After launching a successful Kickstarter campaign with a
dynamite video to raise the funds for her second full length project, song
writing pop/folk/punk rocker Bess Rogers is out with the results. Out of the Ocean is in a
real sense a concept album. Rogers
explains that her inspiration came from Your Inner Fish, a
book by paleontologist Neil Shubin, which takes a compelling look at human
evolution. Oliver Sacks describes the
book as "an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure
story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be
human." Rogers notes that the
"book is about our evolution from life as far back as pre-historic fish
and microbes and how that has affected our
bodies and our lives now." The book, she says, obsessed her:
"I started to look at everything we do in life as a product of
evolution, and many of the songs on this record were inspired by that idea."
While it is certainly worthwhile to know about Rogers'
inspiration, it does tend to channel response to the album. This can be a good thing, but it can also
create something of a problem. In my own
case, the more I listened to the songs, the more evolution inspired content I
discovered. The more I discovered, the
more I looked for. I began to lose sight of the music, and over intellectualize,
ending up with a first draft critique of her remark about "many" of
the songs being inspired by the idea that went like this:
"Many" may be something of an understatement. My own sense is that not only every one of
the eleven songs on the album has been inspired by her obsession but that even
their order on the record reflects an evolutionary theme. In a sense what Rogers has done is to create a
metaphoric analogy between human physical evolution and the evolution of
emotional relationships. As humanity
evolved physically, individuals evolve emotionally in a kind of variation of
ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. Just
a few examples: The disc opens with a little introduction of less than a minute
called "One Step Free," which gets the speaker out of the depths of
the ocean and leads into "Standing Tall" where "a little bit of
love" keeps her dry, keeps her alive and fostering evolutionary growth.
"Weak Link" deals with a kind of smothering enabling love that
weakens its object and prevents it from becoming part of the evolutionary
chain.
You get the idea.
This kind of academic gibberish, even if true, which is debatable at
best, is little more than pompous posturing.
The song lyrics are available on Bess Roger's website. Readers are welcome to check them out and
decide what they all mean for themselves without third party mediation. Besides
when you come right down to it, there are some really fine songs on this album,
whether they are related to the evolutionary theme, or whether they're not,
they still make for some mighty fine listening.
"In the Waves" is a kind of other worldly mermaid
song that seems to offer an escape from the darkness and pain of the earthly
world. "Math and Science"
looks at the physical underpinnings of emotions like love, and happily asserts
that whatever the reasons, love is a lot of fun: even if it's "all just
math and science/I will offer my compliance." "I'll Be Gone" rocks with the
passion of love gone bad. The album ends
with two acoustic jewels—a softly beautiful "Second Chance" and
"Brick by Brick" which begins softly and then builds to an anthemic
crescendo. A pop flavored
"Anchor" with a theme that contrasts with the point of "Weak
Link" is available for download on the singer's website.
Rogers sings and plays a variety of different instruments on
different tracks from ukulele and electric guitar to Moog synthesizer to
melodia. Chris Kuffner, who produced the
album and joined in the writing of "Math and Science," also plays a
number of different instruments, as does keyboard player Saul
Simon-MacWilliams. Elliot Jacobson and
Adam Christgau are on percussion on various tracks. Other contributors include—Ingrid Michaelson
and Allie Moss (vocals), Ian Axel (piano on "Anchor") and Dave Eggar
(cello).
Whether you want to
indulge in fish out of water philosophizing or you prefer listening to some
fine songs with tuneful wit, Out of the Ocean is an album
that deserves your attention.
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