When spring fever sets in, the blood churns and ripens for love right on cue. But there's more to this collective giddiness than flowers in riotous bloom and lovers walking paths strewn with whispered promises. Spring is also a pale wad of tangled grubs scurrying beneath the feet of starry-eyed couples, the underbelly of romance working busily at luring lonely hearts into doomed love affairs.
Nestled somewhere between the sweaty palms of new lovers and the murky netherworld below lie the evocative songs of singer Lori Carson. Her second solo album, "Where it Goes," balances a yearning for true love with a nihilistic certainty that romance can never rescue her from the past. The song "Petal" finds her musing throatily, "So many times I thought/ Hey this is it/ I'm ready let's go baby/ But it all led nowhere/ Turned out wrong/ And I still believe in it/ But not much."
Carson's voice has a rawness beneath its soprano highs that make her songs resonate and tremble -- she's an unaffected singer who sounds like the bitter kid sister Joni Mitchell never had. Thankfully, the sweetness of her voice is seldom cloying; she knows to use it sparingly so as not to gum up the lyrics' genuine emotion with sentