33 rebellions per minute
"The 6-pack of beers, the locker room jeers, I don't wanna be here..."
© 1997 bokonin@hotmail.com
1994
Paula Cole, HARBINGER
Yeah, I'm lame: I discovered Paula after "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?", just like all the folks who don't get counted as real fans. I'd considered buying this, her then-obscure debut, simply on the grounds of its title: it's a very promising sign when a beginning songwriter picks a title that 1) much of her potential audience will have to look up in the dictionary, and 2) when they're done they'll be muttering "that conceited bitch!". Maybe if I'd known she talked up the wonders of Kate Bush's HOUNDS OF LOVE at every opportunty, I'd have followed my instinct. Fortunately, I caught up anyway.
Kate Bush's influence is implicit and in the background. Paula's emotive voice takes some of Kate's leaps and dives, as well as quite a few of Jewel's. She also, like Kate, programs many of her own keyboards and beat-boxes, although the most facinating musical backgrounds--- especially the exotic tremolo/ beat-box/ strings/ cymbals/ sampler clatter of "Ciaroscuro"--- are collaborations; her own style is intriguing but only subtly non-average (points to Paul Bushnell for playing bass as close to the bottom edge of hearing as anyone in the biz, often patterned like an "Every Breath You Take" for someone over whom the vigil might be quite brief). However, she's clearly a modern, 1990's singer/songwriter, and her voice is a strong, conventionally pretty alto (occasionally lower; contralto?) that would do justice to any church choir. Quite possibly, it got used that way. The most frequent theme of HARBINGER is Paula's virtuous, rule-following, A-student, class president upbringing. Which, it so happens, she loathes.
"Happy Home" and "Watch The Woman's Hands" set the premise, observing her mother, and other mothers, struggling nobly to create happiness for everyone other than themselves. Paula on "I Am So Ordinary" self-disgustedly volunteers herself for an equivalent romantic role, while "Saturn Girl" immediately takes the offer back and vows to escape anywhere other than this pathetic planet. "Bethlehem", widely considered her best one-song candidate for greatness (I agree), is a stunningly thorough and detailed indictment of everything in her hometown, herself included, not as evil but merely as contemptuously unimaginative to the point of dead ("I just want to be a dog or a lump of clay", she prays).
"Bethlehem" seems to perform a cleansing function, as the topic afterward broaden healthily. "Ciaroscuro" and the soaringly lovely "Oh John" are love/lust songs, albeit one against a background of racist contempt for her black mate, and one told in past tense. "Our Revenge", a string waltz with crashing drums and some dramatic monotone piano, is an indictment of how winners rewrite history, with an apparent vow that the losers will rise again (and be righteously pissed off). "Dear Gertrude", the only song where Paula hands off the mouth-percussion duties to a friend, holds her out as comfort for someone else's problems, while the loud, roiling "Hitler's Brothers" allies her with victims of the racism of men "in everyday disguises/ camoflage, or business suits". By the JOSHUA TREE-ish "Garden Of Eden", she's decided to align herself with the snake, who was interesting and alive, against boring old God, and to try to take a potentially worthwhile guy along with her. By the gospel-influenced but disorienting "The Ladder", which isn't nearly jagged enough to fit HOUNDS OF LOVE's side 2 but has more than a bit of the spirit, she is "climbing a ladder of urgency/ climbing a ladder of hope/ climbing a ladder of my emotions/ climbing a ladder of unraveling rope". The music never does leave minor key for more than a few measures, and it's neither asserted nor obvious that the rope won't unravel and dump her ass 1000 feet to smash against the rocks. But it's nice that, after "Bethelhem", she recognizes her own implied point well enough to make the try.
1996
Paula Cole, THIS FIRE
"Tiger" may start the album with Paula's lone, unaccompanied voice, but it makes no bones about her agenda. "Where do I put this fire?/ this bright red feeling?/ this tiger-lily in my mouth/ it wants to grow to 20 feet tall/ I've left Bethlehem and I feel free/ I've left the girl I was supposed to be". The drum machine and rattling low piano enter, and she resumes her indictments of her own "that shy girl.... that straight-A" persona, of "teachers tryin' to touch my ass" and "go to hell, diapers"; she makes the modest (but thoroughly understandable) spat-out vow of "I can finally be a teenager at age 26". But the music gives in to roaring, rousing, assertiveness that "someday I'll be born".
She did say "someday", mind you. Even "Tiger" fades into industrial snarl, bizarre vocal processing, and inarticulate rage. "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?" places its soaring, vocally stylized singer/songwriter chorus in the midst of a raspy quasi-hip-hop portrait of a marriage. It sounds like a more energized take on the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" without the Beatles-ness that probably explained the Surfers' title; that's a very good thing, say I; but "Cowboys..." is also much more profound. Though often misunderstood as appallingly pre-feminist, "Cowboys..." is actually a sharply drawn portrait of how feminism got so powerful: that for every woman who felt deprived by an asinine stereotyped division of labor that prevented them from doing meaningful rewarding jobs like coal-mining or provosting or sales representing or assistant deupty managing, there were two or three who might have accepted the bargain ("I will raise the children if you will pay the bills") if it wasn't so damn easy for the man to welsh on his half of the deal. "Throwing Stones" ("you call me a bitch in heat and I'll call you a liar, and we'll throw stones until we're dead") taps into the same well of rage, proving beyond all doubt that if the rock'n'roll "power trio" had been built around piano instead of guitar, the label could still have fit.
As with HARBINGER, though, this seems to be a palette-cleansing. The empathetic, loving, quietly shuffling "Carmen" apologizes because "sometimes I talk too much about myself"; and while a later song entitled "ME" fully opens itself to the snotnosed anonymous comment on the winter 97-98 singles chart that "the only thing more redundant than a Green Day single called 'Redundant' is a Paula Cole single called 'ME'", that song is in fact a first-ever full declaration of personal responsibility (e.g., "it's me who makes my monsters"). True, "Mississippi"--- with an implacable rhythm and near-absent melody putting all the focus on sharp dynamics, Paula's unexpectedly bluesy singing, and her brief gentle Tori Amos impression--- is another song of her own pain. And the echoed stomp "Road To Dead" gets pissed off at Jesus Christ because he gets to be resurrected and she, just becuase she's not the daughter of God doesn't. But on the solo piano "Nietzsche's Eyes", she's able to discuss a misguided relationship without assigning (much) blame or self-blame, merely searching for understanding of what happened. The jazzy "Feelin' Love", the lullably/ Peter Gabriel duet "Hush, Hush, Hush", and the dynamic, multisegmented, good-enough-to-survive-Dawson's Creek "I Don't Want To Wait" close the album on a note that still isn't cheerful; that wouldn't even be believable, given the preceding context. But this time, it looks as though the rope will hold.
On a strict album-to-album, comparison, I'd say that HARBINGER is more detailed and more subtly inventive, while THIS FIRE is more varied and more the sort of album that could be expected to sell millions of copies (that's praise, since my expectations for what can be a hit are always terribly optimistic, and albums like THIS FIRE only encourage me to never learn). Beats me which you'd prefer; I think I prefer the second, myself. However, I was advised, in advance of trying her, to start with HARBINGER, because only in its context could THIS FIRE be properly appreciated. I agree. You needn't care about either album, but if you do, then follow the chronology, and good luck to you.
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