Lemonade

Lemonade

Beyonce (2016)

       For much of my culturally and intellectually conscious life (the exact beginning of which is unknown - possibly 12 or so years of age, possibly I've just made up the term) I've had a typical and markedly pronounced (even to the point of snobbery (ok, ok - well past the point of snobbery)) disdain and contempt for popular entertainment - especially music. The likes of Beyonce, Kanye West, and other such popular artists were met from me by, at first, a kind of scoffing and rather outwardly aggressive trashing, and then, later, a smug and snide feeling usually accompanied by a condescending and pitiful look at those who listened to, as I perceived it to be, such mainstream and bland radio fodder. I'm still very much like this, and, to be honest, feel a lot of it is justified, but over the last couple of months or so I've had a kind of revelation when it comes to popular music, as well as art in general. This first happened for me when I put in Frank Ocean's 2016 album Blonde - on a kind of anti-recommendation from my fourteen year old sister - and was struck by the emotional impact it had on me. Like I said, it was revelatory, and helped start me on the path away from cultural elitism that I'm currently exploring. What I learned from Frank opened the door for me to give other contemporary popular artists a shot, such as Chance the Rapper and the aforementioned Mr. West, which in turn lead me to an introduction to Hip-Hop, and specifically to whom I believe is the most essential musical artist of the current decade: Kendrick Lamar.

      My most recent personal discovery on the road away from one-dimensional pretensions about "good" and "bad" art and how that correlates to popular and, I don't know, "unpopular?" (or, more accurately, older) art is the ever hyped and lauded (largely by tween girls) Beyonce Knowles. Having had my world expanded by the actual startling quality of some popular music, I did go into this expecting something pretty good, what with it being called the greatest album of 2016 and all that. I did still have my reservations though. I had gotten used to the idea of these game-changing and progressive artists dropping concept albums and sophisticated pieces of pop art, but knowing the adoration that my generations young women and girls have for Beyonce, I couldn't help but slip into old patterns of prejudgment.

       For these album reviews I've decided to give the record a good three listens before writing a full review. I've listened to Lemonade more than that, and not because I feel I'm missing something, but because I just really enjoy it. This is both a conceptual statement and highly listenable and re-listenable collection of stone solid pop songs.

       "Pray You Catch Me" starts off the album in a lowdown and serene way, but not without charge, and not without effect. Beyonce sings about listening at the door, praying to catch him whispering, and to be caught listening herself. This sets up one of the albums main themes: infidelity (supposedly (well, pretty obviously) her husband's in particular). With swelling and reverberating background vocals the sonic palette of the album (although it later proves to be a dynamic one) is established as well - this is to be an aesthetically full and deeply personal and revealing listen. There is no weak pop gloss or uninspired commonality that pervades on the radio fodder I've associated in the past with the artist and her ilk (meaning essentially all modern pop artists). The song ends after the music stops, with Beyonce saying "What are you doing my love" in a pointed, intimate way that can't help but feel directional and confrontational.

       This segues into one of my favorite tracks here, "Hold Up," which lifts the beautifully worded "they don't love you like I love you" refrain from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's song "Maps." It's not a sample mind you: it's the same line with a different tune and different emotion behind it; and it doesn't feel like a cheap steal either, it feels original, partly due to the fresh accented delivery, partly to Beyonce just being charismatic enough to make it feel like she came up with it herself. Speaking of accented, Beyonce breaks out the Jamaican accent during her variations on the line, and makes it work too, adding a command and emotion that it probably didn't need but certainly improves it. The line's major difference between her version and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's is the confidence. That band was making a plea, Beyonce is making an intimation of status and value, almost a warning.

