Friday, November 29, 2019

New Millennial Pop-Folk Blues

Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow

“Sitting at the bar, I told you everything,” Sharon Van Etten sings mournfully to open this album. “You said ‘Holy shit. You almost died.’” Van Etten doesn’t much explain what “everything” means in this song, “I Told You Everything.” But it clearly involves a youthful sexual experience that leaves her shaken and scarred, yet, she implies, compelled to eternally repeat. That sets this album’s mingled themes of dread and disappointment.

If, like me, you encountered this album through its advance singles, particularly “Comeback Kid” and “Seventeen,” you probably anticipated these themes. Heavy with melancholy and a sense of mortality, these songs reflect an artist who, thirty-seven years old when she recorded them, recognized an unmet need for pop music with a grown-up audience. But they don’t really reflect the album’s larger soundscape, which is unremittingly grim, verging on bleak.

Previously noted for a substantially acoustic singer-songwriter sound, Van Etten’s fifth album shifts to an atmospheric electronica sound notable for its minimal guitars. And by “atmospheric,” I mean a minor-key bass chord on Farfisa organ runs through nearly this entire album, making your teeth vibrate like a 1980s horror movie soundtrack. This chord is so understated, though, that you may only notice its persistence on the fourth or fifth listen.

Yet this isn’t a horrific album. Sad and pensive, perhaps, often preoccupied with the past despite the pressing imminence of the present, but the only scary thing is how we interpret it. I noticed this on “Jupiter 4,” which has lyrics of unalloyed love—”Our love’s for real, how’d it take a long, long time to let us feel?”—played ironically against chords that sound like a breakup song.

Put another way, Van Etten does the opposite of Hank Williams, who often played gloomy lyrics against bouncy tunes. Van Etten, like Williams, puts her words and music in direct opposition. Listening to this album, you may feel a growing sense of dread. Not only that somber chord, but Van Etten’s contralto voice, which contrasts with the music but doesn’t oppose it. Her voice seems separate from the instrumentation.

Sharon Van Etten
This has good and bad qualities. This album’s first three tracks are so uniform in sound and tempo that, if you’re listening with half an ear while driving or studying, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s one fourteen-minute song. Only with “Comeback Kid” does the sound become differentiated enough to feel a change. This is also where Van Etten’s vocals become distinct enough to follow without a lyrics sheet.

After that point, however, everything opens up. Her dynamic changes, and her voice becomes a more prominent instrument. Though still atmospheric and dense, she becomes more willing to step up or fade back, appropriate to the message she conveys. Yet she never loses that reverse-Hank Williams trick, because her songs remain sonically stark, regardless of how optimistic or despondent her words.

Please understand, this isn’t a timeless sound. My previous reference to 1980s soundtrack music isn’t flippant. Her foregrounding of Farfisa or synthesizer on every track harkens back to the music that dominated the soundscape of Van Etten’s childhood. As the oldest Millennials approach forty, but frequently still can’t afford a down-payment on a house, this lingering backwards gaze will touch their situation concisely.

Hearing this album as a unit, one wonders whether Van Etten intended it to announce her planned retirement. The single “Seventeen,” with its themes of generational angst, became her first to hit any Billboard chart. Like most Millennials, she both is and isn’t an adult, with all the responsibilities of a career and new motherhood, but a paucity of trust from her economy. One suspects she’s touched a nerve.

Motherhood in particular lingers throughout this album, though usually not overtly. On the final track, “Stay,” she muses, “Imagining when you’re inside, when you make those kicks inside. Don’t want to hurt you. Don’t want to run away from myself.” The prospect of caring for a helpless life, when her generation frequently can’t care for itself, scares her. But, she continues, “You won’t let me go astray.” Adulthood persists, regardless.

Pop music often requires artists to remain eternally teenaged and rebellious, because kids have more disposable income. But Van Etten’s compositions reflect a generation that never had economic stability enough to rebel, and now faces impending middle age. I find a kindred spirit in her: grown-up, yet still carrying the unfulfilled impulses of youth. This album starts slowly, sure. But by the end, it’s pop for a newly older generation.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

The Happy-Dance of Fake Gender Roles

Rigaud's portrait of Louis XIV
(click to enlarge)
Whenever I get entangled in discussions of gender, my mind inevitably drifts to Hyacinthe Rigaud’s legendary portrait of King Louis XIV. Louis, the “Sun King” responsible for the Rococo atrocity that is Versailles, commissioned several paintings of himself, though Rigaud’s is probably most famous. Rigaud depicts Louis, like nearly every portrait does, wearing high heels, leggings, a fur-trimmed wrap, heavy cosmetics, and a wig.

