All My CDs, pt. 123: The Magic Position

The Magic Position - Patrick Wolf

In the year and a half that I’ve been trying to hold myself to listening to my entire collection in the order they’re shelved in, this is the one I’ve most played out of turn, during the couple of weeks here and there that I’ve taken a break and just listened according to my immediate whims. I don’t think that’s because I like it any more than the rest of my collection - I think it might just be because it’s so late in the order that it’s been more of a strain on my patience than the others. It’s also unique - there is little about it that I could easily get from another album.

That said, I recently noticed that Patrick Wolf has some similarities with Rufus Wainwright, whom I reviewed a few weeks ago, although it’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is they have in common. Certainly Wolf appears to be less mature and complex, a bit more angsty, but the majority of the songs on this album have an infectious joy in them that I see in Wainwright’s happier songs. Compare the title track, The Magic Position, to Wainwright’s Beautiful Child. Both were on the playlist I played at my wedding because of that joy that they embody.

Even the darkest songs on The Magic Position are a little hard to take seriously, not because they seem disingenuous but because they’re so enthusiastic in their angst. They’re far from boring or cliche. More often, the songs convey a sense of childlike wonder and pure appreciation of life, even its more painful aspects. A longtime favorite is the penultimate track, The Stars, which at one climactic point simply makes its central thesis:

Look up
look up
the stars!

and then lets the music show us their beauty.

I can’t think of a better way to end my collection than with such a lovely, love-filled album as this.

End of All My CDs

It’s been more than ten dozen  reviews and a year and a half since I started this project. I had a goal I hoped to achieve in the process: a better knowledge and appreciation of my collection, so I don’t become one of those people who mindlessly consumes without stopping to really enjoy things. That’s why I resolved not to buy any new CDs until the project was completed. I ended up breaking that rule once, but it was quite late in the game and I don’t think that single lapse kept me from nurturing that sense of appreciation. As for knowledge, I feel I know my collection better than ever, and learned quite a lot about the music that I was neglecting over the years. In that way, I think I’ll call this project a success.

What’s the future of my collection? There’s one change I would like to make now that I’ve taken a full and deep inventory of its contents. I decided that alphabetical order is not the ideal organizational structure for music. Not when my collection is so large and diverse that I can’t immediately bring to mind the name of the band I would like to listen to at any given time. I always disliked segregating music by genre, the way record stores often do, because some of my favorite groups belong in multiple categories or none at all. I may compromise between those two strategies and categorize artists by why I like them, so that I can seek out those qualities when I’m in the mood for them. I already have an idea of what artists will end up grouped together.

I didn’t aim for it, but I think it’s fortuitously appropriate that my last review be posted on New Year’s Eve, so I can begin 2016 with a sense of accomplishment and an opportunity for future projects and new music. There are a couple of albums I have my eye on as new additions to my collection, although I don’t think I’ll be quite as acquisitive as I was in the past. In the meantime, I am very much looking forward to using my blogging powers for good in other areas of my life.

So see you next year, with who knows what kind of new subject matter. I’ll be sticking to a regular update schedule, but going down to once per week, on Thursdays.

All My CDs, pt. 122: Earth to America

Earth to America - Widespread Panic

This might be my most rushed review yet. Not only did I not give this album a proper listen when I first grabbed it at random from the bargain rack a few years ago, I didn’t get a chance to listen to it all weekend either. Now I’m supposed to have a review posted by the end of the day, and I haven’t yet heard more than half the album. I’m forming my first impression even as I write. But I have a schedule and really want to finish this project by the end of the year, so please forgive my haste.

I had zero knowledge of this band or their music before picking up the CD. I’m actually getting something of a Dave Matthews Band vibe from it; similar genre and vocal style at least. It’s fun rock music with a decent beat; it's got some jazz and blues elements but not enough to completely turn me off. It’s definitely not something I’d have sought out, but as a randomly-picked unknown, I’ve definitely had worse.

I can’t say anything about the lyrics at this time. It’s rare that they’re sung in a way that’s easy to follow without reading along, and I can’t say I’ve caught a single line of words that I’m confident I heard correctly. Not that I mind; the music itself is quite entertaining enough.

Overall I’m not sure why I never gave this a listen before now. I seem to remember it was one of two or three CDs I bought that day, and one of the others was by a favorite band. So I just never got around to listening to this one, to my detriment.

Next: The Magic Position
And: The End of All My CDs

All My CDs, pt. 121: Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are: Motion Picture Soundtrack - Karen O. and the Kids

When the film Where the Wild Things Are came out, it was often said in reviews and various other writings that it may be a movie about childhood, but that didn’t necessarily make it for children, in that it dealt with a lot of darkness and complexity that would make it more suitable for adult audiences. Media like that hits a delicate demographic niche: it runs the risk of offending audiences that are expecting more lighthearted fare, and people who would appreciate the subtlety of the narrative may not even see it because of its childish appearance - filled with funny puppets and costumes and based, as it is, on a short picture book.

Media that is about childhood but not necessarily for children can be particularly difficult also because it is almost always made by adults - and understandably so, because children usually lack the resources and skills to make large-scale popular art. So media about children and childhood necessarily comes from an outsider perspective - yes we’ve all been children before, but how many of us still remember the visceral experience of it and can accurately describe it without injecting our mature perspectives?

What I’m getting at is that this soundtrack, like the movie it was made for, is made by adults trying to capture the perspectives and experiences of children. The most commonly heard voice on the album is of Karen O., an adult woman sounding remarkably similar to a little boy. Other voices are clearly trying to emulate the energetic and undisciplined sound of children singing, shouting, playing, fighting. The instrumental accompaniment is reminiscent of other large-group indie ensembles like The Polyphonic Spree and The Arcade Fire (possibly why a song by The Arcade Fire was used in the film’s trailer).

The exceptions are Hideaway and Worried Shoes, which sound calmer and more adult than the rest of the songs, with contemplative lyrics and simple piano accompaniment.

My favorite tracks on the album are Sailing Home and Building All Is Love, the latter because it’s one of those extra-long songs with several false endings that I generally find myself attracted to (if I’m enjoying something, I like having it go on longer than I expect). Both songs are just so hopeful and springy.

Two more CDs and I’ll be done with this project.

Next: Earth to America

All My CDs, pt. 120: Wheel

I opened my eyes one day and was

Wheel - Pat DeSimio and Mallory Beck

This is another CD I’m liable to be biased in reviewing, since half of the duo who recorded it is a dear friend of mine. They recorded this eight-song “demo” of sorts before joining with a third member whose name escapes me to form a folk band called Wheel of Sky, which was locally active for a very short time before fate forced the members to go their separate ways.

The music is quite simple, traditional-style folk music with agrarian themes and a consistent focus on the cyclical nature of time - the pattern of night following day, the wheel of the passing seasons, and the broader cycle of life leading from birth to death. For songwriters living in modern suburban environments, it’s amazing how vividly they depict a less industrial existence in farm villages and near-wilderness, where the passing of seasons has such an impact on life that no aspect of work or play can ignore it.

As much as we can try to, I don’t think it’s any more possible to ignore such cycles now. We may be able to soften winter’s impact with heated houses and cars, but we still feel its power. And a modern human who fails to turn his face toward the sun during spring and summer is a sad one indeed. Moreover, the larger cycle of birth, life, age, and death has no less a grip on us than ever, although perhaps our de-emphasis on seasonal changes and their spiritual, cultural significance has made death all the more bleak and final to our minds.

These are the thoughts that this music has put into my head this week.

Come as mistakes turn into wisdom
come as the rash become the sage
come as the blooms of youth grow into
the rich harvest that blesses age

Next: Where the Wild Things Are

All My CDs, pt. 119: Want Two

I only have five more CDs to review before I’m done with my entire collection, and this project. I’ll have all reviews posted just in time for the end of 2015. After that, it’ll be a short break before I’m back with more to say, just not all of it on the subject of CDs that I own. Some of it will be about CDs I do not own. Some of it will be about things I own that are not CDs. Some of it will be about things that are not CDs and that I do not own. Some of it will be about things that could never be owned, like freedom or death or people. Some of it will be about things that will never be found on CD, like the voice of morning sunshine and the taste of blueberries.

I’m looking forward to an exciting new year.

Want Two - Rufus Wainwright

I got this album a few years after I got Want One, mainly because I had heard the song Little Sister and enjoyed it. It’s quite obviously a sequel, and not just due to the title. The cover art for each echoes the style and symbolism of the other, the major difference being that while Want One’s cover features pictures of Rufus dressed as a medieval knight with a sword, in Want Two’s he is dressed as a medieval lady with a distaff. A distaff is a tool used for spinning fiber into yarn or thread, and has since ancient times symbolized femininity - hence, it seems Want Two is intended to be the distaff counterpart to Want One, expressing female points of view or experiences.

And indeed a few of the songs do focus on women, such as Little Sister which humorously approaches the historical marginalization of women from an unashamed male standpoint, and The Art Teacher which tells a story of unrequited love from a woman’s point of view. Neither is exactly a feminist song, which is refreshing in a way; they focus on women’s struggles for recognition against expectations of passivity and properness, but in neither song is that status quo actually challenged. So it has been for most people for most of history.

Other than those two songs, though, there isn’t a huge difference between this album and Want One that makes it more inherently feminine. They’re similar in style, just as their covers are similar in style. If there’s a difference I can put my finger on it’s that Want Two might be slightly more experimental, a little more “out there”, taking a few more risks with weird sounds and lyrics. But even that is a subtle difference and possibly a subjective one.

Also worth noting is that Want Two has a few songs devoted to overt sexuality (such as Old Whore’s Diet), as well as to religious imagery (such as Agnus Dei). Funnily, Gay Messiah covers both areas at once, borrowing Christian mythological themes and affectionately applying gay stereotypes. Both sex and spirituality, as well as homosexuality, have historically been associated with femininity. Was that the intent behind making this album implicitly the female counterpoint to its predecessor? Or is the overall similarity in their styles intended to convey that there is no real, meaningful difference between the genders, as much as our history insists otherwise?

My guess is, a little bit of both.

Next: Wheel

All My CDs, pt. 118: Want One

Want One - Rufus Wainwright

After hearing his rendition of Hallelujah, and after Dinner at Eight showed up a few times on Pandora, I decided it was time to buy a Rufus Wainwright album and to start with Want One. I’d be lying if I said a small part of me wasn’t disappointed in the album as a whole, although there were definitely parts I liked about it. Over the years, however, I’ve come to understand how much I missed out on by not appreciating it.

In all the many ways there are to categorize music, by genre or by mood or by what kinds of instruments are involved, whether there are lyrics and whether the lyrics mean anything, one of the most basic distinctions I’ve seen is between “big” and “small” sound. Small sound may (but not necessarily) have few instruments, an intimate feel, and personal lyrics about feelings or relationships - evocative of a small cafe where someone sits in a corner strumming a guitar and crooning about lost love, or a living room where your guest picks out a tune on an upright piano. Big sound is more characteristic of large groups playing in arenas or concert halls, big productions and themes that are less personal. Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is big sound, as is every classical symphony. Tori Amos’s Yes Anastasia is small sound, as is Moonlight Sonata.

Obviously there’s a great deal in the middle of these two extremes; it’s a broad spectrum. And notably, individual musicians can produce works anywhere along that spectrum, although some may favor one end or the other overall. When my experience of Rufus Wainwright was from the songs Hallelujah and Dinner at Eight, which are both very small, I was not sure what to make of an album full of songs with very big sound - orchestral accompaniment, choirs of backup singers, and grand bombastic deliveries - but lyrics that were much more evocative of intimate, personal themes. I just wasn’t sure how to appreciate it at first. Now, I think I do. The mix of big and small sound gives the album a lot of texture and an outlet for extremes of emotion that aren’t quite accessible in music that is only small.

Today, it is the biggest songs on the album that are my favorites, including Beautiful Child, which I went so far as to feature on the playlist of music I put on at my wedding this past fall. The outpouring of hope, joy, and overwhelming beauty in that song could only ever be captured with a chaos of blaring trumpets, jangling percussion, and about a million other voices united in coordinated disarray.

When I have finally found the room filled with toys
be banging on my crib excited by noise
Oh, how I’ll feel like a beautiful child
such a beautiful child again

Next: Want Two

All My CDs, pt. 117: New Times

I got a machine and I took over the world
in one weekend
I did it because I was looking for a project
and it was either take over the world or learn french
so I took over the world
and next weekend I can learn french.

New Times - Violent Femmes

I got this album a few years after discovering and falling in love with the band’s self-titled album. My salient impression is that it’s the same, but very different. The styles are more diverse and adventurous, the subject matter more mature, but at its core it’s still very distinctly Violent Femmes. I like bands and musicians who are able to branch out without losing the unique characteristics that set them apart.

I don’t know if I have enough musical vocabulary (even after 116 of these reviews) to confidently say much about this album. It subverts expectations at almost every turn. It turns familiar tropes on their heads, but not in a way that looks parodic. A good example of what I’m trying to talk about is the song Key of 2, whose lyrics and music both tell a story about learning to love music that’s just... wrong, possibly due to the same exposure effect whereby an annoyance becomes beloved through repetition. “It’s the music of the future / and it will get to you.”

4 Seasons takes the very old motif of seasons that’s so common in classic romantic artwork, but plays with it in a punk style that makes it fresh and weird. I’m Nothing is a happy song about nihilism, and how could you possibly argue with that?

Machine is hardly even music - the words are spoken, the sounds (all electronic) have little in the way of melody, just well-orchestrated chaos. Yet it’s catchy and clever and I just love listening to it. I can’t imagine conveying the information in this song in any other format.

Overall I found the writing on this album far more intelligent and sophisticated than I ever expected. From the literary allusions in New Times and Agamemnon to the poignant international politics touched on in Jesus of Rio, there is just a lot to think about here.

I got a machine and I took over the world
but nothing changed
that wouldn’t be fair

Next: Want One

All My CDs, pt. 116: Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes

When I was a teenager, broke and wishing I could afford some new music, I happened to see this CD in the public trash can outside the local used record shop. I speculated that someone must have tried selling it to the shop, failed because it didn’t have its original liner notes, and threw it away instead. Never one to let perfectly good trash go to waste, I fished it out and discovered a new favorite band.

I had never heard of the Violent Femmes before, but I had heard one song on the album already: Blister in the Sun, which a group of kids had played at a church youth group talent show. That song has since become one of my favorites to sing at karaoke, and I suggest you try it as well, because the more breathy and uneven you are due to nervousness the more like the original you’ll sound. Plus it’s short, catchy, and repetitive.

Speaking of repetitive, the subjects and themes on this album are pretty narrow. The songs are almost all about the petty frustrations and simpleminded hungers of horny teenagers. And yet, they don’t sound at all like the emo bands that were popular in my youth, with their disproportioned rage and narcissism. They’re simplistic and rough and sincere, and very singable, but without the slightest trace of commercialism or pretense. And there is something deeply comforting about it. A part of me is still a petulant child with delusions of maturity, and listening to this album helps.

There seem to be no instruments all except for vocals, guitar, bass, and drums - the basic elements that a group of high schoolers might assemble in a garage in the hopes of achieving their dream of rockstardom. I don’t know if they nailed the garage-band aesthetic so perfectly because that’s what they were or if it was a calculated manipulation, but I don’t think I care because the result is just so enjoyable.

I will talk a little bit about my favorite song on the album, Add it Up, which I think of as a masterpiece expressing the continual disappointment and frustration that we all, every one of us, must face as a result of not living in a world catered to fulfilling our every desire.

why can’t I get just one screw
believe me I’d know what to do
but something won’t let me make love to you

The first few verses establish that, day after day, something is missing, and hints that something is eventually going to crack.

take a look now what at your boy has done
he’s walking around like he’s number one
he went downtown and he got him a gun

don’t shoot shoot shoot that thing at me
you know you’ve got my sympathy 
but don’t shoot shoot shoot that thing at me

We live in a terrifying time, and as while everyone who cracks has some sick political or philosophical justification of what they’re doing, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a simpler explanation: all these frustrations and disappointments and perceived injustices just add up until the whole world needs to be punished. I don’t think it’s because life is any more fair for the people who aren’t spewing rage like a volcano. Something else is going on here, and I aim to figure it out.

Next: New Times

All My CDs, pt. 115: Fear

Fear - Toad the Wet Sprocket

This is another of the handful of CDs that I got and barely listened to, if at all, for years until this review project forced me to actually play it all the way through. I picked it up from the dollar rack because I thought Toad the Wet Sprocket was a terrific name for a band, and I had vague memories of enjoying a few of their songs on the radio, but mostly because of the name. To this day I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered a better band name.

My first impression of the music was that it’s mostly bland folk-influenced pop rock with vaguely poetic lyrics such as “Walk on the ocean / step on the stones / flesh becomes water / wood becomes bone.” It seemed all very positive and pseudo-spiritual to me. And I mostly held onto that notion until a few songs later when I heard “Take her arms and hold her down and hold her down and hold her down / until she stops screaming / take her arms and hold her down and hold her down and hold her down / until she stops breathing.”

From then on, I started to notice a distinctly dark and morbid bend to the words, which started to bleed over into the music as well. Yet it still manages to not be completely dismal. Maybe it’s the harmony or the way the voices blend with the instruments but even during the refrain that goes “Before you were born someone kicked in the door / you are not wanted here, stay back where you belong” sounds somehow uplifting.

My favorite song of the moment is Something to Say, if only for one couplet:

you can take me down, you can show me your home
not the place where you live but the place where you belong

Here’s to all of you for whom that might ring true.

Next: Violent Femmes

All My CDs, pt. 114: Aims

Aims - Vienna Teng

This album came out just after I started training for my first marathon, and like every other album I discovered during that time, my first experience of it was during a run. This artist, whose previous work consisted of a mix of fast and slow music tending toward ponderous and pensive themes and intellectual depth rather than the kind of simple upbeat sounds that are normally ideal for exercise, miraculously came out with an album of perfect long-distance running music just in time. There are a few slow songs, yes, but only just enough to provide a break from the constant bass-thumping that encourages speed and to remind me to pace myself for the long haul. And one of the slow ones, Breaking Light, manages to be both encouraging and relaxing, and joins the very short list of slow songs that I nevertheless like running to.

Aims did another thing too: proved that Inland Territory was not the sort of lightning that only strikes once, but marked a genuine shift in Vienna Teng’s musical style and quality, a shift that I like even as I still deeply appreciate her earlier work. It’s similar to Inland Territory in its open-minded experimenting with lots of different styles, and yoking genres with themes in ways that suggest some meaning to be explored. But the themes themselves are different. As the title suggests, I suspect that this album is about humanity’s various personal and collective goals, and our efforts to acheive them. (Yet another appropriate characteristic of running music.)

Some songs serve as precisely aimed political and social commentary, such as In the 99, which explores economic inequality in the language of the then-recent Occupy movement. There’s also the more subtle Hymn of Axciom, which borrows the aesthetics of religious chanting to deliver a chilling message about the pseudo-spiritual relationship we’ve developed with marketing algorithms.

But most of the album is more focused on personal and interpersonal subject matter. Things like love, determination, healing, family, and home. Not that these songs are any less grand in scale than the ones that address political themes. Landsailor uses imagery that suggests doing the impossible in a vaguely spiritual way, while Level Up is one of the most awe-inspiring “encouragement” songs I’ve ever heard (and the video is pretty awesome too).

And with this I must bid adeu to Vienna Teng and move on to someone much less familiar to me.

Next: Fear

All My CDs, pt. 113: Inland Territory

Inland Territory - Vienna Teng

This album came out a year or so after I began counting Vienna Teng as one of my favorites, and I remember it as the moment when her music exploded in every stylistic and thematic direction and became much larger than her previous repertoire of genres and instruments. The core of the album is her signature intellectual, yet emotional, narrative style and arty piano aesthetic, but it pulls in new sounds from spooky atmospheric effects to orchestral accompaniment to folk styles to pots and pans used as percussion.

The expansion of the music is echoed by an expansion of the lyrical themes, with a literal world of topics covered, all to the furtherance of a central agenda: empathy. Now, this is my personal observation and interpretation; I’m not sure how well it syncs with the artist’s intended meaning. But this is my blog.

There are two types of songs on this album, and they are thematically complimentary. The first relates personal conflicts to global ones; the second relates global conflicts to personal ones. There is some overlap in some of the songs, which underscores the connections drawn in others. As I’ve said before, the personal is political.

Exemplifying the first time is Antebellum, whose title means “before the war” and whose words mourn the loss of harmony when a relationship is frought with fighting. The metaphors are taken directly from war imagary, and are echoed in the choice of instruments, while violins and pianos represent a classically romantic sound and a snare drum invokes the war aspect:
I know the borderlines we drew between us
keep the weapons down, keep the wounded safe
I know our antebellum innocense was
never meant to see the light of our armistice day

Other songs, like In Another Life and No Gringo, explicitly put the narrator (and by extension the listeners) in the shoes of people in vastly different circumstances in order to provoke empathy. In Another Life does so very directly by jumping from century to century, exploring the lives and deaths of past humans - not the significant historical figures we’ve all read about, but common folk, the laborers and soldiers and nameless teenage wives who have always made up the bulk of historical existence.

No Gringo makes things even more personal by taking a timeless but contemprory historical problem - immigration and anti-immigrant sentiment - and turns it on its head, asking the central question behind all instances of empathy: “What if it was you?” (Gringo is a Spanish slang term for a white person).

In Radio, the dichotomy between personal and global concerns is especially blurred, since it shuffles back and forth between the perspective of a victim of terror and someone hearing about it on the radio. It’s made clear that when we hear of others’ trajedies, we have a choice. We can empathize, and make their struggles our own... or we can change the station.

Besides being a goldmine of substantive meaning and intellectual stimulation, this album is also simply gorgeous. A few of the songs still send me into involuntary fits of sentimentality and tears, so effectively do they reach into my heart. The favorite of the day is Stray Italian Greyhound, which is all about a pessimist finding reason to feel optimistic. “What do I do when every no turns into maybe?” “This feeling calls for everything that I am not.”

Next: Aims

All My CDs, pt. 112: Dreaming Through the Noise

Dreaming Through the Noise - Vienna Teng

Of all of Vienna Teng’s albums I like this one the least, which is to say, I love it quite a bit. A few of the songs that initially prompted me to seek out more by this artist are on this album, especially City Hall, another of those story-songs that sounds lovely but provides a satisfying “Aha!” when you pay attention and finally understand what’s going on. That said, several of the songs here are ones I never quite appreciated, although I may someday in the future. Songs like I Don’t Feel So Well and Transcontinental 1:30 A.M. don’t seem quite as interesting, either lyrically or musically. Plus the smoothe jazzyness of those songs just isn’t quite my style, so if it’s yours, maybe this will be your favorite of Vienna Teng’s albums.

1BR/1BA also has a jazzy style, but for some reason I like it. Perhaps it’s because it deals with a common situation, but not one commonly portrayed in song: moving into a new apartment, and all the little discomforts and adjustments as the place transforms from a laconic ad to a real place with walls and windows and a busted AC to, eventually, a home. “My upstairs neighbors are making sounds that I never want to hear / I hope they’re just moving furnature around and really liking their ideas.”

It also strikes me that this album is a tad darker than the others. All of them have sad songs, but this one doesn’t seem to put as much of a cheery face on them. The love songs all deal with some kind of separation from the beloved, some chasm that can’t quite been navigated, whether it’s of physical distance or mere ignorance. One song’s refrain says “I am nothing without you / but I don’t know who you are.”

Even the mostly-joyful City Hall must end by confronting the possibility of loss: “If they take it away again someday...”

Next: Inland Territory

All My CDs, pt. 111: Waking Hour

Waking Hour - Vienna Teng

Like Warm Strangers, this Vienna Teng album is full of lovely songs that each tells a story. They’re good stories, too; many of them are love songs, but with a psychological complexity that’s lacking in a lot of love songs these days. There’s also an intellectual side; this is the album that led me to conclude that Vienna Teng is a master at melding scientific fact with emotional truth, using each as a metaphor for the other. For instance, in songs like Gravity and Momentum, physical forces are used as metaphors for emotional drives. After all these years, I am convinced Momentum is about, among other things, depression: “All I’m asking is to be alive for once.”

Others have more of a narrative style, and really are stories in a more literal sense. Say Uncle tells the story of a family rallying together in the face of loss. Decade and One has its narrator reflecting on her past and life path. Enough to Go By is so compellingly evocative of both past experience and future hopes and dreams that it has become a dear favorite of mine:

I’m at your back door with the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
you won’t recognize me, for the light in my eyes is strange
it was years ago, God knows, when you strained to tell me your whole truth
that you wer enot  mine to save, that you could not change

would it be enough to go by 
if we could sail on the wind in the dark
cut those chains in the middle of the night
that had you pulled apart
would it be enough to go by
if there’s moonlight pulling the tide
would it be enough to live on
if my love could keep you alive

But my favorite song on the album is Eric’s Song, one of those complex love songs, and one that has probably influenced my own values and ideals about romantic love in general. I would select an exerpt of its lyrics to demonstrate this point, but I find that none of the verses can really stand to be taken out of context.

Next: Dreaming Through the Noise

All My CDs, pt. 110: Warm Strangers

Warm Strangers - Vienna Teng

Vienna Teng was one of the first artists that I became aware of mainly through Pandora Radio, when her song Daughter came up on my station, along with a few others. I shared my new discovery with a friend - the same friend who introduced me to the likes of October Project and Sufjan Stevens - and we both fell in love with Vienna Teng’s delicious songwriting, voice, and piano. She was the first of us to make the plunge by buying Warm Strangers, and for the next year or so we took turns buying albums and sharing them with one another. In time, I took it upon myself to buy legitimate copies of each of them for myself.

I think the song that initially drew me to this album is Hope on Fire, which has become one of the iconic songs of my life, representing every person who has ever gotten fed up with the status quo and set out, with nothing but the determination and the knowledge that it’s the right thing to do, to make a change.

When describing Teng to strangers, I usually say that each of her songs tells a story. Sometimes the story is very clearly and straightforwardly told, as in Shasta:

So far so good
You're coming to the bend at the end of the road
You put a hand to the belly that's foreign more
With every day like an oversize load

And so on. Others are more opaque in describing their central characters and events, but it’s clear that some story is there behind the figurative language. A favorite example is My Medea, obviously a mythology reference but otherwise quite mysterious in its words. Is the narrator of the story the mythical Medea herself, her husband Jason, or someone else who played a role in her tragic life? Or is the name Medea just used here to invoke a sense of destructive love and jealousy?

Either way I love this song. The instrumental swelling behind the verse that says “So come to me my love / I’ll tap into your strength and drain it dry / can never have enough / for you I’d burn the length and breadth of sky” is so stirring that I will never tire of it. There are more than a few songs on this album that I could listen to over and over.

This is one of those albums for which I could probably write at least a paragraph about each song, and this review would stretch on for several pages. But I will leave this here, for I have a few more Vienna Teng albums to get to before this is over.

Next: Waking Hour 

All My CDs, pt 109 - 200 km/h In the Wrong Lane

200 km/h in the Wrong Lane - t.A.T.u.

I was surprised and a little embarrassed a few days ago when I discovered that this CD is still in my collection after well over a decade. Like my Linkin Park CDs, I liked it for a while when I was a teenager, but that fondness has not endured into my adulthood and I have since come to regard it with a kind of shame. I can never really escape the knowledge that even as kids these days are fawning over inane and overcommercialized pop music, in my adolescence I fawned over the same sort of claptrap myself.

When I started playing this album once again, I was expecting to feel more of that shame. Instead, I found myself enjoying it, and cranking it up on my car stereo until it could probably be heard half a block away while I drummed along on my steering wheel. It’s catchy techno dance music with angsty lyrics about star-crossed love affairs - perfect teenager fare. I don’t know whether this stuff will ever go out of style.

When I was young I was especially fond of bilingual musicians. For a few years I think I harbored a delusion that I could learn Spanish by listening to Shakira. While that didn’t turn out to be true, while listening to t.A.T.u. I found myself reminded not of my high school years when I bought and enjoyed the album, but my first year of college and my Russian class. Words and phrases that I’d forgotten jumped out at me from the songs. I even remembered mentioning the Russian version of the song’s hit single - All The Things She Said, or Ya Soshla S Uma - when my teacher taught us that idiomatic phrase.

To this day, I prefer that particular song in Russian. Perhaps the language just sounds more exotic and pleasing to my ears, or perhaps it’s easier to ignore the cliches when they’re sung in a language I’m only passingly familiar with.

My favorite song on the album, both then and now, is Malchik Gay. Partly because despite its lyrics being just as angsty as the rest, it manages to be the most cheerful-sounding song on the album, partly because it’s a techno song prominently featuring an unaltered acoustic guitar. It also amuses me to realize what counted as “edgy” in pop music back in 2002.

I enjoyed listening to this CD for the past few days, but I don’t know if I ever will again.

Next: Warm Strangers

All My CDs, pt. 108: Imperfect Harmonies

Imperfect Harmonies - Serj Tankian

Some time after Elect the Dead, I discovered that Serj Tankian had released another solo album, and immediately jumped at the opportunity to buy it. The first time I put it on, the first note of the first song startled me out of my skin; it seemed that every instrument that ever existed had joined together in unison to blast a hole through my consciousness. If nothing else, just listen to the first few measures of Disowned, Inc; you’ll hopefully see what I mean.

The awesomeness of this album is such that it almost overshadowed the awesomeness of its predecessor. For a time I neglected Elect the Dead, although writing my last review had the effect of making me appreciate it a lot more. I still think Imperfect Harmonies is the better album, but it’s a short distance between them, and I love both quite a lot.

What is it about this album? About Serj Tankian in general? It’s hard to find words that I haven’t already said, and that don’t sound like mere adulative blather. The lyrics are more poetic. The music is more grand and far-reaching. And I consider it a treat to hear Yes, It’s Genocide, sung in Armenian,  which so poignantly highlights the Armenian genocide and all other genocides throughout history.

The song that follows it, Peace Be Revenged, is one of the most thoughtful and powerful inditements of modern society I have ever encountered in song form. Several other songs are fair contenders as well, such as Borders Are...

Borders are the gallows
of our collective national egos
subjective lines in sand
in the water separating everything

Fear is the cause of separation
Backed with illicit conversations
Procured by constant condemnations
National blood-painted persuasions

It’s true that the words can sound a bit preachy, but as they say, some anvils need to be dropped. And as I’ve explained before, sometimes I like my sociopolitical commentary to be blatant and unabashed. In my next review, something else will be blatant and unabashed.

Next: 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane

All My CDs, pt. 107: Elect the Dead

Elect the Dead - Serj Tankian

A while after I heard that System of a Down were breaking up, I was perusing a record store with some friends and one of them recommended Serj Tankian’s new solo album; I picked it up right away and began to love it. Before I listened to it for the first time, I wasn’t sure how Tankian’s music would sound without the rest of the band, and suspected it would be similar, but less. Instead, I have to say that his music is similar, but more. Many of the same themes and styles are there, but something is added as well, as if going solo allowed Tankian the freedom to express his musical voice more fully.

What’s added? Most obviously, there is a lot more piano and orchestral strings. The piano plays an important role in this album’s sound, and it’s not the pensive, melancholic piano you find with artists like Tori Amos. It’s a more gutsy incarnation of the instrument, and the same applies to the strings that show up from time to time. Each song is overloaded with a multitude of diverse instruments, and the resulting sound is unlike anything else, a genre unto itself.

There’s something about the lyrics too. Tankian is a poet in his own right, having also produced a book of poetry that graces my bookshelf, and his distinct poetic voice is present in the lyrics of these songs. They have the directness of System of a Down’s lyrics, but subjectively they seem more present, more heartful, like they’re more in sync both with the instrumentation and with the expressiveness of the vocals. I don’t think the lyrics are any more clear about their meaning, but I do think that the emotional content of the songs is more aligned with their intellectual message.

It isn’t always the case that a member of a great band will be equally great going solo, but I think that’s exactly the case with Serj Tankian.

Next: Imperfect Harmonies

All My CDs, pt 105: Hypnotize

Hypnotize - System of a Down

Hypnotize and the album that preceeded it, Mezmerize, each stand alone quite well, but they’re also each meant to be half of a larger whole. Apart from the similar titles, their covers have similar imagery, and the packaging of Mezmerize is designed so that Hypnotize can nestle comfortably into its back flap. It also seems that Hypnotize continues and elaborates on some of the themes in Mezmerize’s songs, and its final track is a longer reprise of Mez’s first track, Soldier Side. In general, the songs are deeper and more personal in their explorations of the political, social, and spiritual themes.

Over the years, one of my favorite songs on this album has been the title track, Hypnotize. The way that it seamlessly draws connections between personal and political issues (as someone once said, “the personal is political”) strikes me as an especially adept navigation of that particular continuum. Plus the sounds those guitars make are some of the most beautiful I have in my collection.

It’s clear that these two albums together are supposed to mean something. I confess, I haven’t devoted much of my mental energy over the years to trying to divine that meaning. If I were to venture a guess, after immersing myself in both for about a week now, it might go something like this:

Mezmerize explores many of the ways that propaganda has seeped into all aspects of popular culture, lulling the public into a false belief about their lives and their place in the world. The albums’ titles refer to that false belief, indicating that we’ve been to some extent brainwashed into accepting the status quo and being content with a less meaningful existence and a comfortable ignorance about the suffering that exists in the world.

In turn, Hypnotize proceeds to break through that trance, looking the truth in the face and shaking away the fog of self-deception. What it finds is violence, exploitation, isolation, and yet a certain amount of guilt for breaking this comfortable trance in the first place. In one song, Kill Rock ‘n Roll,

So I felt like the biggest asshole
When I killed your rock n roll
Every time I look In your eyes, every day I'm watching you die
All the thoughts I see in you about how I

Yet the truth must, and ultimately will, be known.

Next: Elect the Dead

All My CDs, pt. 105: Mezmerize

Mezmerize - System of a Down

After getting my first internet-connected laptop of my very own, I quickly began to dabble in illegal music downloading. I mostly used it to discover, risk-free, some musicians that weren’t currently on the radio, including the Indigo Girls (now a favorite). But I also used it to shamelessly get more music by some bands I was already well aware of and could easily have bought at the local record store. Some tracks from Mezmerize were among those, specifically Revenga, Cigaro, and Violent Pornography. Eventually I bought the album, more out of completionism than guilt; I had come to the decision that downloading individual tracks, piecemeal, was not for me.

I have some things to say about Violent Pornography. Like I said in my Toxicity review, System of a Down is “no such thing as TMI” music; they dare to use imagery and subject matter often considered taboo, and not just as a joke or for shock value. I usually find that the explicit lyrics are usually thoughtful, powerful, and serve to make an important point that shouldn’t be taken lightly. For instance, in Needles, the image of a tapeworm is used to emphasize the draining, parasitic nature of addiction. Violent Pornography seemed to be an exception; for several years I saw only sexually explicit lyrics and not much in the way of depth or meaning.

But recently, I started to feel like I get it.

It’s a violent pornography
choking chicks and sodomy
the kind of shit you get on your TV

This song came out in 2005, well after the Internet had become established not only as a common household media source but especially as a discrete way to acquire pornography. It was two years after Avenue Q debuted, with a song called The Internet is for Porn. And yet here’s a song describing the most hardcore porn as something you get on TV, the more mainstream, wholesome, mass-marketed medium. What is this song trying to say about mainstream media? About pop culture in general? The lyrics also repeatedly taunt, “Bet you didn’t know.”

I could analyze any of these other songs in as much depth. Some of them I especially like because I’m impressed with how difficult they must have been to write and perform. These include Question! with its confusingly syncopated rhythms, and This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song, which is... well, hyperactively fast-paced. It makes an excellent running song, as does the rest of the band’s repertoire.

This was one of my favorite album for a very long time, and I find I do not love it any less for all the time that’s passed. It’s beautiful from start to finish.

Next: Hypnotize

All My CDs, pt. 104: Steal This Album!

Every so often I feel like ordering a pizza with “Pepperoni and green peppers, mushrooms, olives, chives” and seeing if anyone gets the reference.

Steal This Album! - System of a Down

It amazes me that I owned three albums by System of a Down before I started to realize how much I love them. I got this one after Roulette showed up on my Pandora station consisting mostly of acoustic folk rock, and I was surprised to find it there. The song is a marked example of the “token light song” that many metal bands like to put into their albums, being a very stripped-down voice-and-acoustic-strings piece with wistful, relationship-centered lyrics. But it’s still very distinctly theirs, and I like that.

The rest of the album is much less light, with the band’s usual level of hard-hitting themes and equally hard-hitting sounds. And in several songs, a focus on percussion that reminds me of another favorite band, Course of Empire. There also seems to be an increased focus on spiritual themes, as seen in songs like Innervision, Ego Brain, Thetawaves, and Streamline.

And then there’s bits that sound spiritual, but maybe are just a delivery system for pure sonic sugar. Like I-E-A-I-A-I-O, whose title is a transcription of the nonverbal chant-like refrain; it frames each word-salad verse like a mystical incantation.

I think if I had to rank all of System of a Down’s albums, this one would just barely make the top of the list as my favorite. It’s quite consistently awesome-sounding, with many high points throughout, and relatively few low points. I think it’s also got some of the most beautiful vocal performances I’ve heard from the band. And there’s a lot of drums in it. I love drums.

Next: Mezmerize

All My CDs, pt. 103: Toxicity

Toxicity - System of a Down

This is the first CD I ever bought. For real. A used record shop, Spectra, had just opened around the corner from home; I saw this album on the rack and recognized the title of a song I’d enjoyed on the radio. I didn’t even like heavy metal at the time, except when some of the softer hits trickled into my alternative music station and mere exposure effect gradually desensitized me. I was young and still very noise-sensitive.

I didn’t really develop my deep love of System of a Down until years later, when I got Mesmerize, and I haven’t paid much attention to this particular album for over a decade. There are songs on it that endure in my memory, of course - hits like Chop Suey, Aerials, and Toxicity which everyone probably knows if they’re at all aware of the metal/alternative scene of the turn of the century. But giving the whole album a wholehearted listen-through after all these years, I found that it reminded me of everything I love about System of a Down, and why it remains one of my absolute favorites:

1. Shamelessly barefaced politicism. As much as I’ve raved about the power of ambiguity in art, there’s something to be said about pushing an agenda and pushing it so directly as to leave no room for interpretation. There’s no doubt about, for instance, the message encased in Prison Song. Among other things, it’s saying:

All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased
and law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences

This is pure poetry. And pure politics. How many bands can do both at once without being preachy? I’m looking at you, U2.

2. Vocals that do everything. Since childhood I’ve gone from enjoying Serj Tankian’s vocals in spite of the occasional screamyness to because of it. There’s something very powerful about metal’s use of throat-burningly emotive screams that I don’t think I could reasonably do without in my life, and I think System of a Down has the perfected the art - and yet can also sing well in a more conventional style. If you doubt it, listen to Aerials. And on top of that, they can do some decent birdsounds too.

3. No such thing as TMI. Want politics? Got it. Spirituality? Got it. Pulling a tapeworm out of your ass? It’s set to a catchy tune interspersed with “Hey!” Sexuality? Pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo...

4. A mixture of ancient and modern, acoustic and electric, whatever you want to call that combination that seems to make music sound timeless and eternal.

5. Spirituality. When they want to be, their lyrics are profoundly meaningful:

Life is a waterfall
we’re one in the river 
and one again after the fall

What I love about System of a Down is everything I love about music.

Next: Steal This Album!

All My CDs, pt. 102: Illinois

Illinois - Sufjan Stevens

This album was in the same dump of mp3s that my friend loaded onto my computer along with the two October Project albums and several others. I’m not sure what my impression of it was at the time, but it must have been significant enough to warrent buying the album for real, or else I was influenced by various cultural references to Sufjan Stevens as one of the quintessential “Indy” artists.

Which has led me to ponder a certain question: what makes music “Indy?” It’s not just being made independently of a major record label, even if that was what inspired the name of the genre. After all, “Pop” came from a shortening of the word “Popular,” but also indicates a very specific kind of sound that isn’t present in all popular music. So far I have not been able to string together a set of adjectives that describe “Indy” music even as I see it myself, let alone society in general. As such I prefer not to use the word at all. But when talking about some of the albums in my collection, it feels weird not to at least acknowledge that the word seems to mean something to an awful lot of people.

A lot of the songs on this album are like those of The Arcade Fire and The Polyphonic Spree in that they have a lot of weirdly-assembled voices and instruments working together in a surprisingly coherent way, but different in that Sufjan Stevens’ particular voice dominates even when he’s not actively singing. Other voices and instruments are much more in the background even when they are the aural focus.

The moods of the songs range from dismal depressing to bright and cheerful, with lots of interchange between them. It’s a concept album in that all the songs are about things and people and places associated with the state of Illinois - duh - but apart from that, there isn’t any overarching theme connecting anything. Some evoke imagery of mythic grandeur, others are deeply personal nostalgia, others seem to rush through historical name-dropping with a fervor matched only by Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

Before making this album, Stevens made one about his home state of Michigan. I’m told that his intent was to create an album devoted to each of the fifty United States. That would be a tremendous undertaking for one man, even if he did nothing else for his whole musical career (how many people even have fifty albums to their name?), so I doubt that it’s ever going to happen. And in the ten years since Illinois’s release, there have been no more state-centered albums. My guess is that Illinois is a hard act to follow up on. Just listen to it. It doesn’t need to be part of anything greater than it already is.

Next: Toxicity

All My CDs, pt. 101: Matinee Motel

Matinee Motel - Dan Smith and the Deep Cleveland Trio

I got this CD as part of a giveaway of chapbooks at a poetry reading three years ago, when I started becoming more active in the Cleveland poetry scene. It differs from every other CD on my shelf because it’s primarily a work of spoken word (a collection of poems written and read by local poet Dan Smith), and the music mainly creates a moody backdrop.

Many of the poems have a very local flavor. Dan Smith is not only a Cleveland poet by coincidence of geography, nor even by the name-dropping of specific streets and landmarks around town, but by the way he captures the city’s gritty, rough-edged spirit. Listening to him reading his poems, I thought about other Cleveland poets I know, and wondered if Cleveland has a voice that all its poets channel with their words.

Then I wrote a poem about it:

I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city of humble aspirations
a city that burns a river and names a beer after it
a city that places its pride in its ashiest deeds
and paints its noblest face with the colors of self-deprecation
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a voice that says if you can’t take the cold
get into the kitchen with kielbasa and pierogi
and leave the oven door open when you’re done
a voice that doesn’t bother with meter and rhyme
or even the rhythms of soul
unless there’s bass in the background
and a neon light overhead
I try to write in the voice of Cleveland
a city that aspires to humility
because any higher aim would take us away
from the truth that skitters down the streets
with the wind

Next: Illinois

All My CDs, pt. 100: Shrek

Shrek - Various Artists

Shrek, the popular animated film deconstructing the classic rescue-romance fairytale narrative and forwarding the revolutionary view that conventional standards of beauty are not the be-all end-all of loveability and worth for young women, was released when I was 13. I was the perfect age to absorb its message - not only because I was one of those not-pretty girls myself, but because I was beginning to grow out of the animated fairytale genre and could really appreciate the satirical humor that liberally spiced each scene, while still getting wrapped up in the plot and its resolution. Despite some disappointing sequels, to this day it remains a favorite for a lot of reasons.

And one of those reasons is the music. Most of the songs are more poppish than my tastes generally run (fitting for a popular movie), but they’re enjoyable to listen to. The one that really motivated me to buy the soundtrack is Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Hallelujah, which later prompted me to seek out the many other covers of that beautiful song, and Wainwright’s music in general (some of which I’ll review in a few weeks). The impact that one track had on my musical education is rather impressive now that I think of it.

Also present is a mixture of pop and rock songs that more or less echo the movie’s sentiments: offbeat love songs like My Beloved Monster, cynical rebellious ones like Stay Home and Bad Reputation, and self-esteem bolstering ones like All Star, which I have a kind of unironic appreciation for despite its overplayed status. But a fair portion are the kind of uncomplicated love songs that already flood the pop scene - Like Wow! and You Belong to Me, for instance - and in my opinion aren’t especially appropriate for the movie’s central themes.

But again, it’s a popular movie, and while it subverts many tropes of the genre the general narrative arc is still there. It’s a popular love story at its core, so maybe the pop love songs are appropriate after all.

Whatever the case, I enjoyed listening to this soundtrack for the first time in several years, and it’s putting me in the mood to watch that movie again. I wonder how well it has aged in the past fourteen years.

Next: Matinee Motel

All My CDs, pt. 99: Parables & Primes

Parables & Primes - Danny Schmidt

A few years ago I became aware of a wonderful little podcast called Welcome to Night Vale, a fictional comic horror drama that incidentally features, in each episode, a song from a different emerging or established independent musician. This segment of the show, even taken out of the context of the rest of the podcast, serves as a very interesting tour of various worthy and largely unknown artists; most of them were wholely unknown to me before being featured.

One episode featured the song This Too Shall Pass, a thoughtful piece in acoustic guitar and voice that features such hard-hitting verses as:

We think too big, we think our self is one whole thing
And we claim that this collection has a name and is a being
But deep inside, when every cell divides
It sets upon the rule that states self-interest is divine

Cancer, too, lives by this golden rule
That you must do unto the others as the others unto you
All for the best, cause that’s all the life accepts
And so we kill it like a buffalo, with awe and with respect

I am such a sucker for this kind of subtlety and emotional ambiguity in song lyrics and all other art. Like Georgia O’Keefe framing a sunbleached skull in vibrant flowers, this song takes death and despair and sets it alongside beauty and truth and allows them to flow into one another, so each is tinged with the essence of the other. Naturally I had to investigate this musician further, and as it happened I soon had the opportunity not only to hear him perform live (in a Night Vale stage show), but to buy this album from him personally.

Not all the songs held my attention as readily as that one, but another immediate favorite was Stained Glass, another masterpiece of that aforementioned ambiguity. In the grand tradition of folk rock, it tells a story: of the destruction of a beloved stained glass window in a church, the death of its creator, and the attempts of his 90-year-old father to “resurrect the window from the dead” in time for Easter. Even at the time lacking Christian belief, the potent Easter imagery struck me right where a good mythic tale should, in the heart and soul. But to really be appreciated the song must be heard with an open mind and full attention, so I hope you will take a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7lTPyoHA5w

Other songs have taken some time to sink in. I am gaining a slow and comfortable appreciation for Beggars & Mules, about the struggle to promote one’s art (something that I, as a poet, can relate to). Another new favorite is Happy All The Time, which is less lyrically accessible, but I think I might be starting to get a hang of some of its meanings:

I lived inside a log but I was happy all the time
With the lizards and the frogs but I was happy all the time
And I always ate at dawn and I always slept til dark
I guess I worked too hard but I was happy, I was happy all the time

It’s sung to a bluesy beat, and dripping with irony. There’s that ambiguity again.

Next: Shrek

All My CDs, pt. 98: Ancient Echoes

Ancient Echoes - SAVAE

This album is subtitled “Music from the Time of Jesus and Jerusalem’s Second Temple.” With respect to the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, that subtitle is a lie. It’s music from 2002.

Okay, I’m being pedantic. It’s music made with instruments, techniques, and languages thought to be in use at the time of Jesus, recorded with an aim toward reviving an aesthetic as close to authentically ancient music as practicable given that time travel hasn’t been invented yet. The liner notes detail these elements along with explanations of all texts used in the songs, some of which come from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s refreshingly progressive translation of biblical verses.

Since I first got this album as a teenager, I have deepened my skepticism for anything claiming to authentically recreate elements of the past - a skepticism that first began to form when I learned that ancient Greece was not really anything like the world I saw through Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules. Yet, as I’ve shown repeatedly throughout this review project, I still deeply appreciate any modern attempts to aesthetically invoke ancient sounds and sights: drumming, wooden flutes, group chanting, and the like. I especially like when these elements are combined with modern sounds, as that seems much more honest - the present may borrow from the past, but cannot become it.

But it’s also nice to hear attempts like this one to use purely ancient sounds, or as pure as we can get it on a digital recording.

It’s also worth saying that the music is quite powerfully beautiful. While driving home from work a few nights ago, I’m sure I had a religious experience hearing the climax of B’tseth Israel (Psalm 114) where the voices all join together in piercing harmony. Other highlights of the album are a rendition of Song of Seikilos (the oldest written song known to history), and each of the beatitudes individually set to music.

Next: Parables and Primes

All My CDs, pt. 97: The Satyrs

The Satyrs - The Satyrs

Like When I Woke, this is yet another album I picked up from the bargain rack on impulse with no idea what it might sound like. Although I’m sure I must have put it on at least once the day I bought it, I have not listened to it at all in the several years since then, so it may as well have been a first-time listening. I must confess, I dragged my heels about writing this review, which is why it’s going up a day late. I have not enjoyed The Satyrs nearly as much as the last few albums I had the pleasure of reviewing.

This album has the cruise control set at 25. It only has one mood: slow, ponderous, and dark. The singing is so slow that following the lyrics is difficult, so it’s easiest just to let them go over your head like a blinking satellite marking its stately progress across the sky. There’s piano and guitars that despite their jangliness somehow manage to sound morose.

I don’t dislike it. It’s just that after the celebratory fullness of the last album I reviewed, and with all the exciting goings on in my life right now, I’m not really in the mood for anything slow or sad that lasts more than a few minutes. And this is forty-two.

Yet after a few generous listenings, I can actually say that it has grown on me. Taken on its own terms it’s rather beautiful, and despite its dark tinge is far from the aggressively depressing strains of popular emo/goth fare. A few songs have a country twang to them, which prompted me to see some parallels with Johnny Cash, an artist I enjoy very much but have not had time to fully explore yet.

I’m happy to move on to the next album on my shelf now, but I shall remember this album for next time I am in the mood for something slower. It’s bound to happen sometime.

Next: Ancient Echoes

All My CDs, pt. 96: When I Woke

When I Woke - Rusted Root

This is another of the several CDs I got from the bargain rack sound-unheard, with no knowledge of what lay within. I seem to remember putting it on that day and briefly enjoying it, but getting distracted and not picking it up again until now.

I wrote in my last review that I could stand to have more of “this kind of music” in my collection, and while Rusted Root is pretty far from Monica Richards in a lot of ways, I can’t help but see some infectious similarities. It’s a blessing that this album starts with Drum Trip, a rampage of drumming fit to induce flashbacks to six thousand years ago. Other songs incorporate elements of jazz, blues, latin rock and pop, but at its core this is drummy folky primal music that makes me want to throw a dance party around a bonfire.

At least one song, Send Me On My Way, is popular enough that I was able to instantly recognize it when it first came up; it’s been in several soundtracks so perhaps you have heard it as well. Its lilting flute and percussion and bubbly vocals seem to especially evoke the freedom of the open road, and all that jazz.

Other favorite tracks include Ecstasy, Food & Creative Love, and Back to the Earth. Hippy music, for sure; you can tell by the titles alone but every note pulses with that vibrant beat of barefoot, life-loving, art-mongering hippytude. I’m tempted to ditch the remainder of my review project, don a bandana, and head off to the mountains with this CD and a smudge bundle.

But only if the rest of you come with me.

Next: The Satyrs

All My CDs, pt. 95: InfraWarrior

InfraWarrior - Monica Richards

In 2010 I got my once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a favorite band, Faith and the Muse, live in my own hometown. While I vacillated in front of the merch table, someone advised me that if I loved the band, I would also enjoy the lead singer’s solo album. Eventually I did decide to buy it, and I was not disappointed. I do enjoy the music. Most of the songs are beautiful for the same reasons that Faith and the Muse is. Still, I don’t find myself listening to it as consistently or with as much relish.

I see a lot of similarities between this album and The Burning Season, which you may (or may not) remember as my least-favorite F&tM album. And it’s true there are several songs on each that I adore. But there are also a few that just bug me, for a specific reason. They seem to indicate a philosophy of gender I’ve come to call “female exceptionalism,” a common and tempting response to patriarchy that glorifies femininity rather than emphasizing equality or rejecting strict gender divisions entirely. Female exceptionalism holds that there is something special and divine about femininity; it privileges the mother goddess over the father god and embraces positive female stereotypes.

The first InfraWarrior that especially embodies this is Gaia (Introduction), really a spoken-word piece over a musical background, where a male voice summarizes the significance and importance of goddess-worship, culminating in the argument that “If we worship and revere male gods we ignore Gaia’s ultimate power over us.” I was right with it up until then, and I think it’s a pretty shaky argument to make. The whole point of polytheism is that you can worship any god without ignoring the others.

Other such songs are I Am Warrior, Feel to Regret (which has a fun slut-shaming line hidden in its delightfully anti-patriarchal rantings), In Answer, and Death is the Ultimate Woman. In Answer is the one I find least objectionable; it explores the restrictiveness of traditional gender roles by repeating “Choose, fate, choose / mother or lover, muse or martyr.” And it does so on top of a perfect driving percussion rhythm, just like many of my absolute favorite F&tM songs.

It’s worth saying that I don’t dislike any of these tracks. I actually enjoy them quite a bit. Feel to Regret is super-catchy, and the angry feminist in me thinks it makes some excellent points, I just think it takes them a little too far at times.

And thankfully not all songs on the album do so. Most are truly pleasurable musical explorations of modern polytheistic spirituality, ranging from creative retellings of the myths (such as The Antler King) to deeply personal encounters with the spirit world (such as The Turnaway and A Good Thing). And like Faith and the Muse, they combine elements of ancient  drumming and chanting, modern techno-trance music, new-age ambiance, and a unique spark that makes it difficult to describe in words. I could definitely stand to have more of this kind of music in my collection, if I can find it.

Next: When I Woke

All My CDs, pt 94: Californication

Forgive my lateness.

Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Here’s another CD that entered my collection by way of my brother’s, when we were kids and I was relatively new to the concept of contemporary music. I don’t usually list Red Hot Chili Peppers among my “favorites,” but I’ve enjoyed them more consistently than many other popular bands, and I don’t foresee losing interest any time soon.

Shortly after putting this CD on for the first time in a few years, it struck me that the music is surprisingly sensitive and vulnerable for an all-male mainstream 90s rock band. Subconsciously that may have been a reason for my consistent draw toward their music; it’s emotional but still appealing in a less superficial way as well. The guitar-playing and harmonies are just complex enough that you know that these are skilled musicians, and the deeper meanings of the lyrics are just an extra bit of value if you’re in the mood to delve into them.

This is one band that is very good at fast-paced, high-powered rhythmic music. The album has a good mixture of “fast songs” and “slow songs,” and the fast ones have enough complex, interwoven rhythms to keep them interesting over many many listenings. Just the refrain of “Right On Time”, where the instruments stay fast and the vocals slow down, then another set of vocals come in on quadruple-time repeating the same phrase, is intoxicatingly textured. I think it’s all the more pleasurable to me because I know I’d never have been able to produce that effect myself. I have no innate sense of rhythm to speak of.

Albums like these are the reason I’ll never be a true hipster.

Next: Infrawarrior

All My CDs, pt 93: Together We're Heavy

Together We’re Heavy - The Polyphonic Spree

I got this album in the summer of 2012 after hearing a few songs on my Pandora station. I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. Probably that the songs sounded good, and they do. In retrospect, listening to it produces more confusion in me than any other emotion. Not a bad kind of confusion, mind you. More a confusion that asks “What is this thing that I’m hearing and why is it so infectiously merry?” Do I understand it? No. Will I buy another of their albums soon? Probably.

The Polyphonic Spree is a little like The Arcade Fire, except that their lyrics make a bit less sense than “a million little gods causing rainstorms turning every good thing to rust”, and their overall mood is a bit cheerier. Like The Arcade Fire, they make an art form of having too many instruments, seemingly jumbled together with ostensibly very little discipline but with lots of joyful energy. (I say “seemingly" and “ostensibly” because I’m sure it takes a great deal of discipline and organization to get that many people to play harmoniously together, no matter how “clean" and “orderly" the resulting sound.) Which must have been what they were aiming for, because that’s the literal meaning of the band’s name.

Now’s the time when I like to tell you a few of my favorite songs on the album and what I like about them, but I’m not sure if I can do that. I have favorite passages, but the divisions between songs don’t seem to correlate to where those passages begin and end. And I wouldn’t be able to tell you why I find it so gratifying to hear the words “Hail to the sky / Hail to the sky / it’s time to watch a show / time to watch a show / the trees wanna grow / the trees wanna grow / grow grow grow.”

The trees wanna grow....

grow grow grow...

Next: Californication

All My CDs, pt 92: October Project

October Project - October Project

Here we have yet another self-titled album. I can forgive this one because the music is so good, but I maintain that it isn’t a good way to name albums.

This is the second-best October Project album, but still a favorite. The themes I see in it are a bit less spiritual than those I see in Falling Farther In, but the songs approach their subject matter from the same broad-minded, idealistic viewpoint, and there are a few of those deeply mystical moments as well. A Lonely Voice particularly captures some of that energy: “In a desert where no one can explain / You tell me God is dancing in the rain.”

If there’s another theme I can see connecting many of the songs, it’s loss and acceptance. Wall of Silence, Return to Me, and Paths of Desire seem to acknowledge the pain of separation, but embrace the surrender of control required to endure that separation with serenity. They say, in as many words but never directly: “if you love something, let it go.”

Return to Me, in particular, says this, but in a potent demonstration of music’s unique potential as an art form, it only says so if you can listen to both the words and the sound. Reading the lyrics straight off the liner notes, there is desire and loss and the pain of separation, but no acceptance. In each refrain, the speaker repeats “Return to me, return to me.” It looks like a plaintive expression of need - or a controlling command. But when the words are sung, they’re in a sweet and light tone, and the instrumental accompaniment is gentle and fluid. It is then that the refrain becomes a request, or perhaps a humble prayer, with no grasping or need for control.

Perhaps this is one of the many answers to the question I’ve found myself repeating throughout this review project: what is it with songs whose words convey one mood, but whose music conveys another, often contradictory mood? What’s with happy-sounding sad songs, and sad-sounding angry songs, or other combinations? Going by this one, the appeal is that such songs play with the complex and difficult spiritual and emotional quandaries that plague our emotional lives. Acceptance of loss feels contradictory, but is necessary lest we constantly pine for what we want or numb ourselves entirely to love and joy.

Speaking of love and joy...

Next: Together We’re Heavy

All My CDs, pt 91: Falling Farther In

Falling Farther In - October Project

In early 2009, I was visiting a friend, who took that opportunity to load up my laptop with several hours’ worth of music she thought I might enjoy. She sent me home with it, with no instructions beyond to explore and appreciate, which I did. When the laptop eventually went the way of all flesh, I lost all that data, and this album was the first thing I sought to replace from the collection.

October Project was an utterly unique band that existed in the 90s just long enough to release two albums. The music has elements of pop and rock, but with a depth of soulfulness that most examples of either do not quite reach. Vocalist Mary Fahl’s voice is deep and rich, and yet light and pure and full of joy. And the lyrics are something entirely unmatched.

During the year that I discovered and fell in love with October Project, I was also getting heavily into Christian mysticism, and as far as I could tell the songs on this album are about nothing else. This is never more true than for the first track, Deep As You Go, which to me is the definitive song not just of the album, but of the band. It describes a love so deep and profound that it is compared to drowning:

Somehow I need to love you
more than I need to breathe

Yet it’s not the desperate, clinging love that such self-obliteration usually implies. Instead, it’s a wholehearted and trusting love, one to gladly follow deep as it goes, no matter what. To me, that’s what mysticism is at its core, no matter what religion you believe in. During the year 2009, if I had a deeply spiritual experience, a song from this album was either playing or not far from my mind at the time.

I see the rest of the songs as variations on the same theme, but each quite unique and able to stand alone. And since mysticism is something best not expressed in words alone, I doubt a review of any length would do justice to my own experience. But the same is true of all music, isn’t it? And I’ve written ninety reviews so far.

Next: October Project

All My CDs, pt 90: I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got - Sinead O’Conner


Here’s an album I pilfered from my mother’s collection (sorry) in my early teens. I remember just being bored with the music I had, but without the cash to buy more, so I found this on a shelf and put it on. I listened with my usual adolescent obsessiveness for a good few months, came to know many of the songs like they lived in my own heart, but never became curious about what else the artist had produced. Later, like so many other CDs I loved as a teenager, it fell by the wayside and I all but forgot it existed.

When I started listening to it again, after more than a decade, I found that the music was exactly as I remember it, and my enjoyment of it has neither changed nor decreased. It’s still as emotionally evocative, as variable in style and mood, and as good. The only real difference is that it’s not new anymore. I would have expected that so many years of experience, some of it directly relevant to the songs’ content, would change the way I relate to the music. Yet this has not been the case, even with the couple of breakup songs on the album.

The only possible exception is The Emperor’s New Clothes, which I enjoy about as much, but might be getting more appreciation out of the lyrics nowadays. No clue why, since I can’t pick out anything I particularly relate to in there.

My favorite track was and remains Feel So Different, which opens the album and isn’t topped by any that follow it. It begins with the spoken Serenity prayer (my first exposure to that particular prayer, back when I first played this album as a teenager). From there, it layers thickly portentous lyrics over a background of slowly-building strings, hinting at but never outright explaining some great personal revelation:

The whole time I’ve never seen
all I need  was inside me
now I feel so different

It’s a total twelve-car pileup of cliches, I know, but I love it anyway. The vagueness makes it easy to just imagine that it’s about whatever’s making you feel so different, and that makes it easier to just get swept up in the emotionality of it. For some reason other songs that are similarly built just don’t do the same thing for me. Maybe because of how young I was when I encountered this one. Maybe because this is an especially well-crafted example of the technique. Or maybe, since this isn’t a popular song that gets played on the radio, I can relish the illusion that the song is mine alone.

Whatever the reason, I like the song. The rest of the album is okay, but doesn’t quite reach the same level with me.

Next: Falling Farther In

All My CDs, pt 89: Transcendental Youth

Finally, here is the last CD on shelf 2 of my collection. The third and final shelf awaits, and the end of this project is tantalizingly near.

Transcendental Youth - The Mountain Goats

I’m seriously considering putting this on my playlist for my upcoming half-marathon. It’s got a fair number of slow songs, which could be a count against it, but for long distances sometimes it’s wise to give yourself reminders to pace yourself. Besides, it opens with one of the most encouraging lyrics ever:

do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive
do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away
let people call you crazy for the choices that you make
find limits past the limits, jump in front of trains all day
and stay alive
just stay alive

I can’t think of a better way to begin a long run.

As with all other Mountain Goats music, each song is a goldmine of poetic analysis, promising years of meaning to be gleaned gradually over many many listenings. I could picture myself in ten years still learning new things from this album. That’s another of the traits that mark my favorite music, aside from the emotional complexity that I mentioned in the last review.

One more such trait is a defiance of conventional genre distinctions. Many Mountain Goats sound like acoustic folk music, others like rock or jazz or even metal. None are strictly classifiable as any one thing. I like that.

Next: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

All My CDs, pt 88: Tallahassee

Well, guy in a skeleton costume
comes up to the guy in the superman suit
runs through him with a broadsword

Tallahassee - The Mountain Goats

Since I’m in the late stages of preparing for a half-marathon, reviewing this album has been somewhat inhibited by the fact that much if it is far too slow-paced and sedate to run to. It’s far from being the slowest music in my collection and several songs are indeed quite upbeat. But more than half of it is appropriate for a lazy summer afternoon sheltering from the sweltering heat, not running maniacally through it.

The writing on this album is at least as good as in The Sunset Tree, and a few of my very favorite Mountain Goats songs are here. One is No Children, whose meaning I cannot divine but which I cannot stop playing over and over. It seems every time I hear it the absurdly pessimistic lyrics and infectiously upbeat music seem more and more brilliantly blended.

Old College Try is another song very close to my heart. It reminds me poignantly of my ex-fiance; I walked down to the end with him because he came all the way down with me.

One pattern I am noticing about my most beloved albums, musicians and songs is that they all combine sad and happy themes in novel and counterintuitive ways. It reflects, I think, the complexity of our emotional lives, in that no feeling is ever felt in a vacuum, untainted by opposing implications. Hope and fear go hand in hand, as do pain and growth. Music - and indeed any art - that does not acknowledge the dark and light side is sorely lacking as an expression of the human experience.

What will I do when I don’t have you
when I finally get what I deserve

Next: Transcendental Youth

All My CDs, pt 87: The Sunset Tree

The Sunset Tree - The Mountain Goats

I got this album after hearing Dilaudid on my Pandora station. There aren’t a lot of examples of such immediate love-at-first-sight with regards to a particular song, and it’s hard for my to explain why this one hit me so hard and fast.

The Sunset Tree is a concept album about domestic abuse (this should be clear, if not from the music itself, then from the dedication which includes explicit words of encouragement to victims of abuse). But something occurred to me this morning as I cracked it open with my analytical eyes open: as clearly and unambiguously as each song’s lyrics address the issues of violence within families, they never do so directly. Each time the narrative begins to show a little bit of its primary subject, the line of sight is shunted aside to some metaphor or literary allusion. We’re never allowed to look the violence right in the eye and acknowledge it for what it is. Yet, each song manages to still say what it means, almost more impactfully because it uses a language of metaphor. It’s almost as if, when a topic is so viscerally fraught and horrifying, the only way to effectively speak of it (without scaring off the audience) is figuratively.

Many of the metaphors use animal imagery. Lions to represent the raw violence of a huge and powerful aggressor. Magpies to represent the theft of life and pleasure and joy. Others are biblical: at the end of This Year, when the stepfather is coming down the driveway, “There will be feasting / and dancing / in Jerusalem next year.”

For this and many other reasons I’m coming to the conclusion that John Darnielle may be one of the best songwriters of our time. Or perhaps he’s just adept at the peculiar melange of positive and negative imagery and sound that tickles my own senses so powerfully. Either way, I’m glad to be wrapping up shelf 2 of 3 with three Mountain Goats albums, and hope one day to increase that number.

Next: Tallahassee

All My CDs, pt 86: Havoc and Bright Lights

Havoc and Bright Lights - Alanis Morissette

I describe this as the album where Alanis Morissette finally achieves enlightenment, inasmuch as all stages of growth resemble finally achieving enlightenment when compared to all previous stages. In that sense, each new discovery is like another layer peeled off the onion of life, each more tender and pungent than the last.  In truth, we can really only say for sure that this is the review where I finally am confident I can spell "Morissette" without checking. (One M, one R, all other consonants doubled.)

Having for the first time listened to an analyzed each of these last six albums in sequence, I can say I’ve gleaned some new understanding of how the music has changed and evolved over the past few decades. The style of music here compared with that in Jagged Little Pill and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie is much more techno, and reflects changes in the overall sound of popular music from the 90s to the 10s. Yet it’s still unmistakably Alanis Morissette, and I get no impression she’s pandering to a popular audience with these changes. The diary-like, conversational tone of many of the early songs has given way to a more typical pop-song structure for even the less structured songs, yet they still come off as very candid.

Looking at songs like Guardian, the lead single, it’s tempting to say that this album is happier than all the others. And considering that Jagged Little Pill’s most popular tracks were Ironic and You Oughta Know, I could almost forgive the conclusion. Yet, looking at the rest of the songs, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of emotional ground being covered. Even ultimately positive songs such as Empathy, Spiral and Receive are only positive because they describe a rescue from suffering. After finally looking critically at Guardian, I can now understand that it represents the same concept, only written in second-person perspective.

And there’s still a lot of angstier material. Woman Down is a feminist diatribe. Celebrity viciously lampoons fame and those who seek it. Havoc describes a relapse of mental health, something I’m very familiar with, with a return to the somber voice-and-piano combo that so beautifully encapsulates themes of sadness and regret.

Lens is a particularly interesting song to me. Besides being very exciting to listen to, its lyrics describe something not usually expressed in popular media or discourse in general: the desire for compassion and mutual respect in intellectual debate.

And so now your grand assessment
is that I’m not in your group
that I’m not your kind
And so we’re locked in a stalemate
with you in your corner, and me dismayed in mine

So now it’s your religion against my religion
my humble opinion ‘gainst yours
this does not feel like love
and it’s your conviction against my conviction
and I’d like to know what we’d see
through the lens of love

Numb is another favorite:

here comes a feeling
I run from the feeling
and reach for the drug

I think it’s cool how the lyrics describe constantly running from and numbing away all sorts of negative feelings, but the music (with searing violin and electric guitar solos) betrays that those chaotic and uncontrolled sensations are always present just under the surface. There is no escape. The only way out is through.

For some time I have considered buying copies of Alanis Morissette’s first two albums, made before she’s generally understood to have found her voice and audience with Jagged Little Pill. I’ve heard those first two are very teeny-pop and not as worth listening to, but they’re nonetheless a part of the body of work of one of my favorite musicians and I am curious. But I think I’ll hold off until after this project is over with. I still have many more CDs to review.

Next: The Sunset Tree

All My CDs, pt 85: Flavors of Entanglement

Flavors of Entanglement - Alanis Morissette

After So-Called Chaos, I gradually became distracted by other artists that I discovered on the wayward path from adolescence to adulthood, and regrettably forgot about my first favorite musician for several years. It wasn’t until 2013 that I thought to check back, and found out that she’d released two albums while I wasn’t looking, and so I had some catching up to do.

I remember being disappointed. Flavors of Entanglement apparently had been produced during, and was mostly about, the aftermath of a breakup between Morissette and her fiance of several years. This means that the best time for me to have encountered it would have been in 2012, when I was myself recovering from the end of a long-term committed relationship. In retrospect, I might have been much more into songs like Moratorium, Torch, Not as We, and Underneath if I’d still been in the thick of similar experiences. Not As We is a particularly potent expression of the life-desolation and the task of rebuilding one’s identity after such a change.

Then there’s Giggling Again For No Reason, which for the first time seems to celebrate solitude and independence and the sheer joy of leaving, to a trancy techno beat:

Oh this state of ecstasy 
Nothing but road could ever give to me 
This liberty wind in my face 
And I’m giggling again for no reason 

All grief eventually gives way to acceptance and, even, to newfound bliss.

But this independence isn’t all that life entails. With lyrics so quintessentially hippy they have to be sincere, Citizen of the Planet describes the ideal state as oneness with all of existence, and a community of all people living in peace.

My number-one favorite, to the point where I can’t help but grin like an idiot when it comes on, is Incomplete. Especially when I’m running and on my fifth mile. Probably because it compares the endless struggle toward enlightenment and self-perfection with a very long run, complete with sweat. So much sweat.

Next: Havoc and Bright Lights

All My CDs, pt 84: So-Called Chaos

So-Called Chaos - Alanis Morissette

This album came out when I was in my mid-teens and all but ready to declare Alanis Morissette a living goddess. Ironically, the songs that have consistently persuaded me in this regard are the most self-aware, self-critical, and vulnerable ones. The album opens with Eight Easy Steps, where Morissette sarcastically declares herself a good role-model in various areas of expertise:

How to hate women when you’re supposed to be a feminist
how to play all pious when you’re really a hypocrite
how to hate God when you’re a prayer and a spiritualist
how to sabotage your fantasies by fear of success

Yet for all of these frailties and faults and foibles, there’s this indomitable will to reach for more. It’s clear that admitting failure is always the first step (and ONLY the first step) in self-improvement. Out is Through describes the painful but worthwhile process of sticking it out with someone when things get dicey, and This Grudge acknowledges the need to finally, for sanity’s sake, let go.

And then there’s the songs that acknowledge that although we have faults, although we have far to go, we can still be loved and loving:

You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can't relate
And you're still here

If I had to pick just one song to represent why I love Alanis Morissette, it would be Everything.

Next: Flavors of Entanglement

All My CDs, pt 83: Under Rug Swept

Under Rug Swept - Alanis Morissette

It’s hard to follow the bombshells that are Jagged Little Pill and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, and in comparison Under Rug Swept seems a bit blander. In particular, the music has more of a poppish vibe than many of the daringly experimental songs found in the previous albums. But the intellectualism and emotional vulnerability are still there, and there are plenty of unique things about this album that make it a worthy addition to my collection.

Fans of the Alanis who’s bitingly sarcastic in her treatment of ex lovers will be pleased with Narcissus, which seems to meet the bitterness quota for the album, as the rest of it is much softer and more self-reflective. Flinch, So Unsexy, and Precious Illusions reveal a very different kind of persona, one who is shrinkingly insecure and overly attached, far from the strikingly independent mask that such a person might don for the sake of self-protection.

The other songs mainly deal with reframing interpersonal relationships in a more compassionate light. That Particular Time and Surrendering present the rather groundbreaking idea that breaking up and being rejected can be gentle, respectful, healthy, and even loving - rather than contentious and hurtful:

At that particular time love encouraged me to leave
At that particular moment I knew that staying with you meant deserting me
that particular month was harder than you’d believe
but I still left at that particular time

Surrendering in particular is the only song I’ve ever heard that imagines rejection of a prospective romantic partner as an expression of praise and respect. Would that all rejections could be taken in this light; perhaps then we’d have less rage, jealousy, and violence in the name of unrequited attraction.

A longtime favorite of mine from this album is A Man, which was my adolescent self’s first exposure to the idea that feminism in its most effective form cannot be a crusade against the male gender. Written from the perspective of a man who resents being held responsible for all the crimes of patriarchy, it’s especially powerful coming from a singer whose career was made at least partly with musical tirades against men. It fits very well with the album’s overall theme of healing interpersonal wounds and reframing conflict as an opportunity for intimacy. It’s also one of the most musically interesting songs on this album.

Next: So-Called Chaos