Since the days of Azure Ray, I have spent most of my time with Maria Taylor listening but not really listening to her stories and remarkable songwriting capabilities. To be honest, I wasn't all that interested in caring. In fact, I went out my way NOT to care. The cheesier aspects shined through her work. It seemed like background music to points of nonchalance—train rides, sports-enthused writing sessions, conversations beyond those of large gatherings of folks—times I could ignore the music or at least not need to imbibe the idealisms therein. In other words, I was not fully ready to be wrong or right about her work. I was ready to carry anything she released as a side note to any other moment.
It is not as if she tried to prove me wrong either. She created her music for the purpose of being understandable while enigmatic. It is, in fact, easy to dismiss the music and lyrics alike in a passing fancy. The crucial moments and movements are ones of fleeting joy or curable sadness: ones of sensible dictation as if Maria Taylor were less a scribe than a questioning stenographer; an arbitrator. He knows the laws of life and love and will seldom imply otherwise. Listen to the lines of "A Good Start" and prove otherwise. She is wise, but not unnervingly so. She is personal but not paltry. She is a steadiness in circumstance just the same as a seamstress of stories.
With this work, the listener does not get a diary-like look into a lifespan or a conceptual view from an omniscient narrator. Instead, one gets a pallid yet perfectly placed array of feuds and firestorms alongside calm reflection. Who can argue this? It is the same style as many of the great singer-songwriter's albums of our time—Aeroplane Over the Sea, Nebraska, Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, etc.- without the same style, of course. Her style is within her capable range; beautiful and breathtaking, sometimes haunting and melancholic, but always teetering on the edge of contemplative without being overly coarse or dramatic.
Indeed, Lynn Teeter Flower is easy to ignore, but it hard to reconcile not needing this album. Whatever purpose the listener proposes it's use, the album is one to behold as fodder rather than necessity, yet needed rather than dismissible. This is an accomplishment in and of itself, and one that should not be ignored. While she may never write the songs of affectations, she writes effectively and with vigor of one that knows exactly her place. If this cannot be celebrated, then what is the point of listening at all? Exactly. |