33 rebellions per minute
"She would rather use her tongue for this"
1999
Corduroy Leda, ILLEGALLY
ILLEGALLY could almost be an alternate-world version of the Indigo Girls' ambitious semi-rock SWAMP OPHELIA, in which the Indigos had broadened towards harmony folk from garage band origins ("influences: Minor Threat, John Cougar Mellencamp", I picture their early want ads announcing), instead of an arty version of vice versa. But of course it isn't, because it's the debut of an all-female Canadian six-piece instead.
Tanya Hobbs, Leda's lead lyricist, has a knack for poetic reach of exactly the kind that has influenced some people I respect to deem the Indigo Girls the epitome of everything awful about serious lyrics, and other people I respect even more to declare them the best lyricists in the world. Know your own position on the issue. My own cringe-meter does go up for a chorus of "I may not be Maybelline, like Bukowski wants" -- I don't get the reference, or feel that I should. But there's also, in the same song, "She says, 'I'd rather he paint me like this, black and blue, than cut me with his words you know. At least in the morning I can turn around and say to him: I used to be beautiful, until I met you'", which is immensely vivid as long as you can imagine some real person saying/ thinking that. I can. Two songs later: "She's the perfect girl because she can't say no. He doesn't even bother asking anymore. She'll file her nails while he pulls the car (headlights reflecting in the living room window) into her parents' flagstone sanctity". Yes, I can understand making fun of people who put their lyrics in parenthesis, and I think I would've mocked "parents' flagstone sanctity" before I met some sets of parents who earned the militantly protective phrase. Now, I'd rather applaud Hobbs' effort, successful for my purposes, of bringing a scene and its people to life.
The other Corduroy Leda lyricists, Amy Bourns and Jenn Scott and Jen Cutts, keep the vocabularies simpler and the dilemmas smaller and more personal. The music itself is simple, but well-arranged. Two or even three guitars play at once, tense and angular lines veering off from three-or-four-chord patterns. The catchiest riffs -- and each of the first six songs is rich in those -- sneak in sideways, diverting the song instead of guiding it. Hobbs has a nice alto voice, somewhat above a whisper, while Bourns's is strained, louder, less accurate; their highlights are as harmony foils for each other. Cello, trombone, and even theremin are used as tasteful decoration, but then "Shortest Distance" breaks off into a jam as if the Black Crowes were guided by Blue Oyster Cult guitarist Buck Dharma, and "Bound" has the understated sparkle of a Dinosaur Jr single. It's nothing radical, but rock music was, after all, founded as a tool for the electric guitar. It's been a while since an album has so clearly reminded me what a good reason that was.
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