Chronicle #3: May-June 2020
Disappointments, pop divas, punk divas, hip hop divas, a lot of hip hop actually!
Lady Gaga - Chromatica
Even if we may not always love her, you gotta respect Gaga. Few celebrities have been quite as influential to the state of pop music as Stefani Germanotta, a woman who, at her peak, seemed to be opening dozens of new doors with each single. She wasn’t afraid to delve into her paranoid and tense inclinations even on her early singles, and when she became, well, what she ended up becoming, she inspired millions. She wasn’t afraid to play with more sinister motifs in her music, which while it never was as “experimental” as many have said, was quite valuable in its technological nerve that resonated with a lot of people. And that’s part of what made Gaga so likeable: all her bizarre moves, she seemed to make them with conviction and determination: you believed in what she’d do because she did too.
Or at least… until Joanne came out in 2016, her transition towards folk/country that she herself sold was the “authentic” version of her; she was now making “serious” music. 2 years later, we saw her on A Star Is Born with Bradley Cooper, in which she played a woman with a capacity to write profund, truthful music until she gets “corrupted” by the industry, and is turned into an unpleasant, plastic product, and are we starting to see a common narrative when it comes to her career? Specifically, one that seems to denigrate all the breakthroughs she’d done for pop music in order to make mediocre, poorly produced folk made with the wrong notion of it being “less fake” than her older material. Suddenly, all her various accomplishments felt a bit emptier, less endearing, more disdainful. We didn’t know in which Gaga we should trust anymore.
And now, since making pseudo-country music doesn’t sell as much, we get this massive course correction that is Chromatica, where she goes straight to pop music (again, the music she didn’t seem to want to make) without looking back. No acoustic instruments here, no ballads, nothing to distract her from making pop bops. In particular, we’ve gone directly to making early 90s house music seen through the eyes of early 2010s dance pop, the period where Gaga was most successful.
And the album certainly sounds fine. There are plenty of powerful grooves that overlap with very colorful synths. There’s a constant atmosphere on the album of sounds being condensated, as if the music was sweating. It evokes the feeling of being at a packed club in which the frequencies bounce and echo each other. To open the album with a song as predictable but imposing as “Alice” is a powerful move; it establishes the high-pitched melodies and the emphasis on the production like few tracks could have. It also helps that most of the songs are relatively short, lasting for about 2 and a half minutes, which makes the album work as a unity and can be played from start to finish with no need for skipping.
Now the problem with all this is not the monotony-overall, there are enough well composed textures that make this a pretty fun listen. What happens here is that Gaga seems to both overcompensate and underestimate her audience at the same time. Overcompensate because she sticks to the sound she’s chasing. She makes it very clear she knows what her fans want: the strident, extravagant, liberated diva, and everything that comes with her glory days. And she decides to do that and nothing else; the album wants to constantly reassure the listener that, for the entirety of those 43 minutes, it’s not switching lanes. And underestimate because Gaga seems to think her fans have no standards; house pianos and violins, drops, vague lyrics about self-esteem and that’s it. As if that’s all that Gaga was at her peak. It gives the album a simplistic vision of her music. This isn’t a retread or a rehash of peak-era Gaga: this is a sketch drawing.
You can tell for example on a track like the first single “Stupid Love”, that has a stunning instrumental, with Moroder-esque synths and a playful arrangement, and in particular a beautiful pre-chorus, with glazing pink-colored keys coloring the mountains… until they’re interrupted by a bland and stupid chorus based on non-melodic vocal samples. It’s gross. And all based around Gaga needing to have faith in herself in order to be with someone? What is this? Gaga at one point liked to push hard buttons, even if she wound up saying nothing about them; here, we don’t even get the illusion of her wanting to say something. Going back to “Alice”, it may be musically fine but in service of lyrics like “My name isn’t Alice/But I’ll keep looking I’ll keep looking for Wonderland/Take me, home/Take me… to Wonderland” as if she couldn’t write anything else.
