Notes on a Song

Argument with David Rawlings concerning Morrissey

To Be Young (Is to be sad, Is to be high)

My Winding Wheel

Amy

Oh My Sweet Carolina

Bartering Lines

Call Me On Your Way Back Home

Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)

Come Pick Me Up

To Be The One

Why Do They Leave

Shakedown on 9^th Street

Don’t Ask For The Water

In My Time of Need

Sweet Lil Gal (23^rd/1^st)

A few years ago, I went to see Ethan Johns play at a small venue not far from where I live. It is to my shame, but to the testament of what Heartbreaker has meant to me, that the primary reason for my interest in this famous producer, and great song writer in his own right, was his cameo in the first track of Heartbreaker, ‘Argument with David Rawlings Concerning Morrissey’, where the attempted commencement of ‘To be Young…’ is halted due to Ethan Johns having ‘a mouthful of cookies’.

Heartbreaker was released in 2000, when I was 5 or 6 years old. It was simply as a child, therefore, that I first heard the album, in a state of complete and utter naivety. It wouldn’t, for example, be until many years later that I would notice the allusion to The Queen is Dead on the album cover, something undoubtedly utterly obvious to anyone who had grown up with The Smiths, or even had any sense of musical knowledge. I mention this only to highlight the conditions under which this album was first encountered, with no preconceptions, prior to the tinted spectacles that come with experience and supposed maturity. Of course, as an album that was played throughout my childhood it latches onto those feelings of nostalgia, and other memories throughout my life, but the first experience remains pure, simply as an innocent reaction to feelings.

Heartbreaker played an important role in my teenage years too. I was never that comfortable at school, as an introvert stuck in an extroverted world, where being ‘quiet’ was criticised. It was at this period in my life that music really began to play an important role through escapism. The overwhelming relief of leaving the school gates and plugging into music on the solitary walk home was an experience that was longed for. The track that stands out in my memory as one that was played again and again was ‘Come Pick Me Up’:

Come pick me up
Take me out
Fuck me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends

They’re all full of shit
Behind my back
With a smile on your face
And then do it again
I wish you would

In his talk The Secret Life of the Love Song, Nick Cave speaks of the essential essence of any great love song is the recognition that with love comes the potential for pain. There must be some sense of duality. This is a feature that is apparent in the lyrics above, and again and again throughout the album, perhaps at its peak in ‘Call Me on Your Way Back Home’, as it slowly fades out to the words:

And I just wanna die without you
Oh I just wanna die without you
Yeah I just wanna die without you
Without you Honey I ain’t nothing new

It seems slightly odd to me, looking back, that an album so obviously centred around break ups stood out to me in the way that it did, before I had any worldly experience of such a thing, and I wonder what exactly it was that I was experiencing. I wish, if I may, borrow the words of Nick cave once more. He writes, in his red hand files, ‘the very essence of our humanness, our vulnerability and fragility, is the most beautiful thing we possess’. I believe that this is what Ryan Adams has latched on to, and what makes Heartbreaker so relatable. It is not an album simply about breaking up, but an album about the very nature of what it is to be alive. It is a very sad album, for sure, but it is not so devastatingly sad that it is unlistenable, quite the opposite, it draws you in and keeps you coming back again and again. By opening himself up, making himself vulnerable, Adams has created not only something that is beautiful, but something that helps the listener encounter what is at the very core of our shared humanity.

Terminal Paradise

From

Womb

Out of your mind

Cradle

Symbol

Blue and red horses

Abyss kiss

What can you say

10 miles

When I first encountered this album, it did not blow me away. It was nice, and listenable, but it did not send shivers down my spine. But I do vividly remember going to see her live during the Abysskiss tour. I knew Big Thief at the time, and had of course listened to this album, but I hadn’t been drawn into her world, her music hadn’t permeated deep inside if me. As I watched her on stage, all alone, I began to feel something that I hadn’t felt before. She was one of those artists who stood awkwardly behind the microphone, her nervousness palpable, her vulnerability hanging in the air. And then she began to sing, and the vulnerability, as so often is the case, blossomed into great strength. It was for me what I can only describe as a spiritual experience, where I felt entirely connected, transported into the very presence of being. She played a number of songs from the album, some older ones, and some songs in their early stages that would later become Big Thief songs. It was an evening that shifted my whole view of Adrienne Lenker as a song writer.

She can be described as nothing but prolific, churning out quality album after quality album. As I write this, their single ‘Change’ has been on repeat for the last few weeks. Her lyrics on this album in particular are haunting. The focus on death is unnerving, but not morbid. It is realistic, it embraces humanity in all its muck and depravity, and dares the listener to live it. ‘Dripping your tears/Like a precious warm spring’, there is power in weakness, in vulnerability, in fragility. Of ‘Symbol’ she said: “Writing it helped me articulate the recognition of a very deep sense of home contained within the warmth of my loved ones and friends made visible in something as simple as a smile.” But the stand out track for me, at least at the time of writing, is Terminal Paradise. This took on new meaning for me as I drove to see my grandma for the last time, as she had been placed on palliative care. Once again, the vulnerability of the human condition stands out: ‘Terminal/we both know’. But the images of transformation, of blossoming once more, are ones to hold on to. They are not comforting necessarily; they do not take away from the pain that is felt, but that isn’t the point. The album asks us to look at one another, to hold one another in our mutual suffering, and perhaps to dare to be vulnerable together.

Abysskiss is not an album that I listen to often, but it is one that has a very special place in my collection, one that when the mood is right, will transport me into the vastness that Lenker seems to intent in getting lost in.