This painting depicts one of the most powerful men—and, for this discussion, I do mean “men”—who ever lived. Louis commanded a global empire with an iron hand, untrammeled by the oversight of any parliament or circumscribing aristocracy. He controlled France’s political, economic, and even religious culture with absolute authority. And he did so while wearing clothing that, to modern eyes, looks like a woman’s, if not a drag queen’s.

I recalled this painting again recently when a tweet went viral. Ashley StClair, a woman who calls herself a “freedom fighter” and “patriot,” shared an Instagram video of a father and son, prancing happily in off-the-rack Halloween versions of the protagonists’ dresses from the movie Frozen. StClair captioned the video with “The testosterone is being sucked from our men right before our eyes.” Because obviously one Instagram video is a universal data point.



The reaction has been both swift and predictable. Defenders of the status quo have condemned the father for not forcing his son to adhere to masculine stereotypes, by requiring him to play catch or work on a farm. Progressives have called for people to let families have fun, or insisted that gender inclusiveness is sexy. I can’t help thinking they both miss the point: this post is built on entirely wrong premises.

StClair’s whole “testosterone” comment implies that gender, or anyway sex, is biologically determined. If that’s the case, why must we police gender roles, and punish anybody who transgresses? Is biology so brittle that it could be shattered by children being happy while trying on possible identities for size? Of course not. StClair feels compelled to enforce gender standards because she knows she’s protecting something artificial, for artificial reasons.

Louis XIV demonstrates this artificiality. High-heeled shoes, a fashion accessory connected today with women, were invented at Versailles, specifically for Louis, who, at five-foot-five, was shorter than most of his courtiers. He feared his height made him look weak when holding court, so he ordered shoes designed to protect his image. Only after he abandoned wearing them, late in life, did women inherit this formerly masculine fashion accoutrement.

Medieval illustration of peasant dress
(click to enlarge)
We invent gender standards, just like standards of class, race, and nationality, to defend power arrangements. Medieval illustrations show that, though the sexes didn’t dress exactly alike, the differences were much slighter than we expect today. Billowy skirts allowed workers to move freely in an economy where both sexes did manual labor, while lace-up leggings protected workers from nettles and insects. Clothes weren’t gender markers, they simply existed.

So gender standards, as we understand them, are fake. Yet the opposite also isn’t true. I have the same attitude regarding gender that Ibram Kendi has regarding race: the distinctions might be artificial, but their consequences are real and lasting. Working construction, a heavily gender-segregated occupation, I see men rigorously defending their gender identities, because it’s frequently the only credential they have for wage-earning in a stagnant labor economy.

Therefore, gender roles both are, and are not, real. And don’t bring me examples of traditional societies which had more than two established gender niches. Unless they had the same gender definitions, and those definitions never changed—which isn’t so—that doesn’t tell us anything useful. It only reinforces my position that gender roles are socially conditioned. Those who police categories, and those who contravene them, operate from the same expectations.

King Louis adopted his look for specific political reasons. He wanted kings of other nations (Rigaud’s painting was originally commissioned for Philip of Spain) to understand his wealth, power, and eternal youthful vigor. His laborers, wearing skirts to work the fields and vineyards, needed no such cultural reinforcement. They dressed in ways that freed them to work, and made them happy.

Happy. Like a little boy dancing in a dress.

I’m sure the anonymous father didn’t intend a political protest against intrusive gender standards. But he gave us one anyway. He showed us that one needn’t obey somebody else’s socially conditioned categories to be happy. The rules don’t objectively exist; they need self-righteous censors like Ashley StClair to police them. And if we don’t need those rules, we don’t need the rule-keepers, either. Maybe we’d all be happier dancing in dresses.

Monday, November 25, 2019

Classical Folk Fusion for a Discerning Ear

The Arcadian Wild, Finch in the Pantry

Listening to the title track, an instrumental, from The Arcadian Wild’s second album, I couldn’t help noticing something unusual: the fiddle and guitar were playing different underlying rhythms. The fiddle, largely the lead instrument, followed a looping six-beat rhythm suggestive of an Irish seisiún, while the guitarist played a four-square supporting chord progression sounding almost like a chorus of snare drums. They weren’t in different time signatures, in the Stravinsky style, but came mighty close.

This musical erudition characterizes the entire album. The acoustic instrumentation comes straight from the bluegrass tradition, with guitar and mandolin trading roles as percussion and driving force, with a layer of fiddle atop them. But they use staggered arrangements, syncopated beats, and cathedral choir vocals. Clearly these musicians learned their craft from the honored elders of musical lore, but aren’t beholden to it. They have their own story, and their own way of telling it.

From the opening song, “Hey Runner,” the band establishes their impatience with convention for its own sake. Sung from the viewpoint of a volunteer concert organizer dealing with an arrogant showcase performer, guitarist Isaac Horn expresses the disappointment inherent in becoming a musician today. Mandolinist Lincoln Mick does something similar on the more upbeat, possibly radio-friendly “Food Truck Blues.” They occupy a Nashville where dues-paying dependency has become a full-time career stretching out for years.

Clearly this album comes from superior musicians more interested in creating music than kissing record executives’ rings. Complex arrangements that require more planning than today’s common studio jams, and dense, allusive lyrics, reflect artists who spend time thinking about their music. It wouldn’t be accurate to say these artists aren’t listenable, because they emphatically are; but they don’t permit listening with half an ear while driving or studying or cleaning. They write for active listeners.

Tracks like Mick’s “Silence, a Stranger” have intricate expressions reflecting this ethos. If you’re like me, you hear songs several times before you really begin processing the lyrics; initial attention stays on the music, which in this case is ethereal and dreamlike, but never wispy. Only on the fifth or sixth hearing do I catch lines like: “Stillness is a woman I’m too cowardly to kiss / A hallowed thing too holy for my unclean lips.”

The Arcadian Wild, l-r: Paige Park, Lincoln Mick, Isaac Horn

Seriously, I heard this album several times before catching how laden the lyrics are with references to literature, the Bible, and other sources. In today’s Nashville, songwriters tear off tracks hastily inside the studio, building them around radio-friendly hooks, because that’s what makes money. The Arcadian Wild are more contemplative and intricate, reflected in lyrics like Horn’s, from “Oh, Sleeper”: “I wonder who I’ll need to be today / They don’t need to change, I’ll relate.”

It bears noting, though this isn’t a Christian band, they’re clearly influenced by Christianity. Besides Mick’s quoted lyrics above, which reference Isaiah and Proverbs, it’s possible to spot other Biblical references throughout. Mick does this more directly, while Horn’s influence comes from liturgy (his compositions use cathedral vocals more than Mick’s). This culminates in the long final track, “A Benediction,” which includes Irish-style blessings, lyrics in Latin, and the line “Because death has lost already.”

This level of musical sophistication has fittingly won The Arcadian Wild a small but loyal following throughout the independent folk circuit; they maintain a busy schedule of house tours and intimate club venues. That’s how I encountered them, playing a small storefront church. Speaking to mandolinist Lincoln Mick following a concert, I mentioned I’d struggled to place why their sound feels familiar, before successfully placing it: they resemble Nickel Creek. “We’ll take it,” Mick said.

Horn and Mick, as composers and vocalists, have a thread of, let’s say, optimistic disappointment. They reflect the belief that things will get better soon, but they don’t know when, or why not yet. (Fiddler Paige Park is billed as full band member, but doesn’t compose or sing lead on any track; she replaces a banjo picker from the prior album. This band isn’t a boys’ club, necessarily, but the men obviously have creative control.)

Without a clear genre niche, this band may struggle to find an audience. Are they bluegrass? Classical fusion? Americana? My comparison to Nickel Creek isn’t flippant: both bands will enjoy a small but dedicated audience, which will probably spread by word-of-mouth rather than slick Nashville promotion. Maybe a review like this will bolster their public awareness. They certainly deserve that attention, because nobody else is creating music like theirs right now, and that’s a shame.

