A Virtual Virtuoso

Ben Folds celebrated his birthday with streamers, and they weren’t the kind hung from ceilings.

ben folds

In a cramped apartment strewn with paper, instruments, and recording equipment, Piano Pop prodigy Ben Folds meanders into the camera frame. Without acknowledging his audience, he silently rearranges the clutter. Suddenly, tossing an over-the-shoulder grin at the camera, he lurches toward the computer. A tap on the spacebar arouses the microphone, prompting applause from the comments section. The curtains have parted on Folds’ livestream birthday show.

While America tuned in on the of evening Ben’s big day, Mr. Folds himself was waking up to the morning after—he had been stranded overseas in Sydney, Australia since the outset of the pandemic. The September 12th show comes as the 14th show in a series of Saturday night/Sunday morning concerts that Folds held from the makeshift studio of his temporary apartment.

Embracing the eccentricity of the moment, Folds kicked things off quirkily. Moving impishly about the room, he reached first for his fuzzy Ugg boots. After removing his cowboy hat to stretch a beanie over his bedhead, he cracked open a beer—it was, after all, 6 o’clock in the states. The entire ritual was scored with a kitschy theme song dedicated to “the scrollers.”

Finally, Folds settled at the keyboard to begin his set. Starting with a relaxed ballad, his playing gradually pressurized. Arpeggios accelerated; octaves grew weightier until Folds was in the full throes of pop stardom. The light, plasticky keys barely withstood the furious pounce of Folds’ fingers.  Above the chaos, his airy voice billowed melodiously. The trembling soundscape shot through the wires, beamed up to a satellite, and descended upon the homes of thousands of fans without losing one bite of intensity.

As the night wore on, Folds canned the conventions of a typical stage show. Pulling his hands back mid-song, he frequently brought the music to a jolting halt to speak to his audience. These intimate soliloquies consisted of stories behind his songs, empathetic encouragement for our strenuous times, and even a lesson on piano technique. At times, the performance felt less like a show and more like a conversation with an erudite elder. In one seamless livestream, Folds managed to quench our desperate desire for live music and comfort us in a moment when we all undoubtedly needed it. The show appeared restorative for Folds as well. Having spent the spring and summer quarantining in an isolated apartment thousands of miles from home, he seemed eager to connect with his fans. Signing off, he confessed “It’s good to see all y’all… I like to catch up with y’all.” We sure enjoyed catching up with you too, Ben.

A Birthday Salute to John Lennon

Artists pay tribute to the beloved Beatle on his big day.

lennon

The Empire State Building shimmered sky blue on October 9th. A peace sign shone against its spire. One thousand feet below, the world remembered John Lennon on what would have been his 80th birthday. John’s son, Sean, who organized the Empire State lighting, coordinated a collection of additional tributes for the occasion. After performing his father’s song, “Isolation,” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Sean encouraged the music community to produce their own covers of John Lennon’s solo works. His call was answered with enthusiasm from musicians eager to pay homage to their musical hero.

Of all the tributes given, Sean’s performance of “Isolation” was perhaps the most arresting. Standing before the camera, he didn’t have to sing one note to conjure the image of his father. His free-flowing hair, angular nose, and ovular glasses were enough. But sing he did, making the resemblance all the more profound. Sean skated across verses with the mellow melodicism of a young, mop-top John. Hitting the bridge, he beckoned the vivacious howl that became a staple of his father’s later works. Sean backed his vocals with loose, heavy swipes at his electric guitar—an unorthodox rhythm style championed by, as you might have guessed, John Lennon. A mere smudge of the camera lens could have duped viewers into believing they’re watching John himself.

Following Sean’s lead, Rufus Wainwright took to Instagram to post a cover of “Mother,” a heartfelt ballad which Lennon wrote of his parents, who were never sufficiently present in his upbringing. Wainwright, known for his scintillating tenor voice—and for taking a break from his pop career to compose a full-length French opera—seized the opportunity to flaunt his classical abilities. Slowing the song down, he carefully carved a collection of notes into every phrase of the first verse. Intermittent silence between lines was broken by the soft trickle of notes dripping off of a grand piano in the background. Moving through the song, Wainwright slowly sheds his articulate embellishments for a more resonant, emotive tone. Upon reaching the refrain, he lets his shimmering trill carrying him through the end. Wainwright’s gentle, sentimental approach acknowledges the solemnity of the song’s content. His performance reminds us that while Lennon was the comic, clever popstar whose face was printed on lunch pails worldwide, he was also complex, sincere, and unafraid to express his inner thoughts and feelings through his music.

It’s often said that John Lennon inspired musicians of all genres. This notion was affirmed when Kevin Parker, the man behind the experimental, psychedelic phenomenon Tame Impala, threw his hat into the rink, posting a cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” on Instagram. Stripped from the bright lights and electronic effects that usually accompany his performances, Parker is filmed lying in bed with a sole acoustic guitar—an image reminiscent of Lennon’s famed “Bed-Ins for Peace.” Parker’s throaty wine and simple guitar are prudent and unadorned. This raw style pairs well with Lennon’s unencrypted lyrics. Lines like “I was feeling insecure/ You might not love me anymore,” refuse to hide behind a wall of metaphors and symbolism. In this confessionary song, Lennon means as he says, openly reflecting upon his faults as a husband. Parker, shelving his usual electronics to go acoustic, embraces the honest, unvarnished nature of Lennon’s music in his tribute.

One final tribute came from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who uploaded a cover of Lennon’s song “God” to YouTube. Recording from his home studio in Chicago, Tweedy’s was backed by his son, Spencer, on drums, and his son’s childhood friend, Liam Kazar, on bass. Standing at the forefront of the frame, Tweedy draws a few jangled chords out of his acoustic guitar to the soft, steady tap of the drum. The easy undercurrent of instrumentation is quickly pierced by Tweedy’s gravelly croon. With little regard for pitch or melody, his performance more closely resembles spoken word than song. This style is most fitting for the chosen song, which is a potent proclamation of Lennon’s philosophy on life. It is with utmost purpose and conviction that Tweedy sings such striking likes as “God is a concept by which we measure our pain” and “I don’t believe in Jesus/ I don’t believe in Kennedy… I don’t believe in Beatles/ I just believe in me.” In Lennon’s day, few artists wrote so directly about themselves. Even fewer had the bravery to convey their deepest, unfiltered philosophies in song. Cautiously aware of the difficulties of performing one of Lennon’s most personal pieces on this day of tribute, Tweedy abstains from musical showmanship. The lyrics, still pulsing with the energy which John breathed into them so many years ago, need little musical support to make an artistic statement.

From his flaring voice to his sloppy guitar style, Lennon’s signature sound lives within each of these performances. Then again, these imitations might not be intentional. Tweedy is known for his loose rhythm playing. Wainwright and Parker constantly reach decorate their vocals with high, airy trills. It’s hard to say for sure, but one could argue that Lennon’s influence reaches deeper than these tribute songs, touching how these artists developed their own sounds. Perhaps these tributes are not only celebrations, but payments of debt to a man who moved music forward, providing inspiration for countless performers. Of course, as these performances show, Lennon’s influence goes far beyond sound. While Dylan spoke through symbolism and Springsteen through story, Lennon just spoke, delivering his raw, candid thoughts to the world. Sean Lennon, Wainwright, Parker, Tweedy, you and I listened. We listened to his far-reaching, forthright messages of truth, peace, and love. We will be listening for the next eighty years to come.

A Fire in The Hole that Just Don’t Quit

Springsteen prosifies his poetic life in his new autobiography, Born to Run.

There’s an old Randy Newman song that narrates a fictitious conversation with Bruce Springsteen at a posh L.A. hotel. Sighing, Springsteen says “Rand, I’m tired. How would you like to be the Boss for a while?” Many mornings I’ve awakened from this same dream, often burrowing into my pillow in a desperate attempt to fall back into my fantasy. Sometimes it slips into the shower with me. Shedding my consciousness as the water trickles down, I’ll gape at the grand stadium of fans projected across my eyelids. On more than a few occasions, I’ve posed opposite my mirror with my butterscotch blonde telecaster guitar—the Bruce guitar. If I squint tight enough, I can see Clarence Clemons at my side, egging me on as I rip the final solo to “Jungleland.” For the better part of my short life, I’ve longed to be the Boss. After reading Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run I’m suddenly not so sure.