       The Jamaican vibes transfer from Beyonce's voice into the instrumentation on the next track, "Don't Hurt Yourself" (at least I think it's Jamaican, I'm kinda faking this whole musical knowledge thing). Also the artist comes fully out of her (somewhat) reserved stance and breaks into blatant righteous anger, the superior put-down zone only a true diva can enter and hold. That intimation of a warning mentioned becomes much more forward here, ending the song on "This is your final warning/You know I give you life/If you try this shit again/You gon' lose your wife." Also, while it looks silly on paper, the line "Motivate your ass/Call me Malcolm X" might actually be my favorite moment on the album, thanks to Beyonce's swagger. "Sorry" continues the unapologetic (more literally this time) "fuck-you" dismissal from the last track. Beyonce sounds more unconcerned about the situation here on a surface level, but the "Middle fingers up/Put them hands high" shows the common affectation of that attitude that reveals itself more as a denial of inner pain than true indifference, coming to fruition when the song breaks from it's established feel to detour into a slower, more poignant verse about leaving a note that he won't read until she's far away (a moment that's also a highlight of the album).

       "6 Inch" is next on the tracklist, likely the worst track on the album (although I guess it's not bad per say, just kind of middling and unnecessary). It's a mostly generic song about independence and empowerment, out shined by later tracks that do it much better. Still got a great moment or two though - looking at the melody on the "too smart to crave material things" bit. The main purpose of the track I think is to act a palette cleanser going into the much meatier and single-worthy "Daddy Lessons," which is a much better song. Here Beyonce sings about her father and the lessons he passed onto her (bet you couldn't of guessed that). It's a song that needs more unpacking, giving up complex feelings about the opposite masculinity in her life - recognizing the flaws in her father and, in relation, her husband, as well as admiration and love for this flawed man who warns her of men like himself. It's an upbeat New Orleans brass (I may have made that up) inflected and country tinged rouser, improving on the ideas on "6 Inch" by presenting them in a very different way. it might be the most radio-friendly song on a radio-friendly album, drifting closer to standard - yet merited - pop than the other tracks, despite being a somewhat unique genre exploration for the artist.

      "Love Drought" is another track that feels light compared to some of the real great stuff this album has to offer, this time finding Beyonce in a more lamenting mood as she calms herself more to give something as close to, if not a plea, than an attempt at a sweet reconciliation and openly wanted explanation as can be found here. Highlight is the incredibly charismatic and honestly sexy way she says the offhand line "Wassup" near the end of the track. "Sandcastles" keeps the slower pace from the last track, as well as the emotional vulnerability, only this time capitalizing on it and yet stepping back to give a more resigned, maybe even mournful (or a lighter synonym) or blue reminiscence on the subject. The gorgeous piano accompaniment bleeds perfectly into the next track, the slight "Forward," which is more of a coda to "Sandcastles" or transitional piece than anything.

      Then the album really explodes, swelling into the climax that is "Freedom." Driving organ and a particularly rousing performance from both Beyonce and featured artist Kendrick Lamar propel the record into the arena of badass empowerment that it was heading towards. Beyonce is at peak confidence and power on this track, possibly the stand-out on the whole thing. The ending spoken coda (spoken by who? I'm not sure) feels earned as the speaker states the namesake of the album, that old aphorism about turning lemons into lemonade. Unfortunately this is followed up by the misplaced "All Night," which I feel the album might have benefitted from either moving somewhere else on the tracklist or cutting altogether. Luckily the closer "Formation" makes up for misstep, ending the album on a high note and a fitting one too, where Beyonce truly forms fully into the victorious queen B. that she was destined to reach, that she worked for. 

1001+ Books: At the Mountains of Madness

1001+ Books:

#9 - At the Mountains of Madness

by: H.P. Lovecraft (1936)

       At the Mountains of Madness applies the scientific mind to the awe-inspiring colossus of everything unknown to science, and is left with a reaction of horror and fascination seen primarily when the young or the stupid enter the den of a sleeping lion after it's been fed a gazelle. There are many times when the antarctic expedition who have stumbled upon the remnants of long dead, highly intelligent civilization predating humanity by millions of years are touched by the urge to turn and run without looking back. A creeping sense of dread and foreboding permeates the text, building gradually and so effectively that the climax is inevitably anti-climactic. This disappointment at the end of the book may have something also to do with the way Lovecraft writes. These nuggets of terror and revelation are sprinkled a little too sparsely over a plethora of long-winded scientific analysis and mythology, which is interesting in it's own way, but is not balanced as well as it could have been. The influence of this work is undoubtably established though, seeing shadows in everything from John Carpenter's The Thing to the criminally underrated Alien prequel (kind of) Prometheus.

