Refined, thoughtful, fragile and beautiful indie folk album.
The innocence mission came together in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1986. The group’s current members are Karen Peris, her husband Don Peris, and Mike Bitts, who have reconvened after a four-year absence to release their thirteenth album. All the songs were written by Karen Peris, apart from one which was composed with her spouse.
This is a delicate, lo-fi, sparse record centred on Karen Peris’s ethereal vocals backed by piano melodies, strummed nylon string guitars, understated drums and the odd electric instrument. The album opens with ‘This Thread Is A Green Street’. It’s the first of three songs on the record about pining for a loved one who is away, and of how love can overcome separation. Karen Peris says that when she wrote the song, “I was missing our kids so much when they were away at university. It’s a song about how love can transcend distance. I was trying to map out pictures of connectedness and thinking about all these different kinds of lines that run through the world, like phone lines, lines of music, subway lines and street maps, and even my wonky way of mending a green cardigan that I was trying to do at the time”.
There’s often a debate about what is more important to a good song, the melody or the words. The tune can draw you in, but the lyrics can entice you to want to find out more. Although on the first few listens, the lyrics of many of these songs can seem slightly obtuse, there’s a poetic beauty to them. However, a narrative isn’t always important to create a beautiful song, for example, apart from its title, the song ‘John Williams’ doesn’t have any obvious connection to the film composer and is far removed from his dramatic film scores.
‘Your Saturday Picture’ is driven along by some fine bossa nova guitar. It’s another song of yearning, with blinking street lights seeming to provide some reassurance. ‘Orange of the Westering Sun’, recalls the group’s time in California recording their first two albums, which were produced by Larry Klein who, at the time, was married to Joni Mitchell. Karen Peris says of the track that, “This was at Joni Mitchell’s house, and the air always smelled like lilies so it became Easter-like, which may have been one of the reasons that there was the feeling of being at the start of something”.
This record feels fragile, tender and beautiful without being flimsy; an album which is a product of the current times perhaps.
