s Waltz in the Storm!”, where Henry says his final words to Ann and leaves her to die, a number that’s better executed on set, with its low-budget giant screen of a raging storm and literal buckets of water being thrown at them, baby Annette’s voice, on behalf of Hebe Griffiths, becomes another major player; Ann’s voice haunting Henry beyond the grave through their child. She iterates, every time, Ann’s wonderful “Forest” aria and every time, it’s in a different musical setting, from toy instruments to orchestras, and it always strikes a chord because of the power to be found within that melody.
Here’s where, despite some very good dialogue between the pseudo charming Henry trying to convince The Conductor that showing Annette’s voice around the world “isn’t really exploitation”, and The Conductor reluctantly following along, we get a lot of ensemble pieces, mostly carried by Russell, with interjections from Henry and The Conductor. “We Love Annette!” is a strong piece of music making, like going through many airports all at once, running through different crowds, and with every “We love Annette!” from the crowd in awe, the music indicates the wrongdoings of the characters, as it’s never a fully resolved chord progression, and the drama fueled by repetition generates, once again, that uncanny feeling of something being forced to work - much like the child herself.
In an even more striking turn, once the world finds out (through Annette) about Henry killing The Conductor and leaving his wife to die, we get a proper critique of the idol worship that Sparks have been trying to avoid all their career, and turn their back on the public and make them realize they’re a part of this too. “He Is a Murderer!”, sung entirely by the audience (Russell) contains a jolly, marching melody, as if the people were almost happy to see someone as unlikeable Henry fail. As we get many of the witty lyrical turns that Sparks are used to (“Whether it's first degree! / Or less than first degree! / The point is moot to us / ‘Cause he's still a murderer!”), as the song does a subtle but magnificent key change, the crowd reveals their true motivations and reason for anger: “You killed the one that we all loved / Near religiously! / Nearly religiously! / No more will she die for us / Who will now die for us? / Who will now die for us?”. Suddenly, Henry’s point about Ann “desecrating the sacred values” - dying, dying, dying, and then bowing, bowing, bowing - is given a bit of a point: it is what the audience wants. They want that pseudo cathartic sense of release that can, at its extreme, be found through death, and the demand of that public for a performer to put themselves through that routine, over and over, is wearying and at times grotesque. Henry’s not in the right, by any means, but there’s a speck of proper reasoning to his hating of that mega-enhanced sense of performance. One he could never do.
And so, we get the final number in the movie, “Sympathy for the Abyss”. Make sure you listen to the ‘film version’ instead of the truncated version on the “Cannes Edition”. “Sympathy for the Abyss” is a duet between Henry, now in jail, and Annette, who finally finds a proper voice carried by an actual real life actress this time, the young prodigy Devyn McDowell. Henry’s main melody is stark and hitting, a work of true genius, as he tries to make sense of his attitude towards life and his demeanor: “Annette, of this I'm sure, imagination's strong / And reason's song is weak and thin / We don't have long” is one of the best lyrical moments of the year, and one so rehearsed and thought out; a face-off into the ‘abyss’ that he had once claimed to never cast his eyes down, as he realizes the lack of understanding he had in other people’s lives, and he loses those he loves. Yet, he gets stuck in that speech, those abstract words that he tries to give meaning to. Meanwhile, Annette has a lot more to say: in the voice of McDowell, she sounds, for the first time, like an actual child (with a stunning voice), but her words are different. She vows to be a rejection of everything her father and her mother (both alive and in the grave) assigned her to be, and while she can’t decide whether to forgive (or forget) both of them, she knows what she’s going to be. Her melody eventually mirrors that of her father, but in a different key; less dramatic, less bombastic, more hidden and truly angry. Until the final goodbye, where she flips the script: taking the melody of “We Love Each Other So Much”, she delivers the final blow: “Now, you have nothing to love”. A masterpiece of drama.
As flawed as the movie is, as flawed as the soundtrack is, as flawed as this collection of music is, Annette puts into perspective the lengthy career of two outcasts who never had it easy, who were always striving for greatness in a world that ignored them, who were always too smart to keep their mouth shut, and too held back to let a grudge go. Baby Annette might just be the product of art being corrupted by those who created it and guided it, the long process of trauma that’s projected into something as pure as art or an infant, the very career of artists (both Sparks and Carax) who never knew when to stop, pulling the plug on itself. It reveals the ugly truths, it demonstrates the power that comes with not keeping quiet, and it’s an awful reminder of the real moments of ugliness hidden inside the world of artists. In the end, everyone’s complicit, and an exploited child must be their own salvation: that’s the tragedy right there. Art leaping out of itself. If you liked what you heard, tell a friend. If you have no friends, then tell a stranger.
