You are the Hero of your own History !

Let me start with saying : "Happy birthday Allison Russell !"
Off course I listened to your album, and I would like to share you my experience. 

 

I am (again) in awe with your music. Off course the music is powerful, these are all great songs, but this album is about so much more, and carries a heavier and more important role on a spiritual level. 

The album is announced as your first solo-album, and mathematically this is of course correct. But I don't see it like that. It diminishes the importance of it all. I don't believe you simply decided that you were going to make a first solo album, and this is the result. I think it is more accurate to say that an entire life,  a period of horror, and the way out decided for you that this needed to be done. It just had to be made, and it could only be done by you. A long hard road to suck out the poison like you wrote in the liner notes. 

I dry-read the lyrics, and I think I'll try to avoid to do that again. Without the music, these words are not 1 but 10 punches in the stomach. I can only sit in silence,.... 

The A-side of the record was the easy part. I'm a listener. I hear the stories surrounded by your musical style I know from 'Birds of Chicago'. 

And then I flip the record to the B-side and 'Hy-Brasil' hypnotises me and its repetitive, meditative flow leads me down the stairs. It feels like I don't want to, but there is no way back... With 'All of the women' I felt as if witnessing the moment, the ritual, the sucking out of the Poison. 

And then live has to go on. It is what 'Poison Arrow' tells me. 

Je te souhaîte la paix
Je te souhaîte l'acceptance
Je te souhaîte une deuxième chance

Et le coeur d'un enfant
Routier! Routier!
Chanter! Chanter!

L'heure des miracles est arrivée
Le poison peut-être médecin
Si t'en bois une goute seulement

The album ends with a message for us all, we 'Joyful Motherfuckers'. Let us open up our hearts.  

This album is one of those that gives me what I search in music. It's an invitation to be engaged. Be an active listener, be an active person. Live life!

It is an amazing album on so many levels. Musically and spiritual far beyond what we humans ever can put in to words. You can be proud of this. You are the Hero of your own History !

Hugs and Love,
Stefan