I haven’t lost any respect for Springsteen—it’s quite the contrary, really. After poring over the stories of Springsteen’s life, I’ve come to comprehend the Boss’s heavy burden. For five decades, Bruce Springsteen has absorbed the insecurities of the American psyche. He takes the childhood regrets, the daydream delusions, and the working-class woes that live inside Americans’ minds and morphs them into morsels of musical hope. Fans flock to show after show not for a cheap thrill of entertainment, but for assurance. They arrive to see Springsteen transpose their own daily plight into rhyme and rock, and to see that plight validated by thousands of others singing in unison. Throughout this autobiography, Springsteen exhibits an awareness of his shamanistic powers. I’ll always yearn for his musical acumen and poetic potency, yet his role as a rock and roll cleric has responsibilities that I’d be hesitant to accept. Perhaps the fantastical fallacy of Newman’s lyric is that anyone could ever brave a day in the Boss’s shoes.

It may feel like I’m merely waxing poetic, but Springsteen’s autobiography corroborates his role as America’s sole doctor. In one of his most tender confession, Springsteen recalls his experiences on September 11th, 2001. Distressed and disoriented after hearing the grim news, he embarked on a drive to sort out his thoughts. While stopped at a light, a man called out to him from the lane over. “Bruce, we need you” the man begged. “I sort of knew what he meant, but . . .” pondered Bruce. Blanketed by the same morose miasma as the rest of the country, how could he rise to comfort Americans? Rise he did, lending his grief and hope to the songs that filled his twelfth studio album, The Rising. From the languid lament “My City of Ruins” to the innocent tune “Waiting on a Sunny Day,” The Rising extended an empathetic arm to a grieving America.

As a nation, we summon Springsteen in our most daunting moments. Yet, for a smaller group of steadfast devotees, Springsteen becomes a constant crutch of connection. Bruce pushes people together. I recall registering for classes on the first day of high school. Tripping and trembling with nervous energy, I stepped into the office of Mr. Standerski, my notoriously gruff academic advisor. As he fixed his beady eyes upon me, I fixed mine on a “my only boss is the boss” coffee mug sitting atop his desk. “You a fan?” I squeaked. His grimace instantly receded into the thick folds of his cheeks. He proceeded to pull from his desk a scrapbook of ticket stubs, photos, and other remnants from the thirty-some shows he attended. Only for the sake of Bruce Springsteen would the brusquest old man of my school take up scrapbooking. We sat together for half an hour hashing out our favorite tracks and albums like members spontaneously reunited members of the same cult. In the biodiverse jungle of music preferences, connecting with other die-hard Springsteen fans is a “Dr Livingstone, I presume” type of rarity. Our only formal meetings occur once every few years when we gather at our nearest stadium to see our deity himself. Thus, when we do find another one of us, the camaraderie is instant.

Looking back to Newman’s lyric, it another deception should be acknowledged: the idea that Bruce Springsteen could ever exhaust himself. Those who have graced one of his many four-hour, multi-encore concerts can’t help but wonder what source of strength is propelling America’s sturdiest musical workhorse into the most raucous years of his seventies. In Born to Run, Springsteen finally pries the hood on his chrome-plated parts, revealing the secret sealant that holds him together show after show. “If you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night,” as Bruce so often does, you’ll need “a furious fire in the hole that just… don’t… quit… burning.”

If you were curious from that last sentence, the answer is yes: Bruce frames much of his writing as if he were shouting it to a crowd in between songs, often capitalizing whole sentences. Even in prose, he’s a performer. Nonetheless, Bruce’s declaration of a “fire in the hole” is more than syntactical showmanship. It is an axiom that he proves page after page. From days living on the street while he penned his first recorded songs to nights in the studio meticulously making his masterstroke album, Born to Run, we hear story after story of Springsteen’s everlasting resolve. This immutable inertia that tethers him to his craft appeared long before he could sell out a stadium—even before he could strum a single chord. His “Big Bang,” as he refers to it, was watching Elvis, and later The Beatles, debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. The sensual spirit of TV Rock & Roll shattered the stale air of his New Jersey childhood home. Soon thereafter, Springsteen strapped on his Beatle Boots and began shaking his hips like the King.

