(acrylic on corrugated cardboard, 11 x 14)
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Hang My Clothes up on the Floor
(acrylic & oil on wood, 6 x 8)
(acrylic & oil on canvas panel, 11 x 14)
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Album Review - Remind Me Tomorrow by Sharon Van Etten
I had no general intention of doing reviews, and no particular intention of reviewing this album, but I read a lot of pieces about it in various places and they were confusing to me, partly because they all seemed to be saying almost exactly the same thing, using the same rather limited vocabulary and reference points, many of which didn't resonate with me at all. And I didn't quite know how that kind of groupthink/groupspeak might have come about, unless the writers/reviewers were mostly just taking their cues from a press release, which seems like an odd way to construct a response to a piece of music, but I don't understand journalism at all, especially music journalism, and especially now.
So here's some stuff about Sharon Van Etten's new album, Remind Me Tomorrow.
Where did we come from
Sharon Van Etten's last album was called Are We There. There was no question mark, which called into question whether or not a question was being asked. But it seemed that a certain inquiry was being made as to direction and destination, in other words, Sharon was speaking somehow about a sense of place, about where she was (or where *they* were, whoever they were), and where she/they were going. The terrain was rough, but the view from the car was beautiful. The album cover is shot from inside a car, with Sharon driving while sticking her head out of the window. We appeared to be in motion.
"Are we there?" is a question that children tend to ask, with increasing impatience, and causing increasing irritation in their parents, from the backseat of a car that is often headed to vacation or on a trip to visit distant family. The adults in the front seat have to parry the request as best they can, inventing distractions to keep the children from noticing that we are, sadly, still not there. But in the case of Are We There, Sharon is the driver and even she doesn't know if she's there yet. It's not clear if we ever get "there" really. The album begins with the Dutch courage that is "Afraid of Nothing," and careens around mountain hairpins like "Taking Chances" and "Your Love is Killing Me," "I Love You But I'm Lost," and ends with "Every Time the Sun Comes Up," which is not the happy sunrise feeling you might feel you should expect after all of that up and down and round and round. In other words, it's a bumpy ride. And it seems that the ride is being undertaken by Sharon and a companion, hence the first person plural.
A different space
With some of the backstory out of the way then, this new album seems at first to be occupying a different space, or at least it seems to be trying to do that. The title suggests a preoccupation now with time over place. This may be coincidental, but it may also be instructive. Where we are is perhaps not so important as the moment in which we find ourselves, and that moment appears, at least in the opening song, "I Told You Everything," to be a watershed moment, where we are privy to the very intimate revelation of all that has gone before, perhaps on Are We There and its predecessors, as if a very long period of great unhappiness has finally come to an end and we are drawing a line under and a veil over it and thenceforth bracing ourselves for a leap into a brighter, clearer, happier, but perhaps no less messy future. It's interesting to note that the cover for Are We There is in stark black and white while the cover for Remind Me Tomorrow is teeming with color. Perhaps (perhaps) we are emerging into a bright new phase, a better time and place.
These are the lyrics that open "I Told You Everything":
It feels like this is a summary of and reference to the preceding four albums in shorthand, and that all of that is a prologue to what is now *starting.* As if to say, everything has been unspeakably horrible, but everything we do will be funky, from now on. As it were.
Where did we come from
Sharon Van Etten's last album was called Are We There. There was no question mark, which called into question whether or not a question was being asked. But it seemed that a certain inquiry was being made as to direction and destination, in other words, Sharon was speaking somehow about a sense of place, about where she was (or where *they* were, whoever they were), and where she/they were going. The terrain was rough, but the view from the car was beautiful. The album cover is shot from inside a car, with Sharon driving while sticking her head out of the window. We appeared to be in motion.
"Are we there?" is a question that children tend to ask, with increasing impatience, and causing increasing irritation in their parents, from the backseat of a car that is often headed to vacation or on a trip to visit distant family. The adults in the front seat have to parry the request as best they can, inventing distractions to keep the children from noticing that we are, sadly, still not there. But in the case of Are We There, Sharon is the driver and even she doesn't know if she's there yet. It's not clear if we ever get "there" really. The album begins with the Dutch courage that is "Afraid of Nothing," and careens around mountain hairpins like "Taking Chances" and "Your Love is Killing Me," "I Love You But I'm Lost," and ends with "Every Time the Sun Comes Up," which is not the happy sunrise feeling you might feel you should expect after all of that up and down and round and round. In other words, it's a bumpy ride. And it seems that the ride is being undertaken by Sharon and a companion, hence the first person plural.
A different space
With some of the backstory out of the way then, this new album seems at first to be occupying a different space, or at least it seems to be trying to do that. The title suggests a preoccupation now with time over place. This may be coincidental, but it may also be instructive. Where we are is perhaps not so important as the moment in which we find ourselves, and that moment appears, at least in the opening song, "I Told You Everything," to be a watershed moment, where we are privy to the very intimate revelation of all that has gone before, perhaps on Are We There and its predecessors, as if a very long period of great unhappiness has finally come to an end and we are drawing a line under and a veil over it and thenceforth bracing ourselves for a leap into a brighter, clearer, happier, but perhaps no less messy future. It's interesting to note that the cover for Are We There is in stark black and white while the cover for Remind Me Tomorrow is teeming with color. Perhaps (perhaps) we are emerging into a bright new phase, a better time and place.
These are the lyrics that open "I Told You Everything":
Sitting at the bar, I told you everything
You said, "Holy shit, you almost died"
Sharing a shot, you held my hand
Knowing everything, knowing everything, we cried
I told you everything about everything
You said, "Holy shit, you almost died"
Sharing a shot, you held my hand
Knowing everything, knowing everything, we cried
I told you everything about everything
I had no idea, I had no idea
We held hands, we held hands
We held hands as we parted
We knocked knees, we knocked knees as it started We held hands, we held hands
We held hands as we parted
It feels like this is a summary of and reference to the preceding four albums in shorthand, and that all of that is a prologue to what is now *starting.* As if to say, everything has been unspeakably horrible, but everything we do will be funky, from now on. As it were.
This is a very smart and exciting way to start a new venture and a new album. It says, this is a blank slate. In looking back, just for this one last time, we are now beginning to look forward. Take my hand and come with me into this future we have decided to make together. If you dare. Also, hands, right from the start, are established as an important motif. We will come back to that in due course .
Initiate the sequence
There has been a lot of talk in other reviews about influences and reference points on this album. The name that comes up most notably and consistently is that of Bruce Springsteen in connection with the song "Seventeen" (about which more later). I have to confess that I don't get that comparison at all, although SVE herself has said (in a rather cloying NPR interview) that she finds the comparison flattering. All of that aside, it seems to me that the opening song is quite clearly redolent and suggestive instead of a lesser, but no less shining luminary, Gillian Welch. There is something in the plaintive tone and the musical turn of phrase that recalls some of Welch's finer moments, and as such the reference in its own turn suggests a return by Van Etten to some of her own “roots,” all while the
instrumentation becomes progressively less organic and more “plastic” than her previous work as the album proceeds.
And there is also, underneath the song, a rumbling spine that might come to be seen as the through line of the album, a spine of forward movement and ongoing anxiety. This rumble falls away occasionally on the first track to leave Sharon alone with her piano, but it's the undercurrent that is yet another preview of what is coming and where, perhaps, we are going.
So begins a strange and rather dizzying double movement that has come to characterize the album for me and it partly revolves around the sequencing of the songs (about which also more to come shortly). Having begun by looking back to look forward, we draw a line under the past with a song that uses a simpler form of instrumentation, referring back to another musical phase in Van Etten's career, all while we are preparing to launch ourselves into the great wide open, which is itself characterized by a stylistic shift. That shift begins immediately, but somewhat glacially, on the second and third tracks, "No One's Easy to Love" and "Memorial Day" respectively. These songs do not quite jump out into the wild new blue yonder as you might expect based on my endless preamble, instead deploying some rather surprising reference points.
