One for Nero, One for Me

a few really good albums.

I got into Sudan Archives through the algorithm - some time last year when my taste was branching out in new directions. And she ranked so highly on Pitchfork’s albums of the year for 2022; coming in second place to Beyoncé is basically the same as coming in at first. All this lead me to Natural Brown Prom Queen while I was driving across the bridge to South Portland a few weeks ago.

This album became the center of my life for a little while after that. A confident, feminine coming of age story of a girl surviving the pandemic through finding more and more things to love about herself. The hooks are irresistible, the vibes far-reaching and energetic. It’s an album all about what it means to be your own best friend, even when you have really incredible supporters at your side. The winning chunk for me is the arc from “Selfish Soul (ODD),” into “Loyal,” then to “OMG BRITT,” and then to “Chevy S10.” But then I truly cannot get enough of “Freakalizer.” And the end of the album gives me chills, with Sudan promising the listener that she’s had enough of this Hollywood stuff - “I’m going back to Cincinatti,” is the final, a-capella thought of the record.

My roommate Jen would come into the kitchen while I was making dinner, or into our apartment’s home-office-esque space in the morning while I was sitting down to my inbox, and ask, “Who is this?” The answer was the same for such a long time that she changed her question to, “Sudan Archives?”

So I was blasting the Sudan Archives record from my living room one evening last week, when I noticed that my little lizard roommate Nero felt really differently about the record - I found him in his tank, totally standing at attention, not relaxed. He stayed that way until I put something else on. I was like, “Okay, my dude, I got you, clearly we are not living for the same tunes right now. Let’s find something else.”

That something else that got Nero vibing was Kelela’s new record Raven, which came out in February, ‘23. Kelela first came onto my radar listening to Object of Sound, Hanif Abdurraqib’s incredible weekly music podcast (currently on winter break). She came onto my radar as someone returning from a long hiatus (her last album came out in 2017), but even without the history, this is clearly a record of rebirth.

The absolutely stunning album cover is a perfect advertisement for the music within. The album’s sparse and deliberate beats sound like they’re coming up from the floor of a pool of still water that you’ve found in a bioluminiscent cave - as the songs rise from below, they change the shape and color of the water and the quality of light reflecting off the stone walls. Her voice cuts through it all, soaring and human. It’s groovy as shit.

The arrival of this record into my life has been perfectly timed with the arrival of the work of Mark Fisher, who wrote a lot about hauntology. Fisher came out of the late 90’s-00’s UK dance scene, and to kind of ground myself I’ve been exploring those genres as well - mostly gravitating towards Jungle, which Kelela specifically references in her interview with Abdurraqib as something she wanted to revive with this record. Songs like “Happy Ending,” or “Closure,” are equally as retro as they are ahead of their time. I’ll be interested to see what other artists reference this record throughout the next couple of years of releases, because it feels course-charting to me.

And, you know, Nero really seems to like it.

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Other music I’ve been enjoying lately: This single by Yaeji - the Portland group Lahnah - this mysterious, cartoonish instrumental record - this German Experimental compilation I got on vinyl like a year ago and am just getting into now - Thin Lizzy.

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