The 2020’s have dragged the world through one disaster after another. For those of us interested in art, living in apocalyptic times can raise rather embarrassing questions. To use an example from my world, as an English professor, I find the endless hand-wringing over “the crisis of the humanities” a bit humiliating in the face of the many existential crises facing humanity. Some have always proposed the old “art for art’s sake” argument, which sees art and human creativity as sacred and aloof from the petty problems of people. This approach to art is ultimately dissatisfying, simply a cheap way to avoid uncomfortable questions. 

It seems to me that since art is, at least in part, born from reality, it must serve those of us still stuck in it. Art must see things as they actually are and honestly grapple with the conditions from which it emerges. 

This is simple enough in theory, but just reflecting hopelessness back to a hopeless world is not appealing. This is perhaps why I found myself so depressed after watching Adam McKay’s 2021 movie Don’t Look Up. I admired it and appreciated its message, but won’t be re-watching it anytime soon. Its insights about the blundering incompetence of American institutions in the face of demonstrable existential crises seem keen enough, but, for the sake of my emotional health, the movie is too immersed in the catastrophe of the world as we knew it. One might say its comet hits too close to home.

So if neither a detached “art for art’s sake” nor a cynical wail at reality is the best function of art now, what is? How can art convict while leaving room for hope?

Might I suggest Wesley Stace’s recent album, Late Style, as a possible model?

After a quick trip to check my claim on Spotify, the reader may hear the album’s opening line, “You wanna be where the bands are, baby,” and dismiss me out-of-hand. The line has an undeniable “party vibe,” as does much of the album. Furthermore, that vibe is one straight from a 60s pop, lounge-singer era. How could such a well-crafted throwback record mean anything to a world in full collapse? 

In his thirty-plus year career, Stace has covered more ground, both stylistically and in terms of genre, than most pop singers ever do. For most of his musical career, Stace recorded and performed under the name John Wesley Harding, a moniker taken from the Bob Dylan album of the same name. Early on, his music heavily tilted toward various versions of the singer-songwriter archetype, each inspired by his broad array of influences from folk to late-70s New Wave. 

By the time John Wesley Harding recorded 2000’s The Confessions of St. Ace (the title containing one of the great puns in the history of pop music), the Cambridge-educated singer had perfected a highly literate form of melodic pop music. Stace began professionally using his birth name in 2005, when he published his first novel, Misfortune (he has four books in total). Beginning in the mid-2010’s, Stace began recording some of his albums under his given name as well. And as if writing songs and novels were not enough, he periodically curates a traveling variety show featuring dozens of artists called Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders. In short, Stace’s career, not unlike that of Dylan himself, has been one of endless reinvention and Late Style shows that his creative fire isn’t nearly exhausted yet.

It’s worth taking a moment to gush over how richly pleasurable it is to listen to. Instrumentally, the album is dominated by bass, piano, glockenspiel, organ, acoustic guitars, and subtle drumming that features a lot of hi-hat cymbal. Its bossa nova beats and infectiously whistleable melodies mesh perfectly with Stace’s smooth voice and clear delivery of his always clever, poetic lyrics. The listener can put on some headphones, pour themselves a fancy drink, close their eyes and imagine being in a classic nightclub or stylish lounge. It is a record to luxuriate in. 

Late Style so effectively captures the spirit and aesthetic of a smoky, bygone era, one may accuse it of being escapist, an aloof exercise in “art for art’s sake.” And indeed the album creates a nostalgic aesthetic, which could be a problem if not for Stace’s skill as a songwriter. So many of the album’s lyrics peer into the heart of our tormented present that the listener cannot help but reflect on our sorry state. Stace is smart enough to recognize the traps nostalgia lays for an artist and he actively resists falling for its allure. What he has created in Late Style is a nostalgia that resists nostalgia.

The record is a paradox, and it creates a cognitive dissonance that offers a blueprint for honest, yet hopeful, art to consume as the comet approaches. Stace never lets us forget where we are, but he lets us look at it from a distance where it doesn’t seem so hopeless. Late Style offers both critique (in its lyrics) and perspective (in its style). It is both honest and therapeutic, providing a reflective distance from the fray.

Let’s get back to that pesky opening number, “Where the Bands Are,” as an illustration. The lyrics paint a romantic picture of the live-music of yore / “oh what a beautiful vibe,” Stace proclaims at one point. The image of this vibe doesn’t look like any concerts I’ve recently attended, with its “cool table set just for you. / Right back where the bands are baby; / there are no plastic forks, / just the popping of corks, / and the catering’s all cordon bleu.” Added to this lyrical other-worldliness is the bouncy nightclub rhythms, instrumentation, and arrangement. All this “vibe” serves as a remote-viewing opportunity to peer into a mythical, romantic past. The song bursts with nostalgia for an era of lost aesthetic pleasures. 