Low - HEY WHAT (glitch pop, ambient pop)
Trying to pick up the pieces in the middle of a digital slurry. Being far too aware of things to be properly depressed, now seeing everything with painfully wide-open eyes and a deeper understanding of why we all got here in the first place. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, the real duo/couple behind Low, are quite the ferocious and daring artists, and have proven to be that way since the early 90s. They started off by building small, desolate worlds full of self-fulfilling nihilism that also found ways in which to have a sense of humor to it all. I Could Live in Hope already tells you that from the title, and the 90s rarely ever felt that gone and buried. They’d write a song called “Rope”, where the one, repeated lyric would be, “You’re gonna need more” (the irony creeps in), until they’d subtly snap and whisper as the song would fade, “Don't ask me to kick any chairs out from under you”. Living in hope was a choice, and they weren’t about to decide for anyone other than themselves. Decisions were personal, but they affected the entire world, even if their musical version of the world was small and quiet.
Obviously, everything is bound to change over the course of 3 decades. The worlds they build as artists slowly start incorporating bigger crescendos, slow-burning harmonies and wider atmospheres. As the years progressed, they’d slowly start adding more distortion to the always-in-tune guitars, and the vocals would find themselves in different positions in the mix. Starting in 2015, they’d team up with producer BJ Burton, who’d made wonders for Lizzo and The Tallest Man on Earth (and would continue to do so for Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Empress Of), and he’d ask them a question: do you want to start smashing shit? The answer: a shy, but resounding yes. And so, for the past 3 albums, Low have been on a brand new journey. Ones and Sixes from 2015 didn’t do much to alter the formula, but Double Negative from 2018 was quite the step forward. Alien and alienated vocals buried in distortion and reverb, like an old radio picking up signals not meant to be played on Earth, as the voices would explore mundane situations yet would not be able to break free: always up must be tough. Until they broke through, and the mix would crumble as if a building was crumbling inside the studio, and the slow-motion figures needed to try to find a way out of the long-overdue wreckage.
So now, it’s 2021, and the wreckage has been passed on to the real world. Low see themselves among a planet so destroyed, so caught in its plagues and tribulations, from the most natural to the most human, and they try to take that isolation back into the studio, with their best album since 2001 - if not their debut from 1994. HEY WHAT might be sonically abrasive, but it keeps the same touches of economic lyrical sentiments and poetry that they’ve been harvesting throughout their careers. What it does is match that small lyrical space with key sonically overwhelming moments, a signal of ever-present anxiety that can’t control itself or anything else. It’s a caged-in record, like a cylinder block in the middle of a crowded street, and as everything seemed to fluctuate this year, it only felt right.
The dozed off strikes of guitar that don’t get to meet their angle open the album on “White Horses”, until they’re suddenly replaced by the exact opposite: chopped guitars with a straightforward blues progression played through moments of the light switching on and off. “The consequences of leaving / Would be more cruel if I should stay”, with their typical harmonies already changing positions mid-word to keep that level-headed loss throughout the sonic space. The groove eventually breaks, and the guitars start turning and giving way to industrial crushes, with more guitars serving as percussion. Low’s apocalypse never felt more urgent. The Biblical sentiment remains, “Still, white horses take us home”, and nothing gets to make a shift; it only adapts to broken sounds that can’t seem to break among the masterful compression. And yet, it’s a pop song: the melodies are singable, and the voices are inviting. Hard to fight off such a feeling.
That’s part of the key to understanding HEY WHAT, and maybe even Low in general: at their core, they write pop songs, with simple chord changes and noticeable, distinctive hooks. Lead single “Disappearing”, stripped to its compositional core, could pass off as a Foo Fighters song. But of course, this isn’t that: here, the harmonies are far too weary to give into that constant grawl, and the chords eagerly await to make their impact, as they crash like sonic waves on a shore in the middle one’s memory; it’s a song that gives off the impression of something fading away, going away, and not for the better. It’s all incessantly trying to not fade into oblivion. The most notable way to express that sentiment is the direct “Don’t Walk Away”, one of the most straightforward love songs Low have ever written, where it does feel like Alan and Mimi are singing to each other, feeling they’ve lost so much, they can’t afford to lose anyone else - certainly not the person they love. It’s one of the most comforting songs on the album, as they sing under a bed of compressed voices, like they were the echoes of what was lost, rooting for their love.