And so we get songs like “Rain on Me”, where Ariana Grande is just there, and the chorus is super flimsy and insecure when it should be displaying confidence (“I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive/Rain on me” is a poor and deflating main line). Similarly shallow is its following track “Free Woman”, a song that sticks to a white liberal feminism point of view and that has a drop that could be pulled from a free royalty track on YouTube,
Now, all this doesn’t mean there aren’t good moments on this album. The middle part of it is fascinatingly good, possibly because it’s the one that aims the lowest, bringing out the singable hooks and gentile breakdowns that don’t get in the way. “911” struts around like a robot that recalls her early collaborations with Space Cowboy; “Plastic Doll”, courtesy of Skrillex’s palpable dynamics, is one of her best songs in a while, with a hook worthy of Swift; and “Sour Candy” with BLACKPINK works way better than expected, as it gets to explore some of the more sinister aspects of the club, even if Gaga’s cold sensuality isn’t exactly welcome.
And yet there is one moment in which Gaga seems to want to come clean with her audience. Well, actually there are 2, but the first one (“Fun Tonight”) isn’t exactly all that good, although her acknowledgment of having lost herself and not being what she think she can be is a nice change of pace. But the second one is by far the weirdest moment on the entire album, the incomprehensible “Sine from Above”. The content is pretty standard, about finding your way in life through the power of music… but there’s a certain catatonic dramatism in the music. The production slowly comes into tension out of nowhere, and takes tones from the thinnest, most ambiguous trance imaginable, and the lyrics have this air of unearned melodrama (“Before there was love, there was silence”). And then in comes Elton John, whose shaky and fragile voice must be processed and set against this rigid yet humid instrumentation, like glass in the middle of a storm. When Gaga and Elton sing (in unison) about the sign/sine that healed their hearts, it’s never quite clear if it was for the best or for the worst; there’s a despair that seems to linger, and the fact that Elton John shares Gaga’s words, as if he himself hasn’t found peace after all this time…
It’s a strange album, Chromatica. Gaga wants to, simultaneously, appease her fans so they don’t quit her, and ends up looking down on them at the same time. It’s quite an insincere listen, and if she keeps going down this road, she might end up restricting herself in the next steps of her career. But Gaga’s last 3 albums have been transitional records to phases that never came, so nothing’s off the table. Which is concerning, and she’s not quite past her anti-pop phase yet… but at her best, she can still come up with something ephemeral, but worth keeping in mind nonetheless.
Original article published on El Quinto Beatle.
Jeff Rosenstock - NO DREAM
Sure, this is a good album-at times, a great album. And it should be no surprise-Jeff Rosenstock has been at it for the past 15 years and so far, he hasn’t exactly missed. He has yet to outdo his best material with Bomb the Music Industry! and the Arrogant Sons of Bitches as a solo performer, but he’s never lost the knack he has for thrilling hooks, raucous instrumentals and exhilarating vocal performances. He embodies what typically doesn’t work in pop punk or even power pop and takes those tropes to the extreme-at his best, it feels like what he’s talking about can’t possibly be covered by his music, because there’s always gonna be something left unturned. And that anxiety has brought a lot of complicated art out of him.
And sure, that technically happens again here. NO DREAM shows us yet again an angry Rosenstock, discontent at the turns his life has taken, the feeling of abandonment by who he considered to be his friends, and the impulse of wanting to throw it all away. The hooks and melodies are still explosive and shimmering, and the guitars crunch their way through grooves that are never as stiff as they could be-albeit with a lack of color that’s one of the major problems of his solo discography. The discomfort presented all throughout is visible, understandable and relatable. Everything is the way it’s always been. Again.
