Frank Ocean’s “Ivy” Is a Waking Dream
Frank Ocean once hinted he’d write a novel. The personal narrative Christopher Breaux has composed around his art—the deeply moving coming-out letter on the eve of Channel Orange, and now the giddy, long-withheld surprise of not one, but two new album-length projects—suggests he could do it. But the form Ocean has especially mastered is the short story. Remember the sex-and-numbness-at-Coachella tale of “Novacane,” from 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra, or the vividly rendered taxicab confessional of “Bad Religion.”
Add to that list “Ivy,” the second track on Blonde and the first that begins with Ocean singing in his usual register. Like “Thinkin Bout You” or the looser, cloudier “Rushes,” a highlight from last week’s Endless visual album, here Ocean reflects poignantly on youth, love, and sex. “I thought that I was dreaming/When you said you love me,” he repeats, addressing someone whose heart the narrator evidently broke—“It’s all right to hate me”—but affirming the relationship was still worthwhile, “the feeling still deep down is good.” The lyrics refer back to and build on themselves, so the emotional payoff is all the more powerful.
A detailed contributor list for Blonde is still emerging, but whether Endless-credited guest Alex G plays on this song or not, “Ivy” is a percussion-less guitar-pop reverie, with palm-muted power chords doused in crystalline tones that emphasize Ocean’s word—“dreaming.” (No less than Rostam Batmanglij wrote the guitar part for the song, Pitchfork has learned.) Alex G’s warped yet tuneful, homemade-sounding indie rock bears an uncanny stamp on Blonde, but Ocean sets “Ivy” apart from other intimate strummers with the sheer force of his voice. Not shying away from comparisons to the late Prince, he ends “Ivy” by unleashing a high-pitched squeal: “Dreamin’!” Then it’s on to the next story in the collection, the next waking dream, the next defiantly multidimensional vision of himself.
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