There are three types of album title: the first is the mundane, simply drawn from one of the songs on the album (such as Massive Attack’s Blue Lines); the second is slightly more interesting, being unrelated to song titles, eponymous or perhaps signifying the meaning behind the album (e.g. Tanya Donelly’s Lovesongs For Underdogs). That leaves us with album titles taken from lyrics, the best of the three, because until you’ve experienced the lyric, you may still be unsure as to why the album has been given its name.
Kristin Hersh’s acoustic album, Strange Angels is one such album. The way she deploys its title is effective because she rarely adheres to conventional song structures, which can make her work difficult to listen to. In particular the twisting of similar sounding words and phrases from one line to the next, but also due to the lack of obvious choruses. Listeners need to become familiar with the motion of each song to uncover its organisation, using repeating motifs, sounds or words as hooks on which to hang conclusions.
Shake is unexpectedly the centrepiece of Strange Angels because it concentrates ones attention on the use of those two words. Coming in the middle of the song, they arrive unheralded at the beginning of a line. Boom! What follows stretches through the remainder of the song and the rest of the album, lingering in the background of one’s thoughts. Furthermore, because Shake leads on seamlessly from its perky predecessor Stained, it’s eventual evolution into a separate entity makes it more remarkable. No wonder she uses the term Strange Angels for her musical benefactors.
Kristin Hersh - official website
Kristin Hersh - Strange Angels (Amazon UK, Amazon US, iTunes)
No comments