Saturday, May 30, 2020
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Reunions
By any normal standards, Reunions is outstanding; in the context of Isbell's recent discography it's merely very good, a sustaining of the high standard he's set in that run since Southeastern. Whether on crisply written, richly layered and thrumming singer-songwriter fare like first three songs "What've I Done to Help", "Dreamsicle" and "Only Children", guitar-to-the-forefront rock songs like "Overseas" and "Be Afraid" (which bring to mind both the War on Drugs and Isbell's old band the Drive-By Truckers) or mellower moments like "River" and "Letting You Go", it all resonates; for modern Americana it doesn't get much better than this.
Friday, May 29, 2020
Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
I've had a fondness for Stephen King going way back - a testament to the power of story-telling, I think, as horror has never particularly appealed to me as a genre (although I don't mind occasionally dipping into it). 'Salem's Lot was his second novel, vampires in small town Maine. While I got through it quickly, some of the elements that make King great weren't as fully developed at this stage of his career as they would be later - in particular, the way things would go is very telegraphed, taking some of the tension and sting out of the story, and the sense of creeping dread that he'd later master is also a bit nascent (although apparent). On the other hand, his ability to draw a large cast of engaging characters is already apparent to a large extent, as are the story-telling instincts.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Georgia O'Keeffe (ed. Tanya Barson, Tate Publishing)
This book was pitched pretty much exactly at the level I would've wanted for an exploration of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of my very favourite artists: many large colour reproductions spanning all important parts of her body of work, six mid-length essays going into aspects of her work (including its reception and the context in which it was made) in just the right amount of depth, and some shorter interpolated pieces and extracts mostly from contemporary reviews of O'Keeffe's work. Most of the works I've encountered before, and a lot of them in person, but all are always welcome, and some were new as well.
The two strongest through-lines are her relationship to abstraction - as traced, for example, through the development of her 'black place' series, a striking stretch of hills some distance northwest of Ghost Ranch - and the role of gender in how her work has been received and interpreted over time, including the role that Alfred Stieglitz played in creating and disseminating a heavily feminised reading and how that fit with Modernist art currents in America at the time.
There are some illuminating perspectives on abstraction in particular, and how this relates to the sense of infinity in O'Keeffe's work. In relation to the 'patio' series (the door of her patio in Abiquiu that she painted over and over), for example, and Barnett Newman: "Newman developed a heightened sense of the 'sublime' or - more applicable to O'Keeffe - the 'infinite'. This he achieved not by perpetuating traditional 'sublime' subjects, but by making the moment of aesthetic perception of his expansive, 'present' canvases an overwhelming emotional sensation ... O'Keeffe transformed the patio wall motif into an intangible, metaphysical vision".
I also found the discussion about how O'Keeffe was influenced by photography interesting and persuasive - the pathways it opened to abstraction, including the techniques of close ups and unusual perspectives, and the emphasis on negative space. (And again, in that case, in interplay with Stieglitz.)
"It is the abstracting - as with the flowers, the bones, the simplicity - that should be the example, the abstract continuity of unseen patterns and clues, culled in perhaps unrecognizable form at first, but revealing when examined, a simple clarity, wholeness" - Christine Taylor Patten
Black, White and Blue, 1930
The two strongest through-lines are her relationship to abstraction - as traced, for example, through the development of her 'black place' series, a striking stretch of hills some distance northwest of Ghost Ranch - and the role of gender in how her work has been received and interpreted over time, including the role that Alfred Stieglitz played in creating and disseminating a heavily feminised reading and how that fit with Modernist art currents in America at the time.
Black Place III, 1944
There are some illuminating perspectives on abstraction in particular, and how this relates to the sense of infinity in O'Keeffe's work. In relation to the 'patio' series (the door of her patio in Abiquiu that she painted over and over), for example, and Barnett Newman: "Newman developed a heightened sense of the 'sublime' or - more applicable to O'Keeffe - the 'infinite'. This he achieved not by perpetuating traditional 'sublime' subjects, but by making the moment of aesthetic perception of his expansive, 'present' canvases an overwhelming emotional sensation ... O'Keeffe transformed the patio wall motif into an intangible, metaphysical vision".