Friday, November 22, 2019

Clint Eastwood's Cowboy Economics

1001 Movies to Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 33
Clint Eastwood (director/star), Pale Rider


For me, the iconic image happens when Preacher (Clint Eastwood) begins sledgehammering a large granite boulder. Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty) believes there’s untapped gold under the stone, but he cannot reach it without breaking the stone first. And he daren’t drill and blast, he explains, lest he divert the stream the other prospectors depend upon for their meager living. Barrett cannot bear hurting the other prospectors, not even if doing so would make him rich.

Not surprisingly for a movie starring a character known only as Preacher, this movie is replete with Biblical references. Moses, in the book of Exodus, struck a rock at Meribah and opened a stream, saving his people. Likewise, the prospectors of Carbon Canyon, inspired by Preacher’s resistance to the capitalist LaHood and his violent thugs, join him in striking Barrett’s rock; indeed they find gold, which saves the prospectors from destitution. Preacher is apparently Moses.

Capitalist Coy LaHood owns nearly all his domain. He has renamed his town LaHood, and has replaced slow, tedious panning for gold with a hydraulic system. His technology has made him rich, but gradually destroys the land it occupies. Most workers around LaHood have accepted their subjection and work the mines, knowing they’ll never profit much. But why fight it? LaHood bribes state regulators and federal marshals to ensure every conflict breaks in his favor.

The prospectors in Carbon Canyon, by contrast, don’t have bosses. They have legal claim to their smallholdings, provided they stay put. Though they lack a formal hierarchy, Hull Barrett has achieved enough trust and respect that they treat him as unofficial mayor. The prospectors’ relative independence galls LaHood, who longs to control everyone and everything. So he dispatches his employees to destroy their settlement, hoping that will bring them to heel. Instead, they start praying.

Many critics have observed that this movie pinches tropes from multiple prior Westerns. The mysterious stranger who rides in to deliver the oppressed (Shane). The avenging preacher (Heaven With a Gun). Small operators standing fast against a corrupt, thuggish establishment (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Even Eastwood’s own High Plains Drifter. One could make a sport of spotting moments which screenwriters Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack pinch from the great canon of prior Westerns.

But this criticism misses the point. This creative team doesn’t want to open new territory; they’d rather make a point about the present, viewed through a mythologized past. Coy LaHood embodies the violent coercion inherent in unrestricted capitalism. He owns both the lawmakers and the lawkeepers, and fears no consequences for his actions. His money distorts his ethics, making him mercilessly destroy anybody who prevents him making even more money. Lucre is cause and consequence.


Opposite LaHood’s massive, dehumanizing greed, the Carbon Canyon prospectors have a distributed economy based on everyone minding their own patch. As Barrett explains in a moving speech, they aren’t panning for gold to become rich; they’re working to maintain their own patches, put down roots, and become ordinary citizens. LaHood sees money as its own goal; the Carbon Canyon community long for small holdings, distributed power, and family. They’re Distributists, before the term was coined.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting, this movie ignores that the land the prospectors’ land was stolen twice, once from Indians, once from Mexico. It also ignores that, while they pan for gold, nobody’s growing crops or manufacturing goods. Their community couldn’t survive long without more diverse production, and indeed it didn’t; prospector communities quickly dwindled in history, because somebody needed to hoe corn. Like most myths and fables, this one only extends so far.)

This parable of smallness and honesty versus bigness and corruption, remains tearfully relevant because we face this issue today. Anybody who’s tried filing a stolen wages claim against a major corporation recently, or faced an eminent domain claim, knows the system rewards those already well rewarded; to paraphrase Preacher, the system cannot serve God and Mammon. Preacher gets the credit for stopping the corrupt marshal with guns. But the community stops LaHood by standing together.