And by this point we’ve done this. This whole charade of screaming and chanting and power chords, I like to think we’re a bit past that. But Jeff keeps returning to the same well over and over. And the more he returns to it, the more hollow and even regressive it feels. Not only in its compositions, but also in its theory. It’s very not-of-its-time to make a whole song like the title track about police brutality, reflecting upon your white privilege, saying that “The only framework capitalism can thrive in is dystopia”, and asking what we can do... only to end the song with the chant “Fuck violence”? It’s almost getting to the point, and then missing it entirely. And that attitude prevails throughout the album. Interacting with the world through vague escapism. It was cool at some point, but now Jeff feels conformist in his style and his content.
And it’s a shame to hear because there are plenty of moments here are as powerful as ever, and in spirit-and only in spirit-feels like a cry out for something else. “***BNB” is the best song Weezer never wrote (not that that’s a high bar to clear) with its tense chord progression and existential chants; songs like “Leave It In the Sun” and “Old Crap” might be residuals of dread and angst, but they have a certain amount of energy; the highlight of the album “f a m e” is an incessantly catchy song that halfway through turns into an Andrew W.K-esque wall of sound that’s the most inspired section Jeff’s worked on since WORRY. And most of the album has enough hooks to be salvageable; again, this is a fine, and pleasant listen. But it never dares question itself or its audience, it almost accommodates to what the listener wants to hear. It’s a look backwards from a man who once used to be afraid of that notion.
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Alfredo
Some of the best rap seems to have come out of nowhere the past few weeks, including this one. Freddie Gibbs has been one of the most prolific gangsta rappers as of late, with his attitude of someone who’s seen it all and can separate the grass from the weed. He’s had a lot of moves in the 90s-inspired jazz rap, although his incursions into trap have been quite efficient as well. But after his second excellent collaboration with producer Madlib last year, he seems to want to touch upon similar musical ideas but with a sharper sense of brevity; that’s why we have a relatively short project with prolific producer The Alchemist that’s rapidly become one of the best rap albums of the year almost effortlessly.
It’s interesting how Gibbs is so used to bragging about his fame and success, and yet he can sound so comfortable among such humble sounds. The Alchemist makes him go back to several eras of hip-hop at once, with a finesse and comfort worthy of the elite. Forgotten soul songs are brought back and they seem delighted to belong again, on top of lounge grooves that glisten with their clear-sky guitars, like sunlight through a window, or pianos that shine. And even when they give way to more ominous instrumentals, they neither contradict or create dissonance with the rest of the album, for they’re discreet enough to not go too dark. Standout beats include “God Is Perfect”, with its light touches of saxophone that don’t ruin the menacing vibe of the pianos; “Something to Rap About”, which guest Tyler the Creator describes as “the boat I haven't bought yet”; and the looser soul of “Babies & Fools”, with the voices that judge Freddie’s conformity.
And it’s not that Freddie sounds too comfortable or confident on this album to not try-he’s certainly still an imaginative, fun, ingenious rapper in the way he expresses himself, and his voice is so magnetic, it’s hard not to pay attention to him. There are moments where he sounds like he’s skipping stones because he knows which way he’s headed, and yet he still manages to not make this a repetitive listen. He clearly knows how to tell stories of crimes, drug dealing, discrediting his haters, and how his life in the streets still affects him to this day. And even if it’s got some strong moments of reflection-the story of how he supplied the drug dealer of his uncle who later died of an overdose-they’re merely moments, and he’s frank enough with himself to understand the flexibility of his relationship with others. And all in all, Freddie’s pleased with demonstrating his technical and lyrical skills that are demonstrated throughout the album, and that’s more than enough. He’s got plenty of stories to tell and things to say. One of his best lines, on “Something to Rap About”: “Yeah, you n****s bringin' out the old me/I'm tryna live to 93 and see the old me”.
Backxwash - God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It
Horrible stuff. Not in quality-certainly not in quality-but in just how much visceral openness there is here. It’s an opening of a living carcass and realizing it’s still alive, and willing to put up a fight. God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It, the breakthrough album of Backxwash in terms of critical notoriety, is a quick but powerful listen through someone’s inner demons battling each other out. And she puts the industrial “horrorcore” rap tag to a raging extreme, with a mood that seems to swamp itself out. She raps on the first track, “Mama keep telling me to ask the lord for forgiveness/I want war with these bitches, I want corpses and weapons”, and it sounds like a hunt for all those who denied her existence.
