4/5
Put Your Hands In The Air.
It's time to 'Surrender' to Maggie Rogers for her sophomore album after she 'Heard It In A Past Life' (before dusting off some 'Notes From The Archive' during 2020's quarantined lockdown). The best album of 2019, alongside the 'Cheap Queen' King Princess, who also releases her new album today ('Hold On Baby'), along with somebody called Beyoncé. The Queens are here and it's time to dance in the karaoke booth to the renaissance. C'mon! You know it's what you 'Want Want'. Right now, 'That's Where I Am' like a video ode to New York City and its romantic comedies of the 90's with David Byrne too. 10 things I love about this? Nah, I could name a thousand words. Hitching a yellow cab with all this cosmopolitan city has to offer. Feeling you everywhere, singing and signing the cross between some nuns in the cobbled Meatpacking District for this sister act, sophomore set. Graduating like her thesis, studying all this to the cap and gown. Iconically holding a mic and stage in front of the Empire State Building, glittering with the state of all her sparkling gold. "I found a reason to wake up/Coffee in my cup, start a new day/Wish we could do this forever/And never remember mistakes that we made", and we have too, feeling the same. So let your troubles fade away (because after all "even boulders turn into sand"), and dance, dance, dance along to this with a hairbrush like the closing credits of your favourite movie. All until the sing-along 'Want Want' of the second single that rocks even more into the golden era. With a sweaty and sexy video that now has the best of my top-three wigs for the pixie cut singer who cut off those folky locks like we needed to cut out those "electric Joni Mitchell" comments. She's her own born star. Beating out Scarlett Johansson's pink karaoke do, serenading Bill Murray, 'Lost In Translation' in Tokyo, Japan. And whatever s### I end up getting to cover my thinning head, thinking I'm Andy Warhol, or something. Even the visualizer, lyric videos to these songs akin to the Gatsby eyes album artwork, are something else that feel like pop art themselves from the television sets of the man that brought us Campbells cans, Brillo pads and Marilyn Monroe in neon.
All the pretty 'Horses' come galloping back to the fields of the 'Alaska' singer who was one with more than nature after a Neptune co-sign. "Cross the street like a dream out my window/Sucking nicotine down my throat/Thinking of you giving head", she signs beautifully in the city like the 'Women In Music', Haim lovingly telling us, "we're watching the sunrise from the kitchen counter/when you're lyin' between my legs, it doesn't matter" for 'Gasoline'. Rogers goes into 'Overdrive' on this opening 'Surrender' with an epic, uplifting track that this album is the makings of. "I don't wanna do this again if you're gon' break my heart/I'm tearing at the seams, can't believe that it's gotta be this hard/You told me that I was all you could see, but you kept me in the dark," Maggie mesmerizes. Giving us not only an ode to the good times when our young life and love was like a movie. But the soundtracks to our very hearts that reside in that time, now broken like a record. Going 'Anywhere With You' and your bruised soul atmospherically over piano and "You tell me you want everything you want it fast/But all I’ve ever wanted is to make something f###### last" lyrics that literally speak for everybody right now. Just 'Be Cool' like Travolta on the new beat of "overload(ing) the speakers" and "listen(ing) to Britney". Because bitch we're, "Sick of the sound of self-importance/I f##### off for a month or two/Needed a summer just to be a teenager/Drunk on the month of June." Amen and cheers to that. Raise your glasses, as you put your hands in the air to 'Surrender' for a toast. And 'Say It' like the introductory song I heard before and now still on repeat like a Starbucks playlist, haven't been the same in life since. Literally saving me from anxiety and playing in the background with someone that centered me. Rogers hammers it!
Shattering the speakers of a new wave for her age. Complete with Florence Welch shaking her tambourine at Electric Lady here, after Maggie Rogers provided backing vocals to the 'Dance Fever' machine. All whilst black and white returning to the roots, past a previous 'Past Life' and not forgetting the 'Dog Years' of where she's from like a Del Water Gap. Like Norah Jones to a Peter Malick Group. From the sweet shyness of an NPR Tiny Desk, featuring the book she helped transcribe, meeting in the bathroom. To the compelling, contagious confidence that you see right now. Watch this Mag usher her way in. From being in awe of how many people came to see her first set at Glastonbury. To cracking a hole in Coachella this year (and all I got was a tour tee). This is THE artist of our time. And a riffing 'Shatter' ground breaks all that. This rock is never turning to dust. Stories to be told. Millions to be sold. Much more to be moved. Oh, men, she's got your number too. "I see it in your teeth again/There's a tightness when you're smiling/It creeps in through the backdoor when/You play pretend and break down crying." And her closest have got her back to, like the good times rolling of the 'I've Got A Friend' like Hathaway had alive and live. After 'Begging For Rain' on the most perfect precipitation, that's definitely running in the romantic rain for the film of someone who would give you Dylan 'Shelter From The Storm'. If they just gave you a(nother) chance. Doing something to the new Batman and making us listen to Dolly, or else. There's going to be hell to pay like Jolene. Maggie truly gets epic on the euphoric 'Honey' like a Mariah 'Butterfly'. "Oh, I believe in the way I loved you then/And the way you held my hand, it wasn't circumstance/Or anomaly but powers about when you/Place your bets and how you choose your friends/Oh, and I believe I could have been your girl/For about a hundred years, oh, in another world/But I had to leave and now when you hear my name/Oh, does it break your s###? Or do you run away." A sensational 'Symphony' like the stellar track of the same name that may be 'Surrender's' superior. All the way acoustically, back in your body for another classic closer in this 'Different Kind Of World' ("one last song, I'll sing a song/And make it a song for peace") since her '19 debut. Maggie, our hands are behind our backs and we're down on our knees. When it comes to your music, do as you please. White flag. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'That's Where I Am', 'Want Want', 'Horses'.
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