I haven't been to
New York City or Los Angeles since I was a teenager. A young teenager. Young
enough that I really only remember snapshots of places I saw, and how it felt
to see them. So, by and large, my images of these two very different cities
comes from art – usually over-romanticized portrayals that show the cities at
their most dynamic and picturesque (your Manhattans,
your Chinatowns).
Music offers
listeners the opportunity to delve a little deeper into these bustling
landscapes by taking us into the mind of the characters on the pavement,
elbowing their way through crowds, kissing in the parks and looking down on it
all from the steel towers.
In their ways,
the new albums from Destroyer (Dan Bejar) and The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) get
into their cities (New York City and Los Angeles, respectively) in deceptively similar
ways, but build vastly different worlds. Both men have also crafted fantastic
albums that are throwbacks to the most interesting work of their influences,
while forging new sonic pathways.
The New York of
Destroyer's Poison Season is a grey,
rainy place where the crowds become even more faceless as they turn up their
collars and shake out their umbrellas. It seems wholly centered around Times
Square – one the most ubiquitous locations in a city brimming with them – as a
kind of beating heart; not just for New York, but the lovelorn character Bejar
follows around on the album. It's where love is found, lost and found again,
and the images he uses are suffused with romantic and scarlet imagery. Lines
like, "You can follow a rose wherever it grows/Yeah, you can fall in love with Times Square," are the kind of lyrical painting that puts you right
there, following a lone flash of color amidst a sea of grey.
The Weeknd's Beauty Behind The Madness is a chronicle
of Los Angeles at night – times where it's all neon, brake lights and the
floating flames of lit cigarettes. People are either in the clubs, in their
bedrooms, or on the street. There are no families here, and very little in the
way of friends. It's a sea of crusted and cracking tar, and Tesfaye is your
navigator. In the course of the album, he guides the listener through a cold
landscape where everyone is watching all the bad things you're doing, but
nobody really sees. "Hills have eyes, the hills have eyes/Who are you to judge, who are you to judge?" Unlike the characters in Poison Season, Tesfaye isn't searching
for love. Any affection in his world is physical, flammable and fleeting. The deepest
he thing he can feel is the desire that the women he meet find someone they can
love, because it sure as shit won't be him.
Their different
approaches to their city and the search for connection notwithstanding, both musicians
channel the work of some of pop's biggest stars into their own distinctive
sounds. With its blaring horns and lovely piano work, Bejar resurrects the sounds
of early Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, while channeling some of the
most romantic music of a young Billy Joel. Much like these artists, Bejar is obsessed
with New York, and brings that love to the forefront.
Beauty
is the most pop-sounding work Tesfaye has ever done, and it's all Michael
Jackson. On his previous albums, Tesfaye buried his vocals behind curtains of
reverb and synths, but by pulling back the curtain, he shows just how versatile
a musician he can be. His range (especially some of the high notes he hits on
tracks like "Tell Your Friends") show a careful study to the King of
Pop. Thankfully Tesfaye hasn't totally jettisoned his previous sound – it's
just more artfully interwoven now.
Bejar has been
working as Destroyer for nearly a decade now, while Tesfaye is just getting started,
but both their albums show a study of craft and experimentation that promise
they're both only going to progress as time goes on. We're all just lucky
enough to be here for it.
Also recommended this week:
Beach House's
pulsating dream pop wonder, Depression
Cherry.
Alessia Cara's
debut EP, Four Pink Walls.
Halsey's
electro-pop debut, BADLANDS.
The Paper Kites'
sophomore indie folk gem, twelvefour.
Yo La Tengo's
collection of covers, Stuff Like That
There.
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