Just about every move here is one of defiance. From the bold sampling of cis white men-staple rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and placing them in an openly black trans environment, to the 2 heaven/hell interludes that easily could break up the mood of the album yet they end up opening up its frontiers of the sound-the “Heaven” one being a brutal reimagining of “In Heaven” from David Lynch’s similarly industrial masterpiece Eraserhead-to Backxwash’s performance all throughout that, even at its most subdued, still conveys a certain quiet angst and anger of being put to the side for all her life. Her lyricism is so up front and direct most of the time, it could come off as simplistic-but the way in which she performs it gives it its monumental gravitas. Her being an openly trans woman, she’s facing a world that she feels terrified of being a part of, as she tends to give into her paranoia which takes her some of her darkest moments, like on “Into the Void”, with the daunting acknowledgement that said void could be anywhere. And her turning her back on institutionalized religion to give into the “black magic” even if she’s ostracized by her family and those around her is something she needs to do to survive.
Not to say everything is bleak and hopeless. If the music sounds the way it does, it’s because there’s a core in which she takes it to herself to not give up. Songs like “Black Sheep” and “Spells” may be locked into instrumentals that feel trapped amongst all the noise, but for the most part, this record delves into a swampy, angry atmosphere that’s loud as a sign of resistance. The sound of going “Into the Void” may sound eerily similar to the protest and standing up against hypocrisy of “Amen”, but that’s because she’s aware of how she can take her anger and fear and turn it into something else, something strong and tangible that works against those who have forsaken her. And she’s smart enough to go after the ones who truly deserve punishment, and can make an assessment of her complicated relationship with her family on songs like “Adolescence” and “Redemption”, the least chaotic of the bunch if that means anything. There’s a clarity among the darkness that, as ready as Backxwash is to fuck shit up, keeps the record somewhat grounded in its targets-like she’s gone through enough to understand who the bad guys are.
The best part of the album is the final minute of “Black Magic” where after a pained bridge, the guitar (courtesy of Ada Rook from Black Dresses) wails, and she starts whispering the chorus, almost as if “I fuck with black magic” was a mantra to herself instead of anything else… but slowly the tension grows, and so does her voice, and before anyone notices the chorus kicks in again with full force. Breaking the world by way of reconstruction of oneself.
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Yeah. Sure. Why not? As a thought, we certainly could be doing a lot worse than Run the Jewels, and if they’ve proven anything, it’s that they’re as legit as they can be. This rap superduo who’s been growing in status with each release knows what they’re doing and they do it well-hard knocking beats with 2 leaders on top of it who get to challenge themselves in terms of wit, charisma and subject matter. Ordinary men turned into villains not afraid of delving into political matters such as racial profiling, police brutality, the unspoken racist systems of power that maintain a status quo that leaves behind black people, and said system’s unfair machinations that bring death and suffering to those around them, amongst others. And they do it with a steady eye too. They succeed at just about everything they do; right now, they’re probably one of the most well-rounded acts in hip hop.
…And maybe that’s the problem. They’re a little too well-rounded. Their answers are a little too simple, they know with a little too much clarity where to point the fingers at, and who to blame; and when they don’t, they can easily sidetrack those issues with the aforementioned hard-knocking beats. That’s the thing: they know what they’re doing well enough to know how to incite action-which is always welcome-but their readings never go as far or as deep as they could (and, in their solo careers, they’ve proven they’re capable of). They try to appeal to as many demographics as they can so that, at their worst, they can feel like a political one-size-fits-all package that makes a chunk of their audience leave their music without any real questioning of the statutes of power as they currently are. To put it plainly, they’re the kind of political hip hop the #resistance can listen to without flinching.
