All My CDs: pt 66: Come On Now Social

Come On Now Social - Indigo Girls

This will be the last Indigo Girls album I'll be reviewing. I bought it on a whim in early 2013 while perusing the bargain rack with one who is now my fiance. It quickly became a mutual favorite, and I get pretty sentimental writing about it now.

Unlike any other album of theirs that I've heard, Come On Now Social is angry. It's still a far cry from the most wrathful and metal of my adolescence, but has a definite strain of mature, controlled anger, like that of an peaceful but uncompromising freedom-fighter. It's clear from the first electric-guitar chords of the first track, Go, with shades of the fierceness of the first-wave feminist movement. "Did they tell you it was set in stone / that you'd end up alone / use your years to psych you out / you're too old to care, you're too young to count."

I also see a feminist agenda in Compromise, whose powerful and catchy refrain declares "When I'm walking through this world I need to hold your hand / let me take you on this road, I hope you understand / I'm not asking for a compromise." Not asking for a compromise, here, indicates that what is being fought for - freedom, equality, simple human rights - is just not up for negotiation. Yet there is still a call for reconciliation, a need for communion, that shows that the crusade for the oppressed need not be a war between people. It can instead be a reunion between those who have been needlessly - and unnaturally - segregated. Needless to say it could equally apply to the efforts of any other oppressed group's struggle for justice in this world.

Faye Tucker and Philosophy of Loss are similarly dripping with social and political commentary. The latter is cloyingly sweet in melody and vocals but biting and even bitter in its words, from its very first lines to its very last.

Yet here also are songs refreshingly compassionate toward types of people that many lovers of liberal-leaning folk rock might be tempted to look down on: the type described in Cold Beer and Remote Control, the working stiff who can't be bothered to think politically or fight for change in the world. He's too tired from a long hard day for anything but numbing, passive recreation. The kind who might "try not to care, I would lose my mind / runnin' round the same thing time after time." 

And also here are some of the happiest songs I have heard all month. Peace Tonight breaks ground by portraying the peacemaking process as more like a party with good friends than a long and contentious negotiation. We Are Together seems along the same lovey-dovey vein. Together the few happy songs provide a needed respite from some of the darker themes of the album.

That's the end of my Indigo Girls reviews. Now for someone much less well-known, but with a few things in common.

Next: I Wanted to Call Out