Before long, Springsteen a king in his own right, seizing a stretch of the New Jersey boardwalk as his fiefdom. Before ever signing a record deal, he reigned atop the bottle-strewn stages of the seaside bars each night, playing to surfers and greasers who shored up from the tide to have a drink and hear his music. Here, Springsteen scouted for fellow musicians who could keep time amidst the police raids and drunken melees. Those brute enough to brave the end of the gig would move on to form the tightest troupe in the land: the E Street Band.

Springsteen’s stretch as a Bohemian beach bum is perhaps the most captivating segment of the entire autobiography. He describes this era as a time when he was completely off the grid—no phone bill, no performing contract, no responsibility to anyone minus the audiophilic night owls flocking to listen to him rock the New Jersey jukes. It’s not hard to imagine that even the most titanic rock stars would dream to enter this easy atmosphere of salt-crusted days at the shore and muggy nights at a microphone. One can still find imprints of this formative time upon Springsteen’s music in the jingle of a quick rhyme and the jangle of a twangy electric guitar.

Out of these early days rises the emotive climax of the book. As Springsteen narrates, it was a “dark and stormy night” on the boardwalk. Waves from the beach collapsed over the ramshackle boards of the dock. An icy wind stirred trash and tattered leaves into small swirling tornadoes, flinging bits of damp debris at unsuspecting passersby. Seeking refuge from the Friday night frigidity, lost souls sauntered into drinking holes across the boardwalk. Down on the corner, one bar’s windows shimmered with a particularly warm and welcoming incandescence. Inside, Bruce Springsteen tuned up his guitar and began his set. He was running through his routine, grooving with the crowd, when a sudden thwack of thunder splintered the soundscape. Almost instantaneously thereafter, as if the storm cloud had thrown a follow-up punch, a gust of wind slammed against the bar’s exterior, knocking the front door off its hinges. As the door rolled and rattled into the night, a new figure had taken its place. The shadow of the colossal Clarence Clemons and his saxophone shone over the entryway. As Springsteen continued to play, Clemons waltzed over to a barstool and turned his ear to the sound.

As the bar neared its final call, Bruce locked eyes with Clarence. Without needing to ask those around him to clear a path—something almost never needed for a man of his stature—Clemons traversed the floor and ascended the stage. When the two struck up a song, soundwaves shook the floorboards harder than any seaside storm. The Boss and the Big Man, side by side for the first time, rocked the bar through the night. Feeding off of each other’s energy and acumen, they forged a sound and show that neither could have achieved individually. As years passed, bars would turn into stadiums, songs would turn into anthems, and Springsteen and Clemons would turn into rock and roll legends. Yet, however circumstances evolved, they continued to awe crowds with their unparalleled synchronicity night after night.

 

 

EC’s New EP

Elvis Costello continues to reinvent his sound in his latest release, Newspaper Pane.

costello

Nobody put him up to this. Sitting atop a trove of chart-gracing hits, Elvis Costello did not need another album to secure his legacy as the grandfather of British pop-punk. He certainly didn’t need the money, either. Yet the sixty-six-year-old songwriter stepped into the studio once more, and yet again, he refuses to play the role of rock-star-retiree. While his contemporaries are reliving their glory days, writing boilerplate tunes in the keys of their former successes, Costello is moving forward. His new five song EP, “Newspaper Pane,” incorporates genres from New Orleans Jazz to Alternative Rock, reaching into territories previously unconnected to the Costello catalog. The EP will be annexed as part of Costello’s 31st studio album, Hey Clockface, which is set for release on October 30th (yes, you read that correctly—his thirty-first studio album).

The EP’s opening track, “Newspaper Pane,” enters upon a hollow soundscape, which is suddenly cut by the discordant twinge of an electric guitar. A backbeat clicks into place, manufacturing an industrial groove. For a moment, listeners may be fooled into believing that they’re playing someone else’s track; the monotonous, percussive instrumentation is far removed from Costello’s classic projective, guitar-laden tone. Then, a squealing, nasal voice punches through the mix, leaving no doubt of the artist’s identity. The first lines paint a scene of a woman deserted in her dilapidated apartment. She plasters newspapers to the wall “to keep out the nonsense/ to block out the needing.” His poeticism primed, Costello winds through rhymes with a flicker of Dylan-esque symbolism and a flair of his own fatalist wit. The song’s energy surges into the third verse, “Pictures of bright futures somehow ignored/ That offered her finery she could never afford/ Tempting out savings that she didn’t have or could never risk/ Not a fashionable kindness, it was grotesque.” Costello’s evocative appeal against the corrosive effects of tabloids and other sensationalized media is poignant here, and extends throughout the rest of the song. True to his style, Costello rattles off imaginative, vivid verses faster than we have time to process them. Upon the line “A bent note on a horn I can’t play,” a row of tart, trite trumpets intervene, moving Costello’s cultural grievances forward with greater intensity. Costello’s bellicose voice balances the broody instrumentation, producing a song that is classic in content and novel in sound.