This movie was one of several Westerns released in 1985. Following the disaster of Heaven’s Gate, which tanked so badly, it destroyed United Artists Pictures, Hollywood became reluctant to touch Western themes. However, as the profligacy of the 1980s, with their cowboy President, became more overwhelming, Hollywood finally returned to the hero cowboy legend. After all, the present is always morally corrupt; from medieval romances to Singing Cowboys, true Virtue always lives in the past.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Nathaniel Rateliff's Old-School Blues Reunion

1001 Albums To Hear Before Your iPod Battery Dies, Part 14
Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats

In the summer of 2015, an unexpected track hit American airwaves, a song with a capella stanzas that sounded like a traditional Gospel choir. Audiences who didn’t listen to lyrics too closely could’ve been forgiven for snapping their fingers and humming along, thinking they were hearing something from an earlier era of American music history. At least, until the musically loaded chorus, where the featured vocalist suddenly shouted “Son of a bitch! Gimme a drink!”

Nathaniel Rateliff paid his dues on the Denver music circuit, where he became a local headliner while polishing his songwriting chops. He tried his hand, at various times, with straight-ahead rock music, more sober folk content, and carefully arranged chamber rock. He finally received success when he organized the Night Sweats, a more upbeat combo focusing on a retro Memphis soul sound. But, like their platinum-scoring breakout single, their sound often conceals much deeper sadness.

That lead single, “S.O.B.,” propelled Rateliff’s ensemble into national awareness, perhaps because Rateliff’s ragged but tuneful vocals reflected the then-current mix of disappointment and optimism based on the culture and economy. Rateliff never sounds anything but soulful, but he also sings with a distinct burr in his voice, possibly reflecting his having worked as a carpenter and a loading dock operator while perfecting his style. This man knew the sounds of existential disappointment.

Audiences primed by that single, however, were undoubtedly surprised by the album. Rateliff’s actual sound was less Tom Waits, more Otis Redding, salted with a broad tour of American musical history. Stops in Memphis, Chicago, New Orleans, and the Piedmont gave his album a tenor that spoke to everyone, equally, at the same time. His mix of blues, folk, and rock offered crossover appeal, and he succeeded at an age other musicians are preparing to retire.

The opening track, “I Need Never Get Old,” is built like a standard blues-rocker, but supplemented with an unexpected brass section that offers a depth of sound missing from others of its kind. It’s the kind of spitfire that Chess Records would’ve released around 1954, hoping to capture an elusive White audience. So it comes as something of a surprise when it transitions into the second song, “Howling at Nothing,” a somber epic of loneliness.

Nathaniel Rateliff (center, bearded) & the Night Sweats

This pattern obtains throughout the album: one muscular rocker, followed by an introspective folkie number. “S.O.B.” swings directly into “Wasting Time,” a slower piece with heavy steel guitar, which sounds like something Jim Croce would’ve recorded at his peak. But even at its most melancholy, this album’s sound remains bolstered by the spring-loaded boom of hollow-bodied electric guitars. Rateliff’s complex, layered arrangements definitely play for grown-up attention in an otherwise youth-dominated music market.

Rateliff’s most unexpected track, late on the album, is “Shake.” Where the other songs sound like early proto-rock’n’roll, this track sounds like the kind of music White record labels rush-released to counter rock’s sensual appeal. It combines bluesy guitar with a percussion line influenced by North African folk music, not unlike when White companies tried floating Cuban and other Caribbean music. The lyrics, however, have a sexual frankness Desi Arnaz could’ve only obliquely hinted at.

Arguably, this reflects the entire album: musically, much of it sounds like it could’ve been recorded fifty or sixty years ago. But lyrically, it’s definitely current, and its themes reflect many of the realities of adulthood. Rateliff’s narrative voice enjoys the autonomy that growing up offers, but he isn’t immune to maturity’s disappointments. Conjoining songs like “Thank You,” about enjoying having a grown-up relationship, with “Look It Here,” where he has to beg for recognition, emphasizes this.

Audiences periodically feel drawn to music from another era, usually during a time when social values are changing from gung-ho optimism to existential disappointment. Creedence Clearwater Revival at the end of the 1960s, for instance, or the Squirrel Nut Zippers in the middle 1990s, repackaged sounds from a prior generation and made them new and contemporary. Nathaniel Rateliff speaks to that same audience motivation, and probably for the same reason, as 2015 was pretty disappointing.