"No One's Easy To Love" seems to take up the same material from the opening song, but with a rather different musical arrangement, that worrying spine I told you about, and as such a rather different mood, as if to say, "Are you really sure about this? I'm giving you one last chance to bail. Ok, then? Ok, good, so then having told you that this isn't going to be easy, let's go for real." Some words toward the end of the song seem to underline that watershed I talked about earlier: "Don't look back, my dear, just say we tried." At which point we reach "Memorial Day," the first true break in the continuum, or perhaps the first leap forward, and as such it also serves as a preview for the classic sequence of "Comeback Kid," "Jupiter 4" and "Seventeen." "Memorial Day" is a gorgeous song that seems to meld form and content, atmosphere and lyric together into a plaited rope of anxiety and desire, which happens to be my favorite plaited rope form, so I was in luck when I first heard this song.
And there is also, underneath the song, a rumbling spine that might come to be seen as the through line of the album, a spine of forward movement and ongoing anxiety. This rumble falls away occasionally on the first track to leave Sharon alone with her piano, but it's the undercurrent that is yet another preview of what is coming and where, perhaps, we are going.
So begins a strange and rather dizzying double movement that has come to characterize the album for me and it partly revolves around the sequencing of the songs (about which also more to come shortly). Having begun by looking back to look forward, we draw a line under the past with a song that uses a simpler form of instrumentation, referring back to another musical phase in Van Etten's career, all while we are preparing to launch ourselves into the great wide open, which is itself characterized by a stylistic shift. That shift begins immediately, but somewhat glacially, on the second and third tracks, "No One's Easy to Love" and "Memorial Day" respectively. These songs do not quite jump out into the wild new blue yonder as you might expect based on my endless preamble, instead deploying some rather surprising reference points.
"No One's Easy To Love" seems to take up the same material from the opening song, but with a rather different musical arrangement, that worrying spine I told you about, and as such a rather different mood, as if to say, "Are you really sure about this? I'm giving you one last chance to bail. Ok, then? Ok, good, so then having told you that this isn't going to be easy, let's go for real." Some words toward the end of the song seem to underline that watershed I talked about earlier: "Don't look back, my dear, just say we tried." At which point we reach "Memorial Day," the first true break in the continuum, or perhaps the first leap forward, and as such it also serves as a preview for the classic sequence of "Comeback Kid," "Jupiter 4" and "Seventeen." "Memorial Day" is a gorgeous song that seems to meld form and content, atmosphere and lyric together into a plaited rope of anxiety and desire, which happens to be my favorite plaited rope form, so I was in luck when I first heard this song.
Somewhat strangely, "Memorial Day" does leap forward, while once again looking back, both lyrically (Memorial Day obviously pushes us into the realm of memory, and speaks of both standing still and running forward; a theme of stasis and movement seems to be developing rather obessively already) and musically, since it recalls, strangely, both Cocteau Twins and Massive Attack, very different also rather less recent and forward-looking reference points (one from the 80s and one from the 90s), although they suggest a kind of futurism that the past has periodically produced, which is the somewhat quaint thing about a lot of older science fiction somehow. The
bassline alone (that anxious spine again) needs a Mad Professor remix.
But all of this sets the scene for the showcase of tracks four through six, and it does seem like the album is divided into sections. We have had the restless and labored back and forth of the first three tracks as we try to wriggle our way out of the therapist's sleeping bag, and "Comeback Kid" is when the album's engine finally growls into full life. This is an impressive and frankly rather fearsome engine.
"Comeback Kid" is a tour de force of defiance, a runaway who came back, newly girded and steeled, and the music seems to reflect that in spades. The introduction before the slightly punk rock swagger of Van Etten's vocal performance feels armor plated in places, and it also feels like we are striding into this new future with all the 1980s accoutrements we might need. Dammit, we'll get a feathered mullet if we need to, just you watch. When "Comeback Kid" ends I always feel like I need to take some kind of tranquilizer, or a shot of whiskey to settle my nerves. But the album's by now inexorably energy won't let me. I get a bit of a chill out with "Jupiter 4," but that rumbling is still there, and it won't leave us along.