If the EP’s first song steps into unmarked territory, the second song, “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?” catapults Costello into another galaxy. Rather than revert to his pop-punk roots or elaborate upon the alternative rock aura articulated in the previous track, Costello takes a dive into jazz. No, he was not just inspired by jazz. He did merely not incorporate elements of jazz into his song. Costello is swinging and scatting (yes, scatting!) with the vigor of a New Orleans trumpeter. Bouncing rhymes off a beat of bass and brass, Costello croons to a clockface, wishing for its hands to slow down and give him more time. The song’s campy, fantastical pitch connects seamlessly with the swinging beat, producing a truly vaudevillian tune. A second seal of authenticity is stamped into the EP’s liner notes—Costello is backed by the Parisian jazz ensemble Le Quintette Saint Germaine. As a whole, this formidable facsimile of swing jazz further proves Costello’s abilities to succeed in any genre.

After strolling about the French Quarter, Costello circles back to the desolate cityscape of alternative rock in his third song, “We Are All Cowards Now.” The song begins with one long ooooh—a harmony of layered backing vocals. Then, as quickly as he teases this morsel of pop, he subverts it in a miasma of static and white noise. Pressure builds into a frictional stroke of percussion and is released with a resonant twang of electric guitar. This repeats again and again into a mechanical beat. Costello’s voice chimes in, offering a cryptic critique of war. Lines, such as “pretty confetti, chemical debt/ A necessity to bleed,” are eloquent. However, together these verses fail to make a coherent point or paint a descriptive story. While aesthetically pleasing, Costello’s lyrics fail to distinguish themselves from the heap of poetry that laments the terrors of war. Still, the song is redeemable beyond the writing. Costello injects his lyrics with a melodramatic melody that locks in with the obscure, experimental beat, producing an eclectic and intriguing sound.

Costello continues his theme of sensational journalism in the EP’s fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential.” The tune follows Hetty O’Hara, a deft journalist whose well-followed gossip column “could kill a man with one single stroke.” Yet all her power and influence could not prevent her fall from grace. After publishing scandalous piece about the wrong person, O’Hara is assassinated by a vengeful vigilante. Costello comments “they’ve got witch trials now/ with witches to spare… Hetty said “I’m powerless and I feel alone”/ Now everyone has a megaphone.” Costello’s story is a vivid portrayal of the powers and perils of modern media. It would make quite the page-turner if ever sent to print. Yet, we may be more fortunate to receive this in the form of song. Costello builds a boisterous beat by layering snippets of himself beatboxing, which combine with his raucous vocals to create a sound just as hair-raising as the story he tells.

The fifth and final track, “No Flag,” is a homecoming for Costello. While it lacks the same initiative for innovation as heard on previous tracks, there’s praise to be made in mastering nostalgia. Costello’s opening whine, “I’ve got no religion, I’ve got no philosophy,” could be plucked straight out of his years of youthful rebellion. Bright guitars and abrasive vocals pull more notes into the melody than previous tracks, further achieving the pop-punk aesthetic of Costello’s earliest albums. If it seems out of place for a senior citizen to be wailing of his inability to fit in with mainstream society, remember that this is Elvis Costello. He clearly saved up enough cultural angst in the 1970s to last him the next half-century of his career. The rebellious content is not disingenuous, it’s just Elvis being Elvis. To be sure, “No Flag” is not a complete repackaging of ancient material. The electronically altered organ and synthetic drum machine pepper the song with enough modernity to make this seemingly classic song coherent with the other, more experimental tracks on the EP.

