grooving through: vol. 17
This week: Fred Again and Brian Eno; Frightened Rabbit; Fleetwood Mac; and Future Islands.
I have 254 records. Some, I bought; some, Jake bought; others were hand-me-downs.
Every week, I’m going to listen to 5 of them, A-Z, and tell you what I think. It’s music writing, but it’s also about memory, feeling, discovery, and looking back at what we love most. I’ll mostly dive into my favorite of the week and write a few sentences about the others — but anything goes, so who’s to say?
I’m not skipping a single LP: the mountain of Billy Joel records we got from my mom, the video game soundtrack, the used-bookstore impulse buys.
Let’s get spinning.
Note: I just reviewed Maya Hawke’s latest record for Pitchfork; read it here.
Fred Again and Brian Eno — Secret Life (2023)
I love and appreciate Brian Eno! (Check out the recent documentary if you can; we saw it at Brain Dead when it came out.) I know less about Fred Again, except through Jake — I’m sure no one is surprised by that.
Seeing that this record was released on Four Tet’s label, I had some idea of what to expect, but I’d say it exceeded my expectations (read: I liked it more than our Four Tet record).
Fred Again and Brian Eno built an unhurried album; an ambient exhale; a world to sink into. It’s a record you put on to settle deeper into your chair, ready to write or read or think. It carries with it a certain resignation, too: looking back at the past and reflecting on what’s left in the present.
At the start of Secret Life, a driving, solid piano note anchors us as we float underwater, persistent and present. And when Fred Again unleashes his falsetto on “Enough,” in a rarer moment of joy, triumphant and warm synths point to an imperative but measured optimism. It’s maybe my favorite song.
Will Richards said in NME that “the album’s full power is only released though when understanding the relationship between the two artists, and what came before. For those in the know, it fills in satisfying gaps; for newcomers or Eno fans unfamiliar with Fred’s work, it’d be easy to feel shut out, in spite of the immersive nature of the project.”
As more of the latter, I do see how I could be excluded. But my reaction was a desire to learn more, listen more. I wanted to tap into that world.
How I got it: I bought it for Jake at the Amoeba Records in San Francisco
When I first listened to it: Right now
Frightened Rabbit — The Midnight Organ Fight (2008)
How do you write about a masterpiece like The Midnight Organ Fight when it’s been core to you for so long? “Keep Yourself Warm” used to blast between my headphones as I stalked across campus in college, pulsing and scorned and trying to figure my way out of adolescence and into love.
It’s a crutch for me to say an album is a “rallying cry,” but I feel confident lead singer Scott Hutchison was heading some sort of charge on The Midnight Organ Fight, leading an army of emotionally wounded worriers surging back from heartbreak.
“The Modern Leper” gallops, every line both a recall and a reckoning. When the hoarse “I’m ill” becomes a wail/scream on “but I’m not dead,” that’s an exorcism. When he closes with the resigned line “what you did today,” there’s a neat contrast between the angry breakup song at large (an outward explosion) and the way we move forward (quieter, quotidian).
And there’s no rest on the record.
He’s warring with himself, warring with relationships, warring with the world. “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms” tackles those topics in a way weirdly evocative of Bright Eyes’ “Landlocked Blues.”
The Midnight Organ Fight is strangely uplifting for a bleak record — maybe because of Hutchison’s passion or honesty or intensity. It feels like there’s a panel of light breaking through the clouds whenever his voice trumpets above the music.
His lyrics, too: I think of “Fast Blood,” where he warbles “Because this fumble/Has become biblical/I feel like/I just died twice.” It’s perhaps the most beautiful, painful song about sex-on-the-edge-of-a-breakup that exists. He can be cheeky (“Head Rolls Off” starts with “Jesus… is just/A Spanish boy’s name”) but still tap into base desire and anger and disappointment; on that very song, there’s a mini treatise on accepting death (“And you know when it’s all gone/Something carries on/And it’s not morbid at all/Just that nature’s had enough of you”). He also sings the now-famous, sincerest line: “While I’m alive/I’ll make tiny changes to earth.”
Whether he’s vulnerable and trembling (“I’m working on erasing you” on memory-remover “My Backwards Walk”) or pulling a raw wound open to the air (“It takes more/Than fucking someone you don’t know/To keep warm”) he helps you walk, hard and armored, through a desperate day.
Of course, I have to take a moment for “Floating in the Forth.” It’s harder to listen to, now, eight years after he’s passed (context here for those who need it); to hear “I think I’ll save suicide for another day” when he considers drifting away. But for the first time on this listen, I locked into the Grecian image of the afterlife that he painted against his Scottish landscape: “Is there peace beneath/The roar of the Forth road bridge?/On the Northern side/There’s a Fife of mine/And a boat in the port for me.” He continues: “And fully clothed, I’ll float away.” In this song and in “Head Rolls Off,” the level of acceptance is staggering, sad, untouchable.