But the song’s contemporary relevance lies just below its seductive surface. No industry suffered as much under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic than the live music scene. Music venues and recording artists who rely on touring have faced existential crises. Add to this economic burden the cultural loss of fans unable to gather in person for a shared, intimate group experience, and we can see that the song all taps into an entirely contemporary crisis for its impact. The historical romance softens the blow of the tragedy from which the song emerges. 

So many of Late Style’s songs draw their inspiration from contemporary crises, while crafting the anxiety of their lament into the soothing styles of easy listening. 

The labor market, for example, has been thrown into turmoil in the pandemic’s wake as well. Mainstream media outlets have seemed to settle on the phrase, “The Great Resignation,” to describe the masses of workers who have left their jobs for one reason or another. Many people have quit their careers after achieving a clarity about “what really matters.” It seems to me that Late Style has a song or two for that as well. The lyrics to “Hey! Director” capture the regrets of a man coming to the realization that he has mutilated himself to fit someone else’s mold: “fifty years in makeup and I don’t look like me,” the singer laments. The song ends with an epiphany: “I can’t believe you talked me into this so easily; I’m going back to music; it makes more sense to me.” Though crafted as a 60’s pop song, it captures the melancholia driving The Great Resignation.

But what about the dangers of nostalgia? Stace’s work has always been grounded firmly in received artistic traditions. When he rooted his artistic identity in a Bob Dylan reference, Stace’s connection to great art of the past was forever sealed. His best work has always reinvented those traditions, however, and Late Style is merely the most recent example of that approach.

What ultimately saves Late Style is the fact that Stace understands that nostalgia as an end to itself is an opiate that dooms art to perpetual irrelevance. The song that makes this clearest on Late Style is “Come Back Yesterday,” which is devoted to shouting down reactionaries who want to turn back the clock in a nostalgic effort to return to a mythical past. The song has the feel of a late-sixties Kinks tune, when Ray Davies was nearing the peak of his satiric, social-commentary powers. The style of the song may be antique, but the target of its scathing critique of right-wing politics is utterly of our contemporary political moment: “Your clothes will be way back in style like your views; / and women in kitchens or maybe as muses; / and old worlds to conquer and slaves with the blues; / and ask but don’t tell, except when you’re cruising; / and problems you’ve caused, you can blame on the Jews.” If a listener comes to the record with the hope that the artist will just “shut up and sing,” they will be utterly disappointed. The record, despite its throwback style, is inseparable from politics of the 2020’s. 

One of the most acclaimed works of the pandemic has been Bo Burnham’s hypnotic, self-made Netflix film, Inside. Though darker than Late Style, the film and album share one vital quality: they are simultaneously honest (Burnam’s songs brutally so) and beautiful. Each employs an otherworldly aesthetic that creates a possibility of “after” the collapse, something to look forward to in hope. Stace includes two songs here that align nicely with the social commentary of Burnham’s apocalyptic view of society and technology, “Everything All the Time” and “Well Done Everyone.” 

“Everything All the Time,” in soft, relaxing tones, ponders the long-term effects of the perpetual immediacy of ubiquitous smart phones and streaming services on our attention spans and imaginations. He sings, “I used to dream of the silver screen, / lost in the dark with my black and white queen; / now it’s screen upon screen upon screen upon screen; / in every hand, including mine. / It used to be few and far between; / now it’s everything all the time.” As a topic, it shares a lot of common ground with Burnham’s recent obsessions. Yet neither allows the bleak truth of their observations to drive the listener to nihilism. Burnham’s humor and Stace’s command of style have the effect of releasing some air from the balloon before it pops. Its failure to do so is my main complaint about Don’t Look Up; McKay’s film twists the knife until hope is all but dead.

Likewise, “Well Done Everyone,” with a bouncy, comedic style not unlike Burnham’s, surveys our collective political disasters, including the fact that, as a body-politic, “we thought a madman might be fun,” with both keen perception and good nature. 

Late Style closes with a step outside Stace’s late style, a move that draws even more attention to the power of the record’s style. “How You All Work Me,” is a quiet, Americana-inspired ballad that would have fit nicely in with Stace’s 2013 self-titled release Wesley Stace, which saw the former John Wesley Harding reclaiming his birth name for professional purposes. It’s a subtly funny song in which the singer, with purposeful irony, places the blame for his burdensome creative impulses on his audience, a group he imagines pushes him against his will to undergo all the many artistic transformations that have defined Stace’s fascinating career. But it also emphasizes the art and artifice of Late Style as a whole. It’s an album intricately crafted to exist both inside and outside its moment in history.