Maggie's Farm
Grammy ready. You may say it's too February early to call it, but if the reinvention of an electric and eclectic Joni Mitchell on 'Heard It In A Past Life' isn't the album of the year already (it's the only thing this writer listens to right now after being Spotify shuffled to it randomly after listening to Leon Bridges' same sun soaked evoking latest. The one side I love to streaming). Then its author Maggie Rogers is for sure the best new artist of the 2019 she has January begun with the first big release of the year, like 'Captain Marvel' will do next week in the blockbuster movie world. And if she isn't then it's because 'don't call her a newcomer', she's been here for years. Working away at her art with her inspired indie albums, like 2012's 'The Echo' and the beautiful 'Blood Ballet' reply. And of course the influence of the illuminated 'Now That The Light Is Fading' epic EP two years back and it's definitive 'Dog Days' single that has shone on all of this 'Past Life'. But there's no dog days to be had anymore for Maggie. Rogers has already shown Pharrell 'Alaska' (a song about the National Outdoor Leadership School's homaged in the video. Wrote in just 15 minutes. But sometimes the best songs just pure and simple are) during a study session masterclass at New York University (one her 'Echo' album-recorded at home in a makeshift broom closet studio-got her. With an enrollment for the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music). And the Neptune's producer speechless like those who just keep repeating the word, "wow" was moved to what looked like tears for her as cool as cold snow in your palms track. Singing "you and I/There's air in-between" like serenity. His face to our fourth wall reaction said it all. It's no wonder he didn't sign her right there on the spot. Although you can hear his beat influence on the catchy, foot stepping single 'On + Off', that like it's video really explores the studio space (cowbell word to SNL that she has already love performance owned like the Blue Oyster Cult or her showstoppers on Ellen and Kimmel). But it's like he said to her in awe, amazed response, "I have no notes for that. Because you're doing your own thing." Instead she charted her own path through this social media powered industry "everyone's got a record, deal with it" wilderness. And wowed us all like the art of dance she brings to said songs visual. Like all her vivid videos or iconic album art. She told music N.E.R.D. Williams she has synesthesia, perceiving more than one sense at once. Which allows her to see music through colour. And not in the corny 'Empire' way of Terrence Howard's Lucious Lyon but in perfect symmetry intune of being in an in sync, synergy with sound. And oh how it shows.
Brixton baby to Lana Del Rey's Brooklyn one, it's no wonder this star singer from the other side of Maryland's Miles River in Easton (the true America) who has gone more than viral now has an academy of A-List artist friends in her corner today. Bringing out Great Brit, national Kate Bush treasure, Florence...yes that Florence from the Machine out for her London show. And the ecstatic crowd in witness of a legend were still in awe of a legacy making one to be. You can hear her influence and a whole spectrum of sound on this genre encompassing classic that crosses over like this digital age truly has for an artist who grew up on the neo-soul of Badu and Ms. Hill, between Vivaldi harp practice breaks...from age seven! Who never really respected dance music until she couldn't stop doing so in Belgium's house. Incorporating all that into her fresher than tomorrow sound that at times sounds like banjos and folk like Carole King and at others, the royal new school of the likes of Lorde. She references Stevie...the wonder that is Fleetwood Mac's Nicks with her "come out of the darkness" plea on the renaissance singers 'Retrogade', whilst singing through the perplexed pain, "Oh, here I am, settling at your house/Broken blinds keep the light comin' out/And I am just the shape I'm in/Oh, here I am, settling, crying out." But she probably moves to Motown too. Maggie Rogers cites the likes of Patti Smith and Björk as her inspirations and the mix of the two can be even seen in the soundscape of her aforementioned artistic videos. There's the sun kissed California looking empty backyard pool come skate park of 'Give A Little', with the chemistry camaraderie of all her friends that feels like a young loves American dream as she leads the chorus of the new America, millennial, National Anthem, "And if you give a little, get a little/Maybe we could get to know each other/Give a little, get a little, give a little/And if you give a little, get a little/Maybe we could learn to love each other/Give a little, get a little, give a little." Trust us soon you'll be singing it in unity unison together.
'Fallingwater' is this young 24 year old artist at her 7 days a week, 12 months a 365 working days year creative peak however. Perfect on the piano like the part title track and deepest cut of out of this realm introspection, 'Past Life', this yearning to learning ballad (like the "I've been sleeping/Barely dreaming/Through one year and one half/Found another/Called him my lover/Helped me get my old self back" of the ignited 'Burning') sees our singer in red dance in the desert until the sand of time healing turn into an emotional downpour of blue. As the break change to dancing in the joy offers the hand of the best music video your Vevo has seen in YouTube years. Forget the Instagram age. This is real iconography for the modern mainstreams music canvas. Yet again showing her perfect steps in time to the poetic art that is dance, in all its 'Blood Ballet' to modern day Gambino gambit moves. This is America's future. And like the Childish one...it's hope amongst all the hell. I used to say there were no young idols left in modern music to help carry that torch, but when I look at her and Donald Glover, oh how wrong I was. And then out of the darkness of 'Now That The Light Is Fading', the breakup to make-up, hurt to heart filled ode of leaving the 'Light On' is truly 'Give A Little' anthemic like enlightening. "Oh, I couldn't stop it/Tried to slow it all down/Crying in the bathroom/Had to figure it out/With everyone around me saying/"You must be so happy now"/Oh, if you keep reaching out/Then I'll keep coming back/And if you're gone for good/Then I'm okay with that/If you leave the light on/I will leave the light on" she muses between a music video that's a U.S. road trip of self discovery and a alive live one (and what a real voice live) from French revolutionary music outlet L'Blogotheque. The program that from Lianne La Havas walking the streets of Paris with her guitar, to Ben Harper and blues legend Charlie Musselwhite visiting a shop that puts those very strings together is redefining the art of regular studios music videos with their own productions, have come together with Rogers and her fans and friends on a solitary dark, to all inviting to sing-a-long light of a cosy Parisian bar in an outstanding one-take. Maybe their best of all the beautiful creative collaborations yet. Which just goes to show how contagious Rogers's exuberance and enthusiasm really is. And the warmth literal glow of this video and it's artist in all her honesty and beauty of strength over vulnerability is exactly what we need as she falls in the dark and is trust caught by a group in network support, for a time where we are all kept at a social media scrolling arms length from each other. And Maggie does more than give a little in her lyrics lamenting love in times of tweeted anxiety confusion, swiping...no scratching away for something real. "I remember way back, late night, throwback/Sitting on the front lawn talking/When I lost it, oh, I lost it/I remember you were saying you would come back, come back/Found me on the front porch like that/But you waited, so I got wasted" she sings on the outstanding by dark 'Overnight'. Before cutting into 'The Knife' of "insight torques its way in me/A bad collision without sympathy." But it's the closer 'Back In My Body' where her forlorn fading feelings of the one she loves are stripped bare for the perfect power cut as she fires up how she feels, "I was stopped in London, oh, I was awakening/I was/I was o'er in Paris when I almost ran away/Two times round the block before I decided to stay/Puffed along a cigarette that went and made me sick/Spent another day pretending I was over it." Putting down her thoughts like the last stub in the ashtray for the final flame of the hottest album of the first quarter. It's special to see in a Spotify age where beautifully you have access to almost all music, but brutally that leaves most artists craft cherry picked track by track, that we already have a complete, classic album already that we guarantee will play on constant repeat all calender. Reminding of us in the Trump time of the real America we feel in love with like a dream back in the sixties days of our Mamas and Papas. Maggie Rogers by our centuries version of that decade will be legendary like Jack Kerouac's muse Maggie Cassidy. This cohesive collection is the makings of a classic. Especially the singles and our personal standout, 'Say It', were creatively in her songwriting craft she makes "I cannot fall in love with you. I cannot feel this way so soon" sound like "how can I". The first track we were shuffled too that we've had on constant repeat like Natalie Prass' 'Lost' found from 'The Future and the Past' last year. And now this 'Past Life' is something to be heard, here, now. Despite everything it's been through the American dream is still alive in Rogers. If you thought no artist today could move you in such a way. Maggie may. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
On Repeat: 'Alaska', 'Say It', 'Light On'.
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