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Acid Tongue, Jenny Lewis
Warner Bros., Rough Trade, September 23, 2008
Track Listing: 1. Black Sand, 2. Pretty Bird, 3. The Next Messiah, 4. Bad Man’s World, 5. Acid Tongue, 6. See Fernando, 7. Godspeed, 8. Carpetbaggers, 9. Trying My Best to Love You, 10. Jack Killed Mom, 11. Sing a Song For Them
Sometimes unexpected is too superfluous a word to be taken seriously, as if the events leading to the precipice of surprise do not deserve monikers of sneaky or unforeseen at all. And yet, surprise, surprise! Like the arrival of below zero wind chills in November, surprise!
“I have this dream where
I’m down on my knees on the black sand
I’m facing the sea as the wind pushes me down to my hands”
-from “Black Sand”
Pothole-induced rim destruction hits in December. Funeral processions proceed in January. Love is lost in February (reservations for Valentine’s Day dinner at Spiaggia be damned).
“Pretty bird, pretty bird
Why you so still?”
-from “Pretty Bird”
Surprised? Get on with it. But why be surprised by Jenny Lewis? That truth was easily revealed. Drum roll please….
It was all about me. Surprise, surprise. Me, me, me. The surprise stemmed from where I was at when the CD came my why: in the headlights of winter, 5 to 10 inches more by morning.
“Now he’s living in the woods
the dark and dank woods”
-from “The Next Messiah”
So what if the surprise quotient had more to do with me, my surroundings, and more to due to the timing of my winter Seasonal Affective Disorder malaise than anything with the music itself? No apology needed. A general lack of sunshine never ceases to jar no matter how many Januaries you have endured. It is like walking home from work in the early evening black hole of post-daylight savings, cutting straight into the teeth of a slice-’em-up-dice-’em-up-45 MPH wind tunnel, when you feel the burn of icicle tears that prick as smart as bee stings. The long laboring thaw at home under blankets is hours of Oolong in the making. The time of year finds you trying to regroup, throwing another one on the fire and listening to the crackle of wood drown out the howling bitter hiss of winter.
“We build ourselves a fire
We build ourselves a fire
But you know I am a liar
You know I am a liar”
And you don’t know what I’ve done”
-from “Acid Tongue”
Billy, in keeping with a promise to stray from comparisons, I will X out any references to punk rockabilly right here and now. There is no time anyway, swaying in the creamy warm cake batter sun of Golden Gate Park or sliding on black ice on 90 just outside Chicago, hitting the medium hard. No, there is just no time. Gotta shovel. Latest snow jolt from the north has arrived.
“I beg your pardon
I’m not looking for a cure
Seen enough of my friends
In the depths of the Godsick blues”
-from “Acid Tongue”
Happy New Year! The final countdown—8,7,6—seems somehow unexpected and quick—3, 2, 1—and curiously anticlimactic in comparison to the clutch of the departing year’s crocodile jaws. 2008: The End. A September train wreck in Los Angeles plays tragic metaphor to a year’s grim, descending realities. But wait. A new year (especially one with a changing of the guard in Washington) always carries the promise of hope, even if surrounding adjectives might be trapped somewhere in the long dark road between lofty and unwarranted.
“He’s the next messiah”
-from “The Next Messiah”
Curve ball. In keeping with a theme of Washington surprises, Warren’s invite to the inauguration is eye-opening. The girls on Halsted take notice.
“What are we going to do with you?
You don’t make it easy on me”
-from “Godspeed”
But the calendar is busy now, refusing any and all complaints or suggestions. It does what it does best, marching on with an unbreakable pace. You gotta keep up.
The overhead camera shots (Winter Classic: Detroit Red Wings at Chicago Blackhawks) of Gotham reveal—even in HD—little more than a dank reality (miles and miles of smog-stained, crisscrossing grids of gray-stained concrete). Oh yes, it is a good time to think about spring. It’s getting closer every day. Spring, as surprising as Warren and winter and Jenny and all the rest. As surprising as talk of inclusion (when, as usual, exclusion seems a bit too well represented).
“If you sing a song, sing the song for them
For the bats and belfry and the fairies on Main Street
For the deadbeat daddies and the Boulevard freaks
For the little girls with the carousel eyes
And the brick-a-brak finding housewives, losing their minds”
-from “Sing A Song For Them”
Get a life and quit your bitching. So I’ve heard it said which is a legal and above the belt but still as unexpected as any other connecting uppercut.
But the dream is alive. The music plays on. Now is the time to stake claim to the good whenever it manages to sneak on through. Before it snows again in Utah.
And so, this winter—January, 2009—I am thankful for a Jenny Lewis album. It is a pocket of warmth, unexpectedly nestled along the fringe of a hard charging front coming down like gangbusters from the north.
-G
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