White Patio with Red Door, 1960
I also found the discussion about how O'Keeffe was influenced by photography interesting and persuasive - the pathways it opened to abstraction, including the techniques of close ups and unusual perspectives, and the emphasis on negative space. (And again, in that case, in interplay with Stieglitz.)
Deer's Skull with Pedernal, 1936
"It is the abstracting - as with the flowers, the bones, the simplicity - that should be the example, the abstract continuity of unseen patterns and clues, culled in perhaps unrecognizable form at first, but revealing when examined, a simple clarity, wholeness" - Christine Taylor Patten
Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945
Maria Gainza - Optic Nerve
With many books I've liked, there's a moment, often early on, that makes me certain I'm going to like it a lot - a passage, scene or image that arrives with a sense of opening up, both in its own right and as an indication of the kind of depths the book contains. (That's true of tv series too - e.g. - which suggests an interesting parallel given that's the only other form to which this applies.)
Optic Nerve I enjoyed from the get-go, and I could tell that its layered, oblique disclosures and inter-connections had plenty going on, but that moment arrived just shy of halfway through, in the chapterlette (neither 'chapter' nor 'story' feels quite right for the shortish sections in which the book's organised) about Gustave Courbet, his "The Stormy Sea", the narrator's periodic visits to an old stone house in the coastal city of Mar Del Plata, and the narrator's older cousin who walks the house's hallways at night. It's a section that could have come from A Field Guide to Getting Lost, even before its last paragraph: "My cousin was also called Maria. And only recently has it come to me that our name has the sea in it - mar - embedded like a lure, like a foretelling."
The way those four main elements are woven together through just 13 widely spaced pages reflects the approach of Optic Nerve as a whole - the life of an artist and a particular work (often one held in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires) in conversation with an aspect of the narrator's own life and her experience of the world, which is 'in character' given how important a role art plays in her life. The book is full of moments of recognition in the face of art, only once (I think) made fully explicit, when her eye is caught by a painting that recalls her own 11 year old self. As she says early on, you write one thing in order to talk about something else.
There's some great writing about art here - about individual pieces, and about the powerful subjective experience of encountering art. How's this, for example: "But when Rothko felt anxious, he became talkative - overly so. And this in turn led him to overlook the fact that often the most powerful aspect of any work of art is its silence, and that - as they say - style is a medium in itself, its own means of emphasis. Perhaps there is something spiritual in the experience of looking at a Rothko, but it's the kind of spiritual that resists description: like seeing a glacier, or crossing a desert. Rarely do the inadequacies of language become so patently obvious." In the Rothko 'chapter' (or what have you), the narrator visits a doctor's surgery after "several days' of a constant vibration in my right eye", sees a Rothko poster, and slips abruptly in its final section via "My husband fell ill twice" into a densely reverberant passage wrapping in life, death, eros, class, humanity (via her encounter with a prostitute who walks the wards at night), the spiritual, red, and black.
Also great is the closing bit on El Greco, a painter who's come into my life in a couple of ways lately. As she says, his "View of Toledo" is "easily expressionistic enough to belong to the twentieth century". Looking at it now, it's genuinely amazing to think it was painted somewhere at the end of sixteenth century instead. And her description of his "Christ in the Olive Grove" is even more descriptively intriguing, as well as revealing a great deal about the narrator herself, in the context in which it appears (at its most surface level - in a museum during a visit to her estranged brother who has chosen to remain outside): "A piece I have a weakness for. Not its theme - in fact I have little idea what the scene is supposed to signify - but rather the way in which everything in it seems suspended in the air. In it, gravity functions in reverse: something draw the figures skywards, sucking them in the direction of the clouds, like the lava lamps of my adolescence. The correct way to look at it, I thought, would be while doing a handstand; forget about the figuration and simply appreciate the scandalous sensuality of the brushstrokes strewing the oils this way and that across the canvas. Aldous Huxley must have been thinking similarly when he claimed that El Greco was such a visceral painter that, had he lived to see ninety, he would have ended up producing abstracts. Such were my thoughts as I looked up at the sky in the painting. A portentous sky, the kind beneath which only terrible or solemn events may occur, like a family member leaving home, or the erection of a cross."