Low will always have that tenderness to them, that human ideal to understanding each other. “All Night” was one of the most comforting songs of the year, no matter how musically complicated it was: a compilation of malevolent noises that always seemed to tinker with the main melody, but in the end merely repeated and enhanced what was going on in the forefront of it all. “All night, you fought the adversary / It was no ordinary fight”, sung to one of their most delicate melodies, as the white noise also becomes sampled and distorted, part of the sonic construction. It does give off the sentiment of a struggle being fought against, of not getting complacent and trying to hold on to those human voices, as they softly sing a lullaby through blue-eyed guitars with a grey filter. Getting through these nights is deeply complicated, as what’s beneath tries to penetrate and consume the pulsing groove being formed through that wall of noise.
All of this, of course, not to imply that the implication of the fight is shown, and not the actual fight itself. Towards the end of the album, a brief but highly vindicating song called “More” rears its bloated head, with its 3 chords and a warped, spearheaded guitar passing through the mix, knowing nothing can dare defy it. It’s there for a reason and a purpose, and it was shaped that way. Mimi sings it, “I gave more than what I should've lost / I paid more than what it would've cost / You have some of what I could've had / I want all of what I didn't have”, and really, everything crystalizes. Years of resentment and jealousy over those more privileged, more favoured over, more praised, more acclaimed, more in control. It’s a vague sense of lyricism, and for once, it’s for the better: from the universal and political (women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, civil rights) to the personal (commercial success, critical acclaim, peer validation), it stands out as a moment of pure sonic fury, of realizing once it’s too late that there could have been more. But now the world is on fire. So what are you gonna do?
Certainly not get washed away by the sound, and the nihilism, and the mentality of the doomed. It’s tempting to do so: one of the 2 centerpieces of the album, “Hey”, seems to offer it, as ambient sounds are sampled and looped to create a feeling of being trapped in a moment; the cyclical melody feels like a religious mourning; the lyrical imagery (“caught ourselves beneath the weight”, “went back and wept in the car beneath the shade”) evokes a certain stagnation that can’t easily be solved, a lump in their throat; and the second half of the song, slowly receding into ambient territory, based on Mimi repeating the title word, also feel like the song was whirling around, fully trapped in a memory that won’t make its way out of the brain, and everything remains. But the second centerpiece, right after “Hey”, “Days Like These”, is very much a counterpoint. An overused pop melody meant to be deconstructed, sung with no filters, reshifts everything: “When you think you’ve seen everything / You’ll find we’re living in days like these”, and after a brief, pretty electric guitar does the refrain one more time, the song sharpens even more: the same cyclical melody, deep fried and destroyed (as if they were nitpicking their favorite moments from the wreckage, and the mix tries to break through and fails) and the lyrical idea changes. Finding that something to keep you going is never going to be fulfilling, and chasing mere ideas that can’t be found either by praying or seeking in land will be the death of us all. “That’s why we’re living in days like these again.” Once the ambient final third sinks in, all that dust is what’s sinking everyone in. Seeing the worst in static technicolor slow motion.
The ending is fitting for an album like this. It lingers on two main lyrical passages, both in the title: “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)”. The first one fills up the lyrical first half, and it’s a slow-burning process: they look towards the higher powers, see through their ruse as those above us think (falsely) that we all get what we deserve, only for Low to realize, that’s not the truth (obviously), and realizing just how deep the self-deception thanks to the false sense of living is. “...I know it sounds absurd”. They should know, the guitars being pressed like buttons are telling them so. Crucially enough, we get a climax, a proper climax, the first time where we get drumming of any kind on the album, as the groove shimmers through old passages and passes them through with the speck of a cutting knife. And once it all seems to come crashing down, it all gets stripped away (with an uncanny ease) for the second main lyric to close the album off. Either a call to those above them, mocking them for the power they have on their hands that’s slowly crushing them, or a plea for sympathy for those who need to put on a brave face to deal with every new day - or both! As everything rips itself apart one last time, isn’t it best to look at those above and below you and, with one simple phrase, acknowledge the tremendous differences between the both of them? Low will never make it out alive if they don’t; their conscience won’t let them. But everything must be built back up again.
In the end, surrendering to life’s obscurities is never the way to go; giving in is not an option, and allowing yourself to be defeated is too easy for lives as unique as ours. This album tries to make the argument that Low were never about that, but if anything, it shows just how much Low changed their tune over the decades: as they settled, got to make a career out of what they love - even experimenting with the formula and being rewarded for it -, having children, they would never allow themselves to be beat. Part of that is inertia; part of that is as simple as hope; part of it is probably a grudge they hold to the world. But the combination makes for music with deeply rooted empathy that still doesn’t allow anyone to get too attached to the discomfort. HEY WHAT twists its knobs over and over, and for as much instability as there is here, there’s also warmth, there’s also a tune to be sung, and there’s a deeply human spirit beneath so much wreckage. They’ll never let that slide into oblivion, and it shouldn’t be their fight alone.