Sadly, Rateliff still hasn’t found Top-40 success. “S.O.B.” and several follow-up singles topped the Adult Album Alternative charts, suggesting he quickly found a full-grown audience eager for more complex sounds. Like Rateliff, who was pushing forty when he had his first hit, his audience probably feels alienated from the present. We aren’t necessarily running from the world; we just aren’t fooled by its pretty promises. The commercial mainstream will never quite have a place for us.

Monday, November 4, 2019

The Streets and Courtrooms of Modern Harlem

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Died, Part 102
Walter Dean Myers, Monster


Steve Harmon, sixteen years old and Black, is on trial for felony murder. That’s a technical term for the charge when someone dies during another felony—in this case, armed robbery. His co-conspirators say he was their lookout man, while he… remains strangely noncommittal. Locked up amidst convicts two and three times his age, he keeps a journal describing his Dante-like journey through the hell of the New York State penal system.

Walter Dean Myers was a remarkably prolific author. In a career stretching half a century, he wrote over a hundred books, both fiction and nonfiction, about the African American relationship with power. His histories of Civil Rights pioneers are frequently required reading in public school history courses, while many English classes assign his novels. This novel remains probably his most widely assigned, because it’s so universally accessible.

Steve, a regular at his high school film club, keeps his journal in the form of a first-draft movie script. In it, he describes his trial, before an apparently mixed-race jury, from his untempered teenage viewpoint. He attempts to communicate with his White attorney in plain English; she responds in legal terminology, while warning him to prepare for the worst. If convicted, he faces twenty-five to life, if the jury feels lenient. Steve, who again is just 16, could get life.

Interspersed with these scenes, Steve includes flashbacks to his pre-arrest life. Raised in Harlem, he spent plenty of time sitting on front stoops needing to prove his manfulness credentials to petty criminals who burned out before turning twenty. But he and his brother long to emulate Batman and Robin. And he argues with his film teacher about whether a story’s resolution should be predictable or abrupt, a clear nod to him not knowing how his trial will resolve.

Perhaps Steve’s most striking characteristic is his complete lack of introspection. Though an aspiring artist with, his film teacher assures us, a remarkable eye for telling detail, he never turns that eye toward himself. His proposed movie describes everyone around him: the Harlem street toughs whose respect he longs to earn, the overwhelmingly White criminal justice system, and his mother, brother, and favorite teacher. Steve himself remains beyond our reach.

Walter Dean Myers
Because of this, we never discover whether Steve actually did what he’s accused of. He tells his attorney he isn’t guilty; she reminds him that’s a far cry from innocent. Unlike, say, Harper Lee’s character Tom Robinson, Steve’s culpability remains murky, even as we sympathize with him. Regardless of his guilt, he fronts bravely, telling the jury he scarcely knows his accused co-conspirators… even though we know, having read his prior journal, that that’s a lie.

The screenplay format permits Steve, as Myers’ stand-in narrator, to keep things external. He describes his life and trial in terms of camera angles and cross-fades, not thoughts and memories. His friendships and family relationships come across in telling moments, but Steve never lets them touch him personally, admitting, in his copious handwritten notes, that he must remain detached and aloof, lest he weep in prison, the worst place to appear weak.

Intermittently between blocks of text, we get photographs, drawings, and handwritten thoughts. This book is illustrated by Christopher Myers, Walter Dean Myers’ son, and between them they create a multimedia text that’s potentially more accessible to today’s school-age readers, who weren’t raised on the printed word like prior generations were. They establish Steven as someone who thinks in images, and communicate with an audience who probably thinks likewise.

When this book appeared in the late 1990s, the highest-rated television drama was a courtroom procedural called Law and Order. Black Americans have long recognized this phrase as dog-whistle language for institutional racism, especially back then: Steve Harmon name-checks Mayor Giuliani among the forces steering him into a foreordained outcome. One hears echoes of that whitewashed vision of “the criminal justice system” in Steve’s plaintive story.

This novel, like most of Myers’ corpus, is considered a young-adult book. That’s because it features a teenage protagonist, plain English storytelling, and no vulgarities you couldn’t repeat in school. But like most young-adult literature, it offers copious rewards for adults reading, too, on issues of race, crime, and at what point our society considers a man “grown.” It’s published with a readers’ guide. Share this volume with your students, church youth, or your own kids.

Because I hate to say it, but many things about American justice have only gotten worse in the twenty years since this book appeared.