On the anniversary of Frank, one of the punkiest jazz debuts to ever scat-a-tat-tat.
Special thanks to the musical Paige Tubinis for helping look this over, and Erin Mullen who inspired the autumnal romance.
By Bee Roldan
Shot between New York City and London in the summer of 2003 / photo: Charles Moriarty (FRANK promotional artwork)
“Cause I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy / Feel like a lady and you my lady boy.” YOUCH! If you weren’t familiar: that’s how one of the foulest mouths, as well as most talented and British of Brilliances, Amy Winehouse, begins her punk jazz debut: Frank. And what a way to kick it off.
The freshman album, initially exclusive to her UK natives, is on the mental queue for me whenever fall rolls around. I can’t figure out why. I think it’s the same reason why 19 (Adele, duh) reeks of autumn, a realization my friend Erin brought to me. Or Be Right Back (Jorja). Also, Mama’s Gun (Badu). The music feels improvised on the spot; the deliveries are so unfocused and hazy. Their mimicry of a dreamy period in the western hemisphere where we take for granted the forecasting of an impending slumber.
Or. Maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe the music is just perfect for school’s beginnings, for the kids still in school: Antsy. Stressed. Romantic for the year’s end. Worried about the impending slumber not just of the flora and fauna around, but their hearts’ tiring, seasonal depression knock-knocking.
The three other albums I mentioned mix truthful assertions of their singer’s melancholia with acoustic instrumentations (Jorja being a more contemporary detractor for her incorporation of more pop-like production) that provide an abundance of warmth. Pushed forward by jazzy snares or flirty guitars, electric or organic, the voices sound like home. These qualities abound on Frank too but it’s also just fucking raunchy. Fucking filthy. To leave nothing off the table on her debut: a metaphor of clitoral self-exploration (“Cherry”), the aforementioned “lady boy” lyric that would send many-a-howling today (“Stronger Than Me”), an archetypal analysis of british “skets” (sluts, basically, on “Fuck Me Pumps”), is needless to say, bold.
On the 20th anniversary of her freshman project, I propose that its status as a long-neglected part of her artistry stems from the punk and bravado of her pen. In an approach to jazz-pop that incorporates the standards of her formers, she injects it with the only thing she could never be accused of leaving out: short stories on her relationship with love, epic odes to faulty characters, and a fucking attitude. And, in the process of writing this piece I realized I was smack dab in the middle of this debut’s anniversary. I hadn’t even planned it. While researching it became so clear that Back to Black, and the various biopics and narratives created for her and about her without her control, are given the most importance.
Amy was just so…. not to be annoying: Frank. Honest. She sold nothing but herself and the contemporary perspective of a young woman unamused. She delivers on this promise. The album has no concept, per se, but it works well as a loose collection of observations from someone who’s probably been thrown out of a pub or three. One of my favorite lines from “Take the Box”: “The Moschino bra you bought me last Christmas/ (Put it in the box, put it in the box),” functions as a brilliant weathervane for the culture and time that she lived inside of, and also was just so diaristic in nature that it had to be real.
It doesn’t matter the penetrating and destabilizing intelligence of a two part track like “You Sent Me Flying/ Cherry”. The coupling of a rawly sung eulogy about her heart and physical form that was “kick-kicked” and made to feel like an idiot and the track that follows: “Her name is Cherry/ We’ve just met.” It’s like a time machine, both rocketing her back to the past and into the future. That’s what heartbreak does: returns us to the kernel of ourselves, reintroduces us to our adolescence when we were so naive, but also because of the nature of this life, ridiculously we are thrown into the future. Amy inverts the mission of the first part, to readdress, in the second part, the individual who “understands me after 18 years.”
In these two songs is something to be said about her vocal skills, too. She treats “You Sent Me Flying” like a ballad at first, taking on such ridiculous runs and scats throughout and refusing to reuse the same chorus recordings. The song is volcanic in its build: a testament to a performer with intense stamina, and so authentic it brings to mind a conversation with Reverie’s own Alexis Puthussery about the uniqueness of this. And then she treats Cherry like a little Scat-Rap jazzy tune, less refined and more abrasive, a little battery pack of a song. While absolutely different in tempo and instrumentation, the songs are still complimentary of each other, capable of standing on their own but also addressing the same girl, lonely but newly capable of taking her cherry on, much much better than he ever could.
photo: Charles Moriarty (FRANK promotional artwork)
It is true, production-wise, she rifles through the pages of jazz icons and heroes. Writing for Paste Magazine, Sam Small points out the Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday samples. Amy also just gives a gigantic middle finger to the air of poise sometimes mingled with the genre. She upends that Best Man or Gorgeous Lady veneer that the jazz figures of olden used to maintain. We know now through many fictional and biographical depictions of these people (cough cough, Frank Sinatra) that they were mercurial tramps with substance abuse issues.
And on “Know You Now”, a ridiculously beautiful yet true-to-Amy showcase of the contemporary artists she was more than just aware of: Timbaland and Aaliyah’s chirping birds, the neo-soul beats Badu was lilting over– all a testament to her wandering ear. On the topic of Hip-Hop influences: the drum beats of "In My Bed" stand out as well, because of the flute and trumpet instrumentations which swim alongside in gorgeous contrast, a revelation in the landscape of popular music. That’s a musician who knows the right place for her contributions; who knows how to save space for the genius of others around her but also how to ride through weaving stories of her own.
Like I said, she could construct a synthesis of her tastes old and new, in the foreground her keen gaze and sharp tongue, and yet we’d all still be sobbing and dragging our feet around her grave. She loses every single fucking time someone begins to write a tribute to her, a victim even if her music never meant for that. I think about the end of “Teo Licks” (the second half to “Moody’s Mood For Love”). She’s so close to being out of breath, struggling to fit the last verse into an already fast-paced and dense track, and declares: “Vince Henry, you can come on hit me / Then you can blow now if you want to, / I’m through.”
Your first thought could be: “is this a fucking bj line?” A line about a blowjob to close out the track? Not impossible. But Vince Henry is a lauded musician with multiple credits on the album. “Hit me” becomes a jazz term, and “blow now” just a literal description of his role. But it’s that “I’m through” that forces us to rewind the album. Every guy who’s ever fucked with her comes in to view, and we start back where we left off: pure genius, capable of melding her double-edged sense of humor with the greatest storytelling we have yet to see. Punk in the form of fucking truth.
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