And that’s not to say their music is bad! Their last 3 albums have been consistently really damn good, and this new one is no exception! It is one of their sharpest releases lyrically, and it does go places than none of their previous records had before, which is good for the times we’re currently living in. It’s very noble that they don’t try to present themselves as leaders, but rather as outsiders done wrong by the system-although the tone that they say it with can often betray them. And there are moments like “goonies vs. E.T.” where they call out said ‘woke’ culture as posers who think in ways just as shallow as those they try to fight against, or Killer Mike’s all-around excellent verse on “walking in the snow” in its calling out of white people’s desensitization in the face of the ever-present tragedy caused by racism, their empathy replaced by apathy. If there’s one thing they’re becoming more aware of, it’s who’s really listening to what they have to say, and their effort of trying to question said audience, as inconsistent and half-hearted as it may be, is appreciated.
But there’s still that attitude of backing down when they could go harder, and backing up the wrong moments. A song like “JU$T” finds itself with the phrase “Look at all these slave masters posin’ on your dollar”-a fantastic, stomping line, by all means. But they fall in love a tad too hard with it and decide to not only repeat it the entire chorus but follow it up every time with a little “Get it?” adlib as if they were hitting you with the elbow for you to notice what a smart line that was. And that attitude’s present throughout most of the album: Run the Jewels end up buying their hype a bit too much and become more self-righteous than they have any right to be, at some point it feels like it’s s all for show. They love that they’ll get respect from rockists by having Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine on their album for the 3rd time in a row (Lord knows why they still hang out with him) as well as Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, while also getting enough hip hop clout to get 2 Chainz, Pharrell and DJ Premier on board-but then they have them all do close to nothing. Despite what they want to be, Run the Jewels end up defaulting into empty posturing, while they’re clearly aiming for something more.
That all said, it’s not like empty posturing is necessarily a bad thing, especially when they sound this good and fresh. Opener “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)" is 2 minutes long but it feels way longer simply because of how much happens in it: El-P’s stuttered production that occasionally sounds like an abandoned theme park attraction, and both MCs play their part in cultivating their atmosphere. It’s also very refreshing to hear them dive into more scattered, train-of-thought flows on top of more chaotic and absurd instrumentals, like on “ooh la la” and “holy calamafuck”, the former with its ridiculous hook that may be awful or genius or both, and the latter with its beat switches that cultivate a meaner, funhouse ambiance.
And the 2 clear centerpieces of the album, “walking in the snow” and “a few words for the firing squad (radiation)” are highly successful, ranking among their best songs ever. The dense atmosphere of “a few words for the firing squad”, like a hot morning in the middle of a city that’s about to explode, is a great encapsulation of both rappers’ strengths as storytellers, as both try to keep themselves steady and on the right path both for themselves and for their loved ones. And while the third verse of “walking in the snow” is tacky and unnecessary, the beat sounds like getting home and realizing the demons from the outside world don’t go away just like that, which makes sense since both rappers provide some of their sharpest verses yet regarding just how hard it is to make real, sustainable change when the game is rigged from the start, and how that goes for everyone (El-P: “Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group/So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you”; Killer Mike: “All of us serve the same masters, all of us nothin' but slaves/Never forget in the story of Jesus, the hero was killed by the state”).
There’s a lot to like about Run the Jewels, and a lot to like about this album, and given that it came out during such a mobilizing time for the black rights movement in the United States, it certainly deserves its place in the cultural conversation-but once the veneer of being this overtly politically charged wears off, it’s gonna be interesting to see who this continues to speak to. ‘Intellectual’ protest music.
One of the most well-rounded reviews of Chromatica I've seen so far. I love Lady Gaga and one day I want to see her make a masterpiece album again and I think with this review you've laid out exactly what's holding her back right now.
Perhaps what's more important on "Rain On Me" than the lyrics is the delivery. It's not a great line but she's done a lot without great songwriting before. When you think about it her best song goes "Can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face." And on the final chorus when Gaga's vocals come crashing in it's like a journey to another world, where Lady Gaga is not only alive but on top of the world once again