The writing about art is pleasurable in itself, but much more so is the effect of its interweaving with character and theme. When I started Optic Nerve, the first reference point that came to mind was Rachel Cusk, in the way much of the external action occurs through the narrators' interactions with others and what we learn about those others, combined by razor sharp observations of those same other people. But we learn far more about the narrator here - Maria - than we ever do about the Outline trilogy's Faye, and while the reader needs to work to put the pieces together, the picture of a character and a life, situated in her particular familial, social and historical context, emerges clearly, both through the mediation of (her thoughts on) art and otherwise. And the rewards from the light it sheds on what it is to live - today, and earlier - are greater still.
(Discovered via its deep run in this year's Tournament of Books)
Alfred de Dreux - "Deer Hunt" (unknown date; 19th century)
Optic Nerve I enjoyed from the get-go, and I could tell that its layered, oblique disclosures and inter-connections had plenty going on, but that moment arrived just shy of halfway through, in the chapterlette (neither 'chapter' nor 'story' feels quite right for the shortish sections in which the book's organised) about Gustave Courbet, his "The Stormy Sea", the narrator's periodic visits to an old stone house in the coastal city of Mar Del Plata, and the narrator's older cousin who walks the house's hallways at night. It's a section that could have come from A Field Guide to Getting Lost, even before its last paragraph: "My cousin was also called Maria. And only recently has it come to me that our name has the sea in it - mar - embedded like a lure, like a foretelling."
(1869)
The way those four main elements are woven together through just 13 widely spaced pages reflects the approach of Optic Nerve as a whole - the life of an artist and a particular work (often one held in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires) in conversation with an aspect of the narrator's own life and her experience of the world, which is 'in character' given how important a role art plays in her life. The book is full of moments of recognition in the face of art, only once (I think) made fully explicit, when her eye is caught by a painting that recalls her own 11 year old self. As she says early on, you write one thing in order to talk about something else.
Augusto Schiavoni, "The girl sitting" (1929)
There's some great writing about art here - about individual pieces, and about the powerful subjective experience of encountering art. How's this, for example: "But when Rothko felt anxious, he became talkative - overly so. And this in turn led him to overlook the fact that often the most powerful aspect of any work of art is its silence, and that - as they say - style is a medium in itself, its own means of emphasis. Perhaps there is something spiritual in the experience of looking at a Rothko, but it's the kind of spiritual that resists description: like seeing a glacier, or crossing a desert. Rarely do the inadequacies of language become so patently obvious." In the Rothko 'chapter' (or what have you), the narrator visits a doctor's surgery after "several days' of a constant vibration in my right eye", sees a Rothko poster, and slips abruptly in its final section via "My husband fell ill twice" into a densely reverberant passage wrapping in life, death, eros, class, humanity (via her encounter with a prostitute who walks the wards at night), the spiritual, red, and black.
(1955-57)
Also great is the closing bit on El Greco, a painter who's come into my life in a couple of ways lately. As she says, his "View of Toledo" is "easily expressionistic enough to belong to the twentieth century". Looking at it now, it's genuinely amazing to think it was painted somewhere at the end of sixteenth century instead. And her description of his "Christ in the Olive Grove" is even more descriptively intriguing, as well as revealing a great deal about the narrator herself, in the context in which it appears (at its most surface level - in a museum during a visit to her estranged brother who has chosen to remain outside): "A piece I have a weakness for. Not its theme - in fact I have little idea what the scene is supposed to signify - but rather the way in which everything in it seems suspended in the air. In it, gravity functions in reverse: something draw the figures skywards, sucking them in the direction of the clouds, like the lava lamps of my adolescence. The correct way to look at it, I thought, would be while doing a handstand; forget about the figuration and simply appreciate the scandalous sensuality of the brushstrokes strewing the oils this way and that across the canvas. Aldous Huxley must have been thinking similarly when he claimed that El Greco was such a visceral painter that, had he lived to see ninety, he would have ended up producing abstracts. Such were my thoughts as I looked up at the sky in the painting. A portentous sky, the kind beneath which only terrible or solemn events may occur, like a family member leaving home, or the erection of a cross."
(1596-1600)
(1600-1607)
The writing about art is pleasurable in itself, but much more so is the effect of its interweaving with character and theme. When I started Optic Nerve, the first reference point that came to mind was Rachel Cusk, in the way much of the external action occurs through the narrators' interactions with others and what we learn about those others, combined by razor sharp observations of those same other people. But we learn far more about the narrator here - Maria - than we ever do about the Outline trilogy's Faye, and while the reader needs to work to put the pieces together, the picture of a character and a life, situated in her particular familial, social and historical context, emerges clearly, both through the mediation of (her thoughts on) art and otherwise. And the rewards from the light it sheds on what it is to live - today, and earlier - are greater still.
