In Which Nerina Pallot Rains And Also Thunders

Make It Better

by JANICE LEVENS

Stay Lucky
Nerina Pallot
producer Nerina Pallot
October 20th on Idaho Records

Beauty made my heart a liar.

Nerina Pallot’s new album, her first full length effort since 2011's stunner Year of the Wolf, is at times a sonic sampler. Stay Lucky gives us a full and varied sense of a woman woman entering her 40s. Pallot still seems excited to dip her toes into the thrall of other artists: Fleetwood Mac (“Man Didn’t Walk on the Moon”), Spiritualized (“Bring Him Fire”) and Massive Attack ("Juno"), to name a few. Yet she provides a unity of sound within these homages to wildly divergent artists by seeking the commonality in instrumentation and melody that they share. Her compositions loop around each other so pleasantly that they never outstay their welcome. Perhaps it also Pallot’s voice that synchronizes her themes as well.

Unlike many other artists, marriage and children has not led Pallot to run out of things to say. Her lyrical insights live in the interstices of normative everyday life, and when she slows down on tracks like "Come Into My Room", her own instrument fills any space so sweetly. “I can’t help the way I feel,” explains “I don’t care if I fall from grace.” It is rare that the helplessness of love has been more clearly explicated in any form.

On "Bird" she sings,

Tell me what it means to be free of all the misery
of the world and everything in it
As much as it hurts I know that I'm feeling something
that's better off than feeling nothing.

Pallot decided to marry her husband on her first date, yet whatever impulsiveness she has as a person is restrained beautifully here. She must have the most astonishing perfect instincts, since every move she makes on Stay Lucky, from suddenly bringing in background vocals when you might never expect them, to reducing the soundscape to echoing tickles on a piano in the haunting intro to "Juno", the album's standout track, achieves a sustained and memorable effect.

The second half of the album reprises Pallot’s traditional sound, which can best be described as a jazzier, more substantial Regina Spektor. “Better” terminates in an aimless, semi-passionate saxophone solo that exemplifies the type of meaningful risk Pallot accomplishes even when her songwriting is ticking the most traditional, pleasurable pop boxes. There is something improvisational and fresh in all these songs, as if they sprung out of her in a particular state of mind and now exist more precisely in this form than they ever did while in her head.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording.

In Which It Is Just The Christmas You Lost To Cocaine

Workshop Blues

by JANICE LEVENS

Everyday Is Christmas
Sia
producers Sia Furler and Greg Kurstin
November 17th on Atlantic Records

I have no idea why Sia recorded Everyday Is Christmas, but it is best to not look this particular gift horse in the mouth or face. Some artists make jokes and others are sincere, but Sia occupies a discursive space between those two norms, and what a space it is. This metaphysical area is full of the following:

* puppies (Sia loves dogs, because they only judge people based on physical presence and potential as a food source)
* nature (on “Snowflake” Sia deals with the traditional version of  term. She is not so crass)
* elves (in the metaphorical sense)
* mistletoe (there is a positive aspect to touch)

Parsing the lyrics is sometimes a challenge. On “Sunshine”, Furler suggests, “Tell me your secrets tonight and I’ll get the elves working on them.” She adds, “Got the elves working so hard, make your pain stop.” I honestly never know when to laugh or cry on this album, and the preternaturally talented producer of Everyday Is Christmas, Greg Kurstin, doesn’t seem to either. This unexpected album is such a songwriting tour de force that even the most nonsensical lyrics land completely in the Santa’s Workshop of orchestration woven by Furler.

On the album’s most formal and nearly devout track, “Snowman”, Furler manages a touching and deeply beautiful ballad that proves that almost any simile she writes can encompass anguish and joy at the same time. She sings,

Don't cry snowman, don't you fear the sun
Who'll carry me without legs to run?
Don't cry snowman, don't you shed a tear
Who'll hear my secrets if you don't have ears?

Mostly Everyday Is Christmas seems to be making the point that words are mere shells, and the underlying arrangements are Furler’s actual voice. She is one of the most magnetic and intuitive musical talents ever to work in this genre, and if it feels like very few risks are being taken here, there is also the pervasive feeling that Sia is closing a door on a certain sound embodied by her 2014 masterpiece 1000 Forms of Fear.

On “Puppies Are Forever”, Furler sings, “Cause they're so cute and fluffy with shiny coats. But will you love 'em when they're old and slow?” This should not have affected me as much as it did either. But for some of us, the end of the year is when we are at our most vulnerable and plaintive. Timing is everything in life, and I am happy Sia made Everyday is Christmas for us this year.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording.

In Which Taylor Swift Becomes A Stranger

Iconoclasted

by JANICE LEVENS

Reputation
Taylor Swift
producers Max Martin and Karl Schuster
November 10th on Big Machine

When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death.

- Niccolò Machiavelli

If Taylor Swift is anything like the person depicted on her new album Reputation, she is the most devious, complicated, multifaceted person ever to exist. Let us take our time with a line from "I Did Something Bad", which I believe in the end represents everything this woman is concerned with: "I never trust a narcissist, but they love me." Such a statement implies that every single association Swift has with other people is deceitful in some way. This admission is startling on another level, since it prizes the latter section of the clause over the former. The beginning of the lyric is a preference, the ensuing clause is a state of being.

Of course there is the possibility that this, like so much else on Reputation, is tongue in cheek, or simply written by one of the many co-writers Swift has worked with over the years. On Reputation, Jack Antonoff and the producing-songwriting team of Karl Schuster and Max Martin are present to work in the confines of Swift's familiar sound. But the lyrical voice is distinctly Swift's own, and the message is completely fucked up:

I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong
Or we're making mistakes
I want your midnights
But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you

Again, if this is true, it's desperately sad and twisted. If it's only a conceit, the expression of it is somehow worse. I know that massive amounts of money and adulation are capable of changing a person, but altering them to this extent is potentially what happened to Lady Macbeth. Of course, no one ever said Lady Macbeth is boring, and Swift is intent on focusing this aspect of her personality. On "Dancing With My Hands Tied" she explains, "I'm the mess that you wanted." Uh-huh.

But no one could ever think Swift was, or has ever been a mess. So that part is a lie, and probably a lot else on this album. Swift's last album, the more enjoyably pop 1989, sold ten million copies, and Reputation attempts to put it in the dust. The more considered, low-key elements of that album are completely submerged here, with Swift more often sounding like mid-career Madonna than any iteration of herself.

There is something dated about Reputation, which suggests that the 27-year old is becoming very old, very quick. The orchestrations are generally limited, leaving the focus on Swift's sharp, bouncy voice, which is at its best when breathily intoning in something like speech. "Dress" is her most complete and exciting track in this vein, explaining, "I don't want you like a best friend," hinting at a story she refuses to tell. Instead, we receive the following blandishments:

Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me
Flashback to my mistakes
My rebounds, my earthquakes
Even in my worst light, you saw the truth in me
And I woke up just in time
Now I wake up by your side

It would be compelling to watch Swift take on various new themes in her work, including authentic estimations of loss and love. Instead Reputation is an extended revenge fantasy on no one in particular. "I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams," she blurts out on "Look What You Made Me Do."

When Niccolo Machiavelli retired from private life, he wrote his signature work, The Prince. The entire time he was longing to return back to politics, since it was what brought joy to his life. In The Prince, he explains that such a person must be able to change his views at a moment's notice. He isn't able to be honest, because it would mean losing his ability to defeat his rivals, and kill them when he can. This was what Machiavelli called virtu. I feel like Taylor Swift is articulating a new philosophy along these lines, which is essentially a return to the old.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles.