Swamp Ophelia - Indigo Girls
This is another relatively recent addition to my collection, or feels like it anyway; I think I got it in 2012. By that point I had a few of their albums and was already thinking of the Indigo Girls as one of my favorite music groups. I know that at least part of my motive for buying this particular CD was that it contained many unknown-to-me studio versions of songs I’d heard on the live album, 1200 Curfews. These included Least Complicated, Dead Man’s Hill, Power of Two, and Mystery, among others. I think of Least Complicated as one of the quintessential Indigo Girls songs: philosophical, introspective, yet cheerful and optimistic, with harmonies and counterpoints that confuse and delight the ears:
What makes me think I could start clean-slated?
The hardest to learn was the least complicated
The album also features several songs that I’d never heard anywhere else, including Fugitive, which has become one of my favorite songs of all. It’s either the only or one of very few Indigo Girls songs to prominently feature a chorus of trumpets, which come in straightaway, suggesting the approach of a hunting party before the lyrics proclaim:
are they coming for us with cameras or guns
we don’t know which but we gotta run
you say this is not what I bargained for
so hide yourself for me...
Like many other favorite songs, this one seems to be clear and specific enough to provoke very intense feelings, but indistinct enough to be interpreted in a lot of different ways, making it fit a lot of different situations. It’s occurred to me that it could be about evading a literal pursuit, or about oppression in general. The “fugitive” in question might be an LGBT identity, or any other personal vulnerability. I personally tend to interpret it as referring to some form of mental illness, as is my wont.
The song Reunion is similarly flexible-yet-strong, but more cheerful, and makes a good running song Somehow the Wood Song and Fare Thee Well haven’t quite struck a cord with me yet, but that might be because I haven’t heard them at the right time yet. It used to be the case with songs such as Dead Man’s Hill, which I never quite understood until recently, and then suddenly felt very drawn to.
The whole album makes for fun listening no matter what the situation, and since I got it it has always been on my short list for CDs to put on when I’m not sure what to go for. Like a comfortable shoe, it just fits.
Next: Poseidon and the Bitter Bug
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