This is an impossible listen because I have an almost irrepressible need to catalog every single song. So I’ll stop there.
In sum: Suffering isn’t linear. Healing isn’t either.
How I got it: I feel like I bought it when we lived in DC, when the repressing came out
When I first listened to it: In college
Frightened Rabbit — The Winter of Mixed Drinks (2010)
I was surprised, when I looked up some more context on this record, that Scott Hutchison said he preferred this album’s everybody-records-separately approach to Midnight Organ Fight’s all-at-once effort.
It does provide some more rounded edges on this album, and there’s more of a holistic production here as they’ve shifted from indie rage to rocking shoegaze.
“Swim Until You Can’t See Land” is perhaps the catchiest song, curiously optimistic and bright for its title (especially in the shadow of our aforementioned “Floating in the Forth”). The jaunty repetition of both the title and lines “Are you a man? Are you a bag of sand?” poke fun at the sink vs. swim dichotomy. It almost sounds like this swimming is a freedom — go on, until no one can find you, race into the unknown. The theme’s potent enough in the thread of the record that a pared-down, exhausted reprise arrives via “Man/Bag of Sand.”
The Winter of Mixed Drinks — not unlike The Midnight Organ Fight — is nautically obsessed, possessed by danger. There’s a lot of washing away, pumping blood, drowning, “no sails.” (And a lot of drowning, and that still, still hurts.)
It fixates on wrestling with the animal that is yourself: What are you running away from, and what are you running toward?
Will you sink, or will you swim?
How I got it: Not a clue, probably in Brooklyn; maybe in State College. It’s pale blue.
When I first listened to it: In college
Fleetwood Mac — Rumours (1977)
This is another tough one to write about, because I’d never claim to be the Knower of one of the most beloved records around. And because Fleetwood Mac doesn’t always click for me the way it does for other people.
Maybe some of it’s from being a chorus kid — I’ve sung both “Don’t Stop” and “Go Your Own Way” in high school for a crowd of parents, and nothing takes the air out of a song quite like that (ever heard the alto line of a pop song?). “Don’t Stop” especially is inexcusably cheesy — grating in its attempt to convince us — that I can’t earnestly listen to it.
Look, I want to get Rumours more. I really do.
This is an early pressing; there’s no “Silver Springs” (which, no surprise, is a song I do very much love, and would’ve said a lot about).
What also isn’t surprising to me is my preference for Stevie Nicks’ songs. “Dreams” is mysterious, gliding, and spacious; the three-part harmony triangulates neatly. She’s the unhurried chanteuse guiding us through a bewitching, enticing, hazy journey.
“The Chain” is fuzzy and insistent, groovy and decisive. It was spliced together (chained, if you will) from each of the members’ disparate song pieces, and that really worked for me. “You will never break the chain” is declarative, almost haunting. You can feel the band’s unity tangibly here, more than anywhere else, especially on the jointly sung outro.
I also love how “Gold Dust Woman” creeps up on you, tangling deeper and darker as it goes, both psychedelic and sensual.
How I got it: Hand-me-down from Jake’s family friends.
When I first listened to it: A long while ago! But very infrequently as a record, front to back.
Future Islands — As Long As You Are (2020)
I love not having context when I go into a great record; As Long As You Are really touched me.
The record’s spacey, cut at first on the triumphantly revelatory “Glada” with a Leonard Cohen/Tom Waits voice that satisfyingly slices through the brightly inflected synth.
But Sam Herring’s voice is very much its own instrument, mutating and modulating it throughout the record to meet whatever musical moment properly. He’s always assured, gliding over synth pop, whether the vocals hearken to Anohni or Morrissey (how does this North Carolinian manage to sound so British?). Whether the loops remind me of Alex Cameron or Bartees Strange.
I already mentioned Matt Berninger, and I do see some confluence with The National — makes sense, as they’re both on 4AD. There are also flourishes that remind me of Stars, echoes of The Postal Service (I should just say mid-aughts, this is taking me forever…).
I’m making these comparisons not to diminish the inventiveness of Future Islands; I’m talking about what it aligns with and comes from and calls up for me. I think there’s nothing more fun than hearing all those pieces.
On As Long As You Are, I keep coming back to one line: “It’s so strange, how a person can change a city’s face.” Nothing’s ever felt truer. (On reflection, I actually wrote something like that once, in a poem: Both “As far as I allow,/you can never touch my city” and “These skyscrapers/have never felt your hands.”)
I’m going to listen to this again, for sure, and build up way more opinions when it has serious time to sink in. I’m definitely only skimming the surface of something great.
How I got it: Through a Vinyl Me, Please subscription (that I got for Jake). It’s teal.
When I first listened to it: Right now