   Rating: B-

1001+ Books: The Great Gatsby

1001+ Books:

#8 - The Great Gatsby

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

       I am not a great reader. I mean, I can read well, and write well, but I am not what you would call "well read." Not yet anyway, but I'm working on it. Because of this, I tend to draw comparisons not between books and other books, but between books and another medium I am much more well versed in: film. So it is not surprising to me that what I see in The Great Gatsby compares much more to movies I've seen than other books I've read. And what comes to mind immediately for me while reading this particular novel is Italian cinema of the '50s and '60s, specifically, and surprisingly, the films of the great Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni (although you could easily make comparisons with the more surface level similarities between Fitzgerald's work and the extravagant flash of Federico Fellini's pictures). The commonality I see between Gatsby and, say, L'Avventura or La Notte by that previously mentioned auteur, lies not in form or style, but in their respective essences. The major difference is that what Antonioni goes for deliberately seems almost to be accidental in Fitzgerald's case. Antonioni's films are openly about vapidity and a loss of self. Fitzgerald's book is too, only in what appears to be a more unintentional, and possibly even more bleak sort of way.

       The story is simple, and well known, so I'm not going to bother going through it, just Google it. What the novel is "about" is such familiar themes as wealth, the past, and the ever present "American Dream." The story takes a look at the unattainability of previously mentioned dream as well as the impossibility of the fulfillment of expectation. It casts a judgmental eye on the decadent and immoral antics of the rich, but notably not enough not to participate in them. We discover by the book's end that everyone (but Gatsby and Nick, the novel's self-described "non-judgmental" narrator) is an unfeeling leech, only present to take what they can from the titular character and leave without any ties. I read Fitzgerald writing Gatsby as a pure, lovelorn, lost soul who believes in goodness and the powers of connection and love. I myself read Gatsby as an emotionally malformed, incredibly self-centered and naive victim of circumstance. Like how I suspect Fitzgerald was, he is a man obsessed with the malleable meaninglessness of symbols and dreams, hanging onto things he thinks will fill the holes he can't fill himself. This is true of most of the characters (the "holes" part), but Gatsby is a romantic, which turns his malaise from a character flaw into a kind of chronic and damning disease. He's too sensitive for his life, his times, and his peers. This would make Gatsby a more sympathetic character, but through Nick's eyes he is kept at arms length, a myth or an idea instead of a man.

       Now it is no rule that great art (at least "narrative" art, if that's the right term) has to feature likable characters (I cite There Will Be Blood). And while I wouldn't say that the book is devoid of likable or relatable characters per say, it also doesn't feature anyone you can "root for," for lack of a better term. Nothing seems genuine, and by the end of the book everyone comes off in varying degrees of insincerity and indifference. Even Nick, who tells us of his anger, who tells us about his awe and reverence for Gatsby, about his thoughts and feelings on everything that happens, gives me the impression of doing so out of respectability more than anything. He just couldn't convince me he cared all that much. In a sad kind of way it's almost as if he's telling this story to reap some sort of material or moral benefits, like he's writing to be published, not to be heard.

       To make another, more personal cinematic comparison, this seems to be, for me, the Casablanca of popular literature, in that both this book and that highly revered movie leave me wondering, albeit less with Fitzgerald's work, what all the fuss is about. I mean, it's good, you know, very pretty and whatnot, but it's certainly not the greatest book ever written. In fact, there doesn't seem to be that much special about it (the beautiful prose aside). Maybe expectations have played too great a role in my appreciation of this book. Anything is bound to disappoint when it has labels like "the (arguably definitive) Great American Novel" slapped on it. I think I just find it all a little too "easy," if that makes sense. I wasn't challenged to think much (not that that is some kind of watermark for quality), but more importantly I wasn't made to feel much. What gives this novel credit is the strength of the craft, the mastery and versatility of language Fitzgerald brings to the table. Language is clearly his greatest strength, but it's not enough. It's a charming read, but I can't get past that hollow feeling, that affectation of meaning that Fitzgerald can't actually match in practice.

   Rating: C+