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On May 19, Megapolis released their first studio album for fourteen years, "Supertango." Band leader Oleg Nesterov sketched the general context for this long-awaited event: "The album took exactly one year to record - over four long studio sessions, arranged as they might have been in classic Korean cinema: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Each and every season produced some songs for the CD. Then, to wrap things up, we added one more winter session, in order to handle the mixing. All that time we were working according to a shared goal: we wanted to find something true. We sought that ideal for ages - and never gave up until we got what we needed."
The color images in this post come from the CD's recent release party, held at Moscow's "16 Tons" club.
Some more words on the CD's slow evolution: "Sometimes we'd actually find what we were looking for [in terms of the right sound] - but not know it! As a result, we'd go off on various pointless runarounds, recording the same song over and over. In some cases, we would we only realize six months later that we'd long since committed to tape exactly what we wanted!" These irritating detours, caused by something implicitly "untrue," were slowly reduced in number thanks to a basic principle: keep things simple, be spontaneous, work closely together (literally), and persevere.
"All the songs were recorded live, in so much as we began by simply sitting down... and playing. That led, overtime, to us leaving the various [closeted] sections of the studio and working together in one common room. The closer we sat, in fact, the better things worked out. Eventually we ended up even taking our headphones off... Once we did that, everything was perfect!"
The last Megapolis album came out in 1996 and, in Nesterov's words, that project had "sucked all the blood" out of him. In the long interim, his main efforts were directed towards the priceless Snegiri ("Bullfinch") label/company in Moscow, which managed an impressive 150 releases over a ten-year period. It was only when Nesterov published a well-received novel last year that his own creative work came again to the forefront of attention.
The new album marking this shift in focus is, as noted, "Supertango," a phrase invented by lyricist Aleksandr Barash, who sees its etymology in "some kind of endless, spinning motion... as in the dances of dervishes. It's the kind of movement in which those same dervishes are able [despite the surrounding chaos] to find a single immobile point."
Somewhere within interminable motion lies a hidden sense of stability. That same idea is reflected in the CD's artwork, shown above. Two solid forms, vaguely discernible amid blurred activity, nonetheless cohere.
We could conjecture immediately that the passage of time has given Nesterov that feeling of "centered" calm. One well-known radio presenter in Moscow has just remarked, quite accurately, that the new album is spun from "ten songs - sung by grown men with the hearts of boys." That phrase neatly reverses the kind of textual/thematic emphases that marked Megapolis in the early 1990s. At that time, Russian pop music was seeking a lyrical register to make possible songs of ardor without the baggage of past pathos; separating the words of doe-eyed couples from pompous tales of "togetherness" was proving hard.
Nesterov and his band, responding to this difficulty, penned hit after witty hit in a knowing, endlessly ironic vein that expressed two things simultaneously: the confidence to write of new desires (of affection per se) and, simultaneously, doubts over the language thereof. What resulted were boys' songs of maturation, both stylistically and physically.
Now, however, "Supertango" emerges as an elegant, wise statement on aging. The same romance endures, though erstwhile, disorderly desires are now replaced with memory and gratitude. The trebly, often synthesized percussion of the group's early discography is now, as we've heard, politely sidelined by the calm, confident musicianship of skilled artists.
Nesterov's wish to pen material with a genuine sense of maturity has even led him, at 48, to suggest that "Supertango" may be the group's final recording. "At my age, any album could reasonably be a final work, for all kinds of reasons. And that's the feeling we had as we worked on the CD, too. There was an overarching atmosphere that was both pleasant and worrying... but we'd nowhere to run!" Tempus fugit... and everybody else is left standing still.
At my age, any album could reasonably be a final work, for all kinds of reasons. And that's the feeling we had as we worked on the CD, too. There was an overarching atmosphere that was both pleasant and worrying... but we'd nowhere to run!
Once again, in the context of such thoughts on our universal development and decline, talk turns to a certain "verity" that the musicians sought, both musically and through Barash's poems. Since so many of these songs are dedicated to general human experience, in the broadest terms possible, long-winded musings would be of no discernible benefit. Why struggle with novel insights into a process that simply happens, willy-nilly, to all of us? Consequently, Megapolis did not allow themselves the "luxury" of endless jam sessions. "The main criterion as we worked ahead was always that same sense of 'truth.' We deliberately forced ourselves to follow certain time limits, just as in football: two halves of forty-five minutes, then you're off the field!"
Another interview with the Russian press a few days ago led to an interesting, related definition of the new songs by Nesterov himself. When asked whether the Moscow media would now pay his songs the same attention as they did in the '90s, he replied: "I see my songs in the same way that pre-Revolutionary peasants used to view their children. It used to be that Russian peasants would have, say, the twelve children 'given them by God.' Some of them would die, some would survive... for which they'd also be grateful to God. I know one thing: my new songs will be heard by those people who want to hear them."
A meek, sage smile of resignation to the inevitable.
Another, related metaphor emerges when he explains how the band members now see themselves, professionally speaking, as "long distance runners." Endurance has trumped speed and showiness - a long time ago.
For this same reason, Nesterov has worked with (or dreamed of working with) several stars of the Soviet stage who embody that same spirit: Lev Leshchenko, Eduard Khil', Liudmila Senchina, and Valentina Tolkunova. Risking a sweeping generalization, we might suggest that these two men and two women all, in essence, embody the kind of gentle romance within socialist pop music that sought somehow to outdo (or at least sidestep!) louder, "civic" versions. In a culture where romance was endlessly hijacked for grander purposes, Tolkunova in particular hoped to maintain the dignity of private, if not wonderfully dull experience in a "difficult" land. Hers were very much songs of personal, rather than public maturation.
As a result, the recent footage that has emerged of Tolkunova and Nesterov working happily together in the studio is deeply touching, especially because the recording rooms at Snegiri are housed in the old House of Culture that once belonged to the newspaper Pravda ("Truth").
In one of her final interviews - she passed away this year - Tolkunova said that any veracity or authenticity once audible in "the word 'love' [as celebrated in song] has now been dragged all over the place, a bit like a call girl." That gripe can be explained in the following context: if late socialist culture, the time of Megapolis' emergence, abused childhood experience in the name of "adult," responsibly social values, then post-Soviet culture has turned the innocence of romance into a cash cow. Maturity, wisdom, and a sober outlook are fairly useless from a mercantile standpoint; dissolute youth sells better than thoughtful dotage.
Both Nesterov and Tolkunova, despite their generational difference, found common musical and lyrical ground in the notion of romance as both hushed "endurance" (Nesterov's term) and tight-lipped "patience" (Tolkunova's). Long-distance runners, one and all.
As Russian society goes through its own, dervish-like "supertango," the most successful runners amid that tumult and turmoil are indeed those who find an enduring, tranquil patience. They express the lasting "truth" of that discovery in modest tales of long-term, unassuming affection. As Nesterov's title track has it: "You grow old, old, old... You see light from behind the door. You hear what sounds like the roar of the tide... It bring tears and it brings sleep... Give me strength, if you can." It's an appeal to another individual; a handful of words spoken to somebody quiet, sitting close by.
You grow old, old, old... You see light from behind the door. You hear what sounds like the roar of the tide... It bring tears and it brings sleep... Give me strength, if you can.
And, as we heard at the outset, the closer people sit, the "truer" their interaction: mere proximity is a step towards private verity - and away from social falsehood. It's the kind of closeness celebrated with awkwardness in the social art of song that can, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, make "everything perfect."
There's a good reason, therefore, why the songs of "Supertango" grow increasingly quiet throughout the track list - as chairs are moved closer together.
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