(Discovered via its deep run in this year's Tournament of Books)
Three playlists
Just like last year, Rob, David and Julian all shared playlists in earlyish 2020. Mainly because I don't really listen to spotify, it's taken me this long to listen to them.
On Rob's - my favourites are Slotface's "Telepathetic" (I see they are 'punks' from Norway), K.Flay's "This Baby Don't Cry", the Jack River songs, and Alex the Astronaut's "I Like To Dance" (even though / including because that last one sounds super First Aid Kit).
On David's - Phantom Planet's "BALISONG" (good to hear they can still knock out a rousing rock anthem, and that someone can) and "Mercy Mercy Me" (Eddie Vedder, the Strokes and Josh Homme) plus of course "Seventeen" (SVE) and "The Barrel" (Aldous Harding; I've eventually been won over by it after repeated exposure).
On Julian's - amidst a predictably more esoteric mix moving across prog, jazz, folk, electro-industrial and power pop, particularly beguiling are Prefab Sprout's 22 minute "I Trawl The Megahertz" and Cechomor's "Bosilecky zvony" (according to the internet, they're a Czech band who play traditional songs in rock formats).
On Rob's - my favourites are Slotface's "Telepathetic" (I see they are 'punks' from Norway), K.Flay's "This Baby Don't Cry", the Jack River songs, and Alex the Astronaut's "I Like To Dance" (even though / including because that last one sounds super First Aid Kit).
On David's - Phantom Planet's "BALISONG" (good to hear they can still knock out a rousing rock anthem, and that someone can) and "Mercy Mercy Me" (Eddie Vedder, the Strokes and Josh Homme) plus of course "Seventeen" (SVE) and "The Barrel" (Aldous Harding; I've eventually been won over by it after repeated exposure).
On Julian's - amidst a predictably more esoteric mix moving across prog, jazz, folk, electro-industrial and power pop, particularly beguiling are Prefab Sprout's 22 minute "I Trawl The Megahertz" and Cechomor's "Bosilecky zvony" (according to the internet, they're a Czech band who play traditional songs in rock formats).
Saturday, May 23, 2020
The Strokes - The New Abnormal
Well, this is easy to listen to although not very remarkable. I don't think I've listened to the Strokes really since First Impressions of Earth came out, except maybe the occasional revisit of a song or few from that memorable first album, and I was never ultra excited about them in the first place, but, yeah, fond memories.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Moneyball
Yale, economics, baseball. Also Brad Pitt and the bonuses of Chris Pratt and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
(previously)
(previously)
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps
Previously known to me as the least interesting - or so I thought - member of boygenius and the female half of Better Oblivion Community Center, Bridgers finally came on to my radar proper when Penelope recommended "Scott Street", which is an epic slow-build of the melancholy kind, in the best way.
That one's the highlight of Stranger in the Alps but there are a lot of other good songs here, Bridger's reedy voice and the at times gossamer instrumentation and production belying the songs' frequent forcefulness and the ground they cover under the cloak of that overall wistful-sounding air; "Smoke Signals", "Motion Sickness", "Funeral" and "Georgia" are the most distinct.
That one's the highlight of Stranger in the Alps but there are a lot of other good songs here, Bridger's reedy voice and the at times gossamer instrumentation and production belying the songs' frequent forcefulness and the ground they cover under the cloak of that overall wistful-sounding air; "Smoke Signals", "Motion Sickness", "Funeral" and "Georgia" are the most distinct.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Bob Dylan - Love and Theft
From 2001; best songs "Mississippi", "Po' Boy" and "Cry a While" (all very relaxed); good all round.