Costello’s new EP spans an impressive range of sounds for its size. For those in search of alternative rock, “Newspaper Pane” and “We Are All Cowards Now” provide a modern, metallic feel. Meanwhile, those longing for the jazz of yore will find comfort in “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me.” For the bookish listener, the fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” is a delectable piece of fiction. Finally, Costello invites his veteran fans into the fold with “No Flag,” a shimmering homage to his past tempestuousness. With such variety, one can only begin to imagine what genres Costello will explore in his full album, Hey Clockface, set for release on Friday.

Dead in Flesh; Alive in Spirit

The LP is dead. It is survived by artists everywhere, who will be influenced by the art form for years to come.

Vinyl

Born to Columbia Records in 1948, the long-playing (LP) record ran circles around its elder sibling, the 78. Shedding the staticky shellac synthetic of the 78, the LP’s vinyl construction produced a cleaner, crisper tone. Its 12-inch stature and 33 rpm speed allowed for more minutes of playing time than any of its predecessors. Inscribed in its grooves, artists found a new code of corpus production: 10-12 songs, 30-45 minutes, one coherent album.

This new format broadened the canvas of expression within a single disc. Jazz musicians were first to take this shift in stride, using the album as an opportunity to comprehensively explore new styles; Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps are a few famous examples of this phenomenon. In the 1960s, popular music took the torch of innovation, engineering the concept album: a coherent story or theme carried across a collection of songs. The Beach Boys famously perfected this form with the lush, alluring Pet Sounds, to which The Beatles retorted with the scintillating Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Two years later, The Who pushed the boundaries of the album still further with the first ever rock opera, “Tommy.”

From the 1960s forward, the LP album established itself as the quintessential mode of musical expression, and the entire music industry became fitted to its features. Aspiring artist were disciplined by record labels with deadlines for writing and recording 10-12 songs. After routine artistic deliberations on track order, album art, and liner notes, an artist’s work was finally deemed ready for placement on record store shelves. The LP structured an artist’s operations on the road as well. Tours became centered around album promotion, and the 10-12 songs of an LP provided the perfect amount of new content to add to ones setlist. Albums had become the locus of all professional musical endeavors.

It wasn’t long before this favorite child of the music industry began competing for attention with its slimmer, sleeker siblings. The cassette, released in 1968, steadily gained popularity in the 1970s and 1980s for its compact design. LPs still sold, but more and more consumers were willing to pass on vinyl’s alluring album art and graceful grooves for this new plastic box which could be conveniently slipped into a car dashboard or boombox. Even more alarming for the LP was the rise of the famed and feared mixtape. Rather than listen to an artist’s released work front to back, as the LP encouraged, listeners at home could dub their favorite individual songs from their records or radio onto a blank tape, curating an individualized listening experience. Thus, a dissonance grew between how the artist packaged their material and how the consumer experienced it. While artists still followed the conventions of the LP, taking time to create enticing album art and arranging their tracks in optimal order, consumers lurched towards a less dazzling, more convenient way to play.

If the cassette tugged at the fabric of album ascendancy, the CD ripped it completely apart. Introduced in 1982, this diminutive doppelgänger of its predecessor had the appearance of an LP shrunken in the wash. Much like with cassettes, consumers were willing to pass on the comely, weighted feel of an LP for another portable plastic box with mix-taping capabilities. By the early 1990s, the LP was wobbling on the edge of the wastebasket. It was finally nudged into oblivion by the emergence of music digitization in the early 2000s. In both legal and illegal fashions, consumers began using computers to transfer the music of their CDs with MP3 files, turning their backs completely on the aesthetic of physical product for weightless ones and zeros. The market soon caught up with this phenomenon; platforms allowing consumers to purchase files directly from the internet rose to prominence. Consumers were further encouraged to ignore the greater body of an artist’s produced work for individual tracks of an album.

