I’ve had Bare as my morning commute music for weeks now. I’ve rediscovered the CD after my initial blitz of playing it when I bought it last summer.
Something about it just makes the idea of inching through traffic, closer and closer to the corporate beast, a little more bearable.
I now associate “Wonderful” with downtown Atlanta. The pounding piano just fits so well with the skyscrapers and those obnoxious metal plates they’re so fond of tossing down in the road around here.
I’ve had a focused and intimate relationship with this CD since the day I bought it. I was hoofing it on foot and on the public trains and buses. I hadn’t bought myself a CD in long time and I was very much looking forward to getting home and taking it for a spin. I didn’t have my diskman with me that day.
The usual MARTA delays had me waiting on a bus for a good bit, so I started reading the CD jacket. I recommend the read if any of you fans of this CD have not given it a gander. Reading her words and dedications, I knew I was in for an emotionaly raw experience, and this CD never ceases to catch me up in that energy.
Since I haven’t subscribed, I can’t search for a similar thread I started not so long ago. Bare is simply one of the best albums of the last couple of years. This is not bubble-gum pop. There is nothing on this album that is trite or teeny-bopper. It deals with the trials and tribulations of being an adult. While no longer in constant repeat, Bare finds its way into my disc changer on a frequent basis.
I’m still mastering the searching function, but I couldn’t find your thread
Aside from the lyrical prose, pretty much every song has a “ear worm” affect on me. Often many individual areas of a single song are equally infectous. I also am blown away by what she does at the end of The Hurting Time, as well as countless other nuggets worth savoring. They are mixed in like big chunks of chocolate in a fat, rich cookie.
So she’s doing this tour with Sting. It sounds like a pretty good show. They’ll be in Atlanta at Philips Arena in September, I believe. $84 each for the cheapest floor seats, though. Ow. I have yet to experience an arena show, but if anyone’s voice can still make such a non-intimate venue worthwhile, it would be Annie’s.
I’m a guy. Now that I think about it, I may have posted my ravings about Bare in another thread about favorite albums of the last year rather than starting a new thread.
One of my favorite aspects of the album is the progression of emotion beginning with the hopeful A Thousand Beautiful Things. By the end of the album we’ve gone through painful unrequited love, bad relationships, heartbreak, anger and disillusionment to end with Oh God (A Prayer) wherein she laments the loss of faith, regrets about bad decisions and being on the edge of “the abyss where you don’t exist”.