Hayley Williams - Petals for Armor
Crisp, heartfelt pop that sounds equal parts of the now and the nineties (those two currently being blurred to begin with) from the former Paramore singer.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
William Eggleston: Portraits (Phillip Prodger)
Normally I like photographers whose work is highly composed, often to the point of evident artifice upon closer inspection - Crewdson, Gursky, some Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman. William Eggleston is an exception, his photos presenting as slices of everyday life, but - as the introductory essay and closing interview with Eggleston in this book more clear - that doesn't mean he was about seeking to represent the world in a straightforward or documentary way. Rather than seeking to capture some defined or self-contained sense of his subjects or the world they inhabit -
It has often been said that Eggleston is at war with the obvious. But the obvious is one area in which the camera excels. Duchamp demonstrated how a thing can be thought of as something other than what it appears to be. Eggleston took this a step further, by showing that the camera, with its unparalleled capacity to record information in exacting detail, does not have to be used for representational purposes, nor do photographs have to be taken at face value. Some early critics expressed frustration that Eggleston's photography reveals little of consequence about Memphis and its environs. But this was precisely the point. Eggleston has never aspired to create social documents or conduct visual surveys. Like Duchamp, his pictures present the banal and the everyday; but unlike Duchamp, they are usually transitory and frequently unsettled, like momentary realisations, or flashes of memory.This book accompanies the British National Portrait Gallery exhibition which came to the NGV in 2017, and I remember many of the photos clearly, especially their vivid colours, as well as the tension between their focus on people - many of them family members and other intimates of the photographer's - and Eggleston's insistence that his photos of people did not express any particular psychological or formal relationship (such as of empathy or expression of worldview) between their human subjects and himself.
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
Frankenstein (National Theatre live)
With Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Frankenstein. This was good but I wasn't fully immersed; I think maybe the nature of the play/production didn't lend itself to being filmed as much as some of the others I've seen.
The Little Drummer Girl
Quite good spy series but maybe less than the sum of its parts given that those parts included Park Chan-Wook, Florence Pugh (relatively new to me but clearly excellent) and Michael Shannon.
Friday, May 01, 2020
Laura Marling - Song for Our Daughter
Another great record from Marling. This one's more acoustic than 2017's exceptional Semper Femina - after the assertive start of "Alexandra", "Held Down" and "Strong Girl' (the first two of those are among her best ever), it turns and stays quiet, requiring attentive listening to find its many rewards.
The Traveling Wilburys - Traveling Wilburys Vol 1
A low key good time. The best bits are (a) "Handle With Care" (of course) and (b) all the bits with Roy Orbison.
Hans Rosling - Factfulness
The subtitle tells you what this book is about: 'Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think'.
Its initial quiz makes its point effectively - most people are systematically and significantly wrong in their understanding of the overall state of the world as measured by facts like the percentage of girls finishing primary school in low-income countries, the trend in numbers of people living in extreme poverty, global life expectancy, and infant vaccination rates. I got 5 out of the 12 questions right - excluding the global warming one. Each question had three options, meaning I barely beat what Rosling calls the chimpanzees, ie what would be expected if someone randomly guessed the answers; Rosling's point is that most people, including (and maybe especially) those who are highly educated actually do worse than the chimpanzees due to those systematic biases.
There's plenty in Factfulness that I agree with - for clear and critical thinking, the list of 'dramatic' instincts which organise the book (the gap instinct, the fear instinct, the destiny instinct, the blame instinct, etc) are useful, in many cases combining cognitive biases of the kind laid out by Kahneman, Ariely et al with reminders about the way statistics can mislead if not used properly. And there's no arguing with Rosling's central call for us to know and understand the facts about our world, including being aware of the ways in which we're making progress.
I have one disagreement with the book's premises, and it's a big one. I think the book assumes that facts about things like educational attainment, immunisation rates, etc are an accurate indicator of global wellbeing, ie if those data points are going in the right direction, then the world is getting better. And of course these kinds of statistics are an important part of the story here.
But his argument doesn't reckon with two important and related things: the fact (of a different kind) that the price of these improvements has been immense consumption of natural resources since industrialisation and, at the same time, catastrophic climate change, and the (more contestable but I think true) point that the post-industrial scientific and technological boom has probably made the world a net more unequal place, with the gains from scientific progress unequally shared and especially once you factor in the disproportionate costs of climate change being borne by basically the whole world that doesn't fall within Rosling’s very wealthy 'level 4' group of countries.
Put those things together, and especially the point about environmental resource consumption and degradation, and it starts to look like Rosling might - ironically - have fallen victim to his own 'straight line' instinct in assuming that past progress on material needs will be sustainable without a different (and more equitable) way of doing things.