As I say, this three- track sequence, "Comeback Kid," Jupiter 4" and "Seventeen" seem like 80s throwbacks somehow. And the fact that they are locked together in sequence, instrumentation and mood, and also stand at the heart of the album, suggests a core nod to a kind of past that we’re intentionally leaving behind – we’re back and we used to be young, but now we've learned some things and we have returned with newly fortified emotional shells. Do not mess with us today.
I adore this triptych of songs, partly because it seems so alien. So alien in fact that one review referred to the album as having goth tendencies, which I rather demur at, but I do hear a little of the wilful oddity of Lena Lovich here and there in this passage of the album, and that's by no means an unpleasant place to visit for a while.
"Seventeen," for example, is a stunning Janus-like miracle, of a piece with "Comeback Kid," head on a swivel between then and now. I used to be this but now I'm not because I'm that and so much more, and the relentless rhythm section seems to be instructive as to the mood of the album above all things. We are driving, and it doesn't matter if we are "there," because we are most certainly *here*, even if we are haunted by our pasts, musical influence included. And this is also the song where Van Etten doesn't so much lose control, but chooses to let loose for a little bit. And the point at which that happens is when she screams this, which has been a long time coming:
I know what you're gonna be
I know that you're gonna be
You're crumbling up just to see
Afraid that you'll be just like me
In other words, there's been a lot of bravado here, but that continues to mask a lot of fear, for all that a kind of peace has also been discovered and is being nurtured. The psychic center of the album is here, I believe, and it's a kind of emotional vortex. So much for a fresh start. We are back in the mire. And no, we are not there yet.
Are We There
After this second phase (the first being tracks one to three), we enter the third phase of the album, which begins the end of the sequence, and "Malibu" is almost a bridge between phases two and three, getting us to to the final sublime tour de force of the last three songs. The sequencing of the album is its true genius, in my view. One to three seems to be a more or less discrete section, then four through six, with seven being a transition to eight through ten.
I supoose I might have mixed feelings about that transitional track "Malibu," feelings that are still being worked out, if not resolved. Having said that, I am certainly coming around on the song. At first it seemed a little, I don't know, bloated? Maybe a little bit too much Bonnie Tyler in the mix, somehow causing me to conjure images of a thousand points of lighters aloft at an unfeasibly large stadium. We begin with a sparse piano with some gentle but fierce SVE vocals about not giving a fuck. Before you know it there's some booming Jim Steinman-style drum and bass (yeah, not that kind of drum and bass, sorry), and we're on our way to Purple Rain territory, albeit that this particular song refers instead to a "little red car," "that little red number," even if it isn't the Corvette of Prince legend. But then it suddenly gets all Wurlitzer weird and SVE's harmonies add a queasy note to the proceedings and we're spiralling, "driving down the one," which takes on a meaning that is entirely beyond my grasp. Now we're in a, dare I say, gothic power ballad or something, and that monster bass engine is back to rumble at us. I have no idea what this song is doing, and I am starting to love it, even if I am really really confused. This might be another core of the album, the second layer of lightning alongside "Comeback Kid"/"Seventeen."
What I do begin to notice at the same time in "Malibu" is a lyrical theme that has been there all along and only now becomes visible: hands. They seem, if you'll forgive the expression, to be everywhere, and in this case we are suddenly transported to a very domestic scene, from holding hands at a truck stop to a lover's hands washing the floor to a Black Crowes soundtrack. We have entered the mundanity of the everyday ktichen sink vignette through the gift shop door of the Weird Museum, all the while still "driving down the one." How did she do that?
This, then, is the sublime heart of the album, and "Malibu" has led us there, to my own personal favorite, "You Shadow." There's more punk rock swagger here to go with "Comeback Kid" and "Seventeen" and this time it really doesn't give a fuck. The booming drums and the bass growl underpin a dare to Van Etten's id, or her superego (it's unclear who the shadow ultimately represents, but it's one of the voices in her head anyway). This is a remarkable song, one of the best of Van Etten's career, and it's even more remarkable to me that it has seemed to escape the attention of reviewers. "Follow me until you don't know where you are," she says. "You ain't nothing you never done nothing," she says, and yet she's not giving us the finger; she's talking to herself, to one of those chambers of her own psyche (rendered all the more impressively by being sung with some of that booming Phil Spector echo to create a sound chamber to to along with the psychic chamber where we find ourselves), betraying both a defiance and an insecurity at the same time. Utter utter genius of human understanding, so she is. Because this is exactly what we are like. All the time. Every day. I am in awe.
And now the hits just keep on coming, and by hits I mean blows rather than commercial successes, because "Hands" writes large the theme I mentioned a little earlier.These last songs are unearthly offerings that provoke butterflies and chills at the same time. This is the stealth underbelly of the album, the b-sides to the a-sides of the more commercial middle, and they work as perfect counterpoints to their catchier album leaders.
As I say, this three- track sequence, "Comeback Kid," Jupiter 4" and "Seventeen" seem like 80s throwbacks somehow. And the fact that they are locked together in sequence, instrumentation and mood, and also stand at the heart of the album, suggests a core nod to a kind of past that we’re intentionally leaving behind – we’re back and we used to be young, but now we've learned some things and we have returned with newly fortified emotional shells. Do not mess with us today.
I adore this triptych of songs, partly because it seems so alien. So alien in fact that one review referred to the album as having goth tendencies, which I rather demur at, but I do hear a little of the wilful oddity of Lena Lovich here and there in this passage of the album, and that's by no means an unpleasant place to visit for a while.
"Seventeen," for example, is a stunning Janus-like miracle, of a piece with "Comeback Kid," head on a swivel between then and now. I used to be this but now I'm not because I'm that and so much more, and the relentless rhythm section seems to be instructive as to the mood of the album above all things. We are driving, and it doesn't matter if we are "there," because we are most certainly *here*, even if we are haunted by our pasts, musical influence included. And this is also the song where Van Etten doesn't so much lose control, but chooses to let loose for a little bit. And the point at which that happens is when she screams this, which has been a long time coming:
I know what you're gonna be
I know that you're gonna be
You're crumbling up just to see
Afraid that you'll be just like me
In other words, there's been a lot of bravado here, but that continues to mask a lot of fear, for all that a kind of peace has also been discovered and is being nurtured. The psychic center of the album is here, I believe, and it's a kind of emotional vortex. So much for a fresh start. We are back in the mire. And no, we are not there yet.
Are We There
After this second phase (the first being tracks one to three), we enter the third phase of the album, which begins the end of the sequence, and "Malibu" is almost a bridge between phases two and three, getting us to to the final sublime tour de force of the last three songs. The sequencing of the album is its true genius, in my view. One to three seems to be a more or less discrete section, then four through six, with seven being a transition to eight through ten.
I supoose I might have mixed feelings about that transitional track "Malibu," feelings that are still being worked out, if not resolved. Having said that, I am certainly coming around on the song. At first it seemed a little, I don't know, bloated? Maybe a little bit too much Bonnie Tyler in the mix, somehow causing me to conjure images of a thousand points of lighters aloft at an unfeasibly large stadium. We begin with a sparse piano with some gentle but fierce SVE vocals about not giving a fuck. Before you know it there's some booming Jim Steinman-style drum and bass (yeah, not that kind of drum and bass, sorry), and we're on our way to Purple Rain territory, albeit that this particular song refers instead to a "little red car," "that little red number," even if it isn't the Corvette of Prince legend. But then it suddenly gets all Wurlitzer weird and SVE's harmonies add a queasy note to the proceedings and we're spiralling, "driving down the one," which takes on a meaning that is entirely beyond my grasp. Now we're in a, dare I say, gothic power ballad or something, and that monster bass engine is back to rumble at us. I have no idea what this song is doing, and I am starting to love it, even if I am really really confused. This might be another core of the album, the second layer of lightning alongside "Comeback Kid"/"Seventeen."
What I do begin to notice at the same time in "Malibu" is a lyrical theme that has been there all along and only now becomes visible: hands. They seem, if you'll forgive the expression, to be everywhere, and in this case we are suddenly transported to a very domestic scene, from holding hands at a truck stop to a lover's hands washing the floor to a Black Crowes soundtrack. We have entered the mundanity of the everyday ktichen sink vignette through the gift shop door of the Weird Museum, all the while still "driving down the one." How did she do that?
This, then, is the sublime heart of the album, and "Malibu" has led us there, to my own personal favorite, "You Shadow." There's more punk rock swagger here to go with "Comeback Kid" and "Seventeen" and this time it really doesn't give a fuck. The booming drums and the bass growl underpin a dare to Van Etten's id, or her superego (it's unclear who the shadow ultimately represents, but it's one of the voices in her head anyway). This is a remarkable song, one of the best of Van Etten's career, and it's even more remarkable to me that it has seemed to escape the attention of reviewers. "Follow me until you don't know where you are," she says. "You ain't nothing you never done nothing," she says, and yet she's not giving us the finger; she's talking to herself, to one of those chambers of her own psyche (rendered all the more impressively by being sung with some of that booming Phil Spector echo to create a sound chamber to to along with the psychic chamber where we find ourselves), betraying both a defiance and an insecurity at the same time. Utter utter genius of human understanding, so she is. Because this is exactly what we are like. All the time. Every day. I am in awe.
And now the hits just keep on coming, and by hits I mean blows rather than commercial successes, because "Hands" writes large the theme I mentioned a little earlier.These last songs are unearthly offerings that provoke butterflies and chills at the same time. This is the stealth underbelly of the album, the b-sides to the a-sides of the more commercial middle, and they work as perfect counterpoints to their catchier album leaders.
In "Hands" SVE claims to be "following you," but don't be fooled. She is the tour guide, the alpha, and the leader. We are going where she takes us, even if she doesn't herself know where that is. At this point things get very handsy. There are hands, as I say, everywhere:
Put your hands on your lover
I've got my hands up
Mean no harm to each other
I've got my hands up
I suppose calling the album Hands would have been too obvious, but these are the hands of work, the hands that grasp and hold onto each other, the hands of lovers on each other, the hands up of surrender, and the hands that lead us and point us the way to go, conducting this magnificent symphony.
Stay
Stay
And so we come to the end, and I suddenly start to wonder how many of the second person addresses we have been hearing have actually been to a child rather than a lover, because that's the kind of way Van Etten has been keeping me off balance for this whole time. And I also start to recognize another unmentioned reference point for some of these songs, which is David Bowie, who would still be alive for two more years when Are We There came out, and now he is suddenly three years gone. "Stay" only recalls the title of my favorite Bowie song rather than any characteristics or tendencies of Bowie, but there is a Low-like atmosphere to some of these songs (more prominently on display in the new Deerhunter album, but that's another story), and this lyric from the Station to Station masterpiece seems to resonate with the message of Remind Me Tomorrow's closing moments:
Stay, that's what I meant to say or do something
But what I never say is stay this time
I really meant to so badly this time
'Cause you can never really tell when somebody
Wants something you want too
Sharon puts it a little differently and there's a good deal less insecurity in her coda, for all the angst that has pervaded what brought us to this point, whether it's here, there, or in between - at least it's definitely now:
You won't let me go astray
You will let me find my way
You, you led me the way
You stay
Stay, that's what I meant to say or do something
But what I never say is stay this time
I really meant to so badly this time
'Cause you can never really tell when somebody
Wants something you want too
Sharon puts it a little differently and there's a good deal less insecurity in her coda, for all the angst that has pervaded what brought us to this point, whether it's here, there, or in between - at least it's definitely now:
You won't let me go astray
You will let me find my way
You, you led me the way
You stay
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
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