Consumers’ slow rejection of the LP’s conventions solidified in the 2010s with the rise of music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. The all-you-can-eat nature of these platforms encouraged consumers to take bites out of the works of an array of artists rather than devouring one singular product. Streamlining the playlist-making process, these sites reinforced consumers’ cravings for an individualized listening experience. The shift away from albums is well documented. In one 2016 study by the Music Business Association, 77% of surveyed participants acknowledged playlists and single song streaming as their dominant mode of listening. Comparatively, only 22% of participants still favored listening to albums. Creators of album charts, such as Billboard, have had to acknowledge that the most successful albums are no longer those selling the most whole copies. Their solution was the mythical metric of “streaming album equivalents.” For Billboard, this means weighing every 1,250 subscription paid streams and every 3,750 free, ad-supported streams as one album unit to count towards the total number of records sold. This assuredly arbitrary algorithm boosted albums to the top of the charts off the success of only a handful of hits.

With the singular sensation of holding a piece of physical music, poring over its liner notes, and playing front to back finally meeting its maker, some makers of music bemoan the album as an outdated model of production. For artists who labor for months to create their 12-song statement to the world, it can be downright disheartening to see the majority of their tracks disregarded. In response, some artists are preferring to focus more on singles and EPs—a pattern of production that we haven’t witnessed on a large scale since the 1950s, when the album had not yet been embraced as the premier format of recording. This method not only ensures that individual songs are not lost in the greater catalog of an album, but it also allows for artists to release music with greater frequency. A smaller, steadier stream of content is phenomenal fuel for an artist’s fanbase, keeping them continually interested. With none of the hurdles that come with pressing and packaging physical product, a frequent output of content is both doable and desirable.

Still, the LP resists relegation to the glass cases of the Smithsonian with the other obsolete inventions of music’s past. After being buried below cassettes, CDs, and Spotify, a new generation of listeners has dug the LP out of its grave. Some are enticed by its collectible nature. Others are searching for a superior stereophonic experience. A third group is staging a desperate escape from the Silicon Valley giants collecting and selling data of every stream. Whatever the motive, vinyl revival has arrived. The LP is now the fastest growing form of physical music. In some sense, the LP itself has taken a similar trajectory to the genres of music that were once inscribed in its grooves. Just as jazz and rock have gone from chart-topping sensations to somewhat niche genres with smaller audiences, the LP has abdicated its role as the primary purveyor of music for a second life as an item of nostalgia.

The lengthy life and times of the album is a captivating saga. Yet, to dramatize on all the foes the LP has fought, as I have attempted, might miss the forest for the trees. The shock value that this topic provides is proof itself that the album still looms large over the cultural conscience of America. The LP is no longer a titan of the music market, and some artists are indeed leaning towards a more piecemeal manner of production, yet the album still stands as the benchmark achievement for musicians everywhere. Despite vast changes in technology, the conventions of production that the LP provided are preferred by most artists. While recording musicians are no longer bound to the 45 minutes limit of what could fit on a record, many still value this length as the optimal balance between substantial and succinct. Album art survives as well; despite some musicians forgoing physical music altogether, the tradition of creating a colorful cover is embraced by all. The “album,” as we refer to it today may be a skeleton of its former self, the LP, yet decades of cultural prominence have knighted the album with a reverence that won’t be lost on the music industry for years to come.

 

Guitar in the Pandemic: A Little Constancy in Uncertain Times

In the corner of my bedroom, my guitar.

Everything felt in flux as the Coronavirus crashed upon American shores, sweeping us away from Campus. Suddenly, all forms of social interaction were streamed across screens and spread six feet apart. I craved a connection untainted by the all-enveloping pandemic.

I came home to find her just as I had left her—or perhaps more beautiful. They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Her simple dress—a satin finish with white trim—only accentuated her natural complexion. Streaks of ochre flared across her mahogany body, flickering out at her dusky rosewood neck. But enough about looks; guitars aren’t meant to be gawked at. They’re made to be played.

I slid my hand up the strings, pressing into her and plucking her for a response. She answered me in the same reverberant tone as always. Every other conversation I had was held at a distance. Every other conversation I had operated within the context of the virus. The way we spoke, however, was unaltered. Working up the fretboard, she reciprocated every beat, bend, and break of a string with a predictable sonic response. When I reached for a fourth or a fifth, she followed. When I sought resolution, she relented.

As the world changes around us, guitars don’t. They stand stable and enduring with the same strings, the same neck, the same tunings, and the same tones that they’ve always had. Chords and notes, Rock and Blues, they all exist independent of the passage of time. Over a summer characterized by rapidly evolving social, political, and economic conditions, my guitar was a well-needed source of constancy.