This also made me think of the Pinker/Ridley/de Botton/Gladwell debate about whether humankind's best days lie ahead.
Its initial quiz makes its point effectively - most people are systematically and significantly wrong in their understanding of the overall state of the world as measured by facts like the percentage of girls finishing primary school in low-income countries, the trend in numbers of people living in extreme poverty, global life expectancy, and infant vaccination rates. I got 5 out of the 12 questions right - excluding the global warming one. Each question had three options, meaning I barely beat what Rosling calls the chimpanzees, ie what would be expected if someone randomly guessed the answers; Rosling's point is that most people, including (and maybe especially) those who are highly educated actually do worse than the chimpanzees due to those systematic biases.
There's plenty in Factfulness that I agree with - for clear and critical thinking, the list of 'dramatic' instincts which organise the book (the gap instinct, the fear instinct, the destiny instinct, the blame instinct, etc) are useful, in many cases combining cognitive biases of the kind laid out by Kahneman, Ariely et al with reminders about the way statistics can mislead if not used properly. And there's no arguing with Rosling's central call for us to know and understand the facts about our world, including being aware of the ways in which we're making progress.
I have one disagreement with the book's premises, and it's a big one. I think the book assumes that facts about things like educational attainment, immunisation rates, etc are an accurate indicator of global wellbeing, ie if those data points are going in the right direction, then the world is getting better. And of course these kinds of statistics are an important part of the story here.
But his argument doesn't reckon with two important and related things: the fact (of a different kind) that the price of these improvements has been immense consumption of natural resources since industrialisation and, at the same time, catastrophic climate change, and the (more contestable but I think true) point that the post-industrial scientific and technological boom has probably made the world a net more unequal place, with the gains from scientific progress unequally shared and especially once you factor in the disproportionate costs of climate change being borne by basically the whole world that doesn't fall within Rosling’s very wealthy 'level 4' group of countries.
Put those things together, and especially the point about environmental resource consumption and degradation, and it starts to look like Rosling might - ironically - have fallen victim to his own 'straight line' instinct in assuming that past progress on material needs will be sustainable without a different (and more equitable) way of doing things.
This also made me think of the Pinker/Ridley/de Botton/Gladwell debate about whether humankind's best days lie ahead.
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is one of those unusual albums that feels genuinely a bit sui generis. But one comparison does come to mind - it reminds me of nothing so much as Boys for Pele, in retrospect maybe Tori Amos's best album (although from the choirgirl hotel and to venus and back will always have my loyalty as my favourites). The similarity's there in some of the atmospherics (vocals sometimes, sprinklings of piano, and occasionally in its percussiveness) and the way little melodic and rhythmic elements and flourishes emerge at intervals from its overall texture, like small fragments of candy scattered and stuck to a carpet's heavy weave - but even more so in its uncompromising quality and air of individual seeking for a mode of expression through music.
It's also unusual in how excellent it is. It's impressive how sustained a record it is, considering its refusal to stick to normal pop song forms. If you squint, you can just about discern familiar outlines at the beginning - "I Want You To Love Me" kind of slides you in, "Shameika" is a cascade of surging verses, choruses and bridges, "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" has almost the build of an anthem - but it's all a bit off-kilter. Apple turns left where you expect her to turn right multiple times in each song, without ever losing the thread. The sequencing helps - in the context of the record's density as a whole, moments like "Rack of His", "Ladies" (which I think might be my favourite along with "Shameika") and "For Her", with their loping, intricate melodies, up-and-down hooks and jazzy touches, arrive as welcome song-length grace notes.
It's also unusual in how excellent it is. It's impressive how sustained a record it is, considering its refusal to stick to normal pop song forms. If you squint, you can just about discern familiar outlines at the beginning - "I Want You To Love Me" kind of slides you in, "Shameika" is a cascade of surging verses, choruses and bridges, "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" has almost the build of an anthem - but it's all a bit off-kilter. Apple turns left where you expect her to turn right multiple times in each song, without ever losing the thread. The sequencing helps - in the context of the record's density as a whole, moments like "Rack of His", "Ladies" (which I think might be my favourite along with "Shameika") and "For Her", with their loping, intricate melodies, up-and-down hooks and jazzy touches, arrive as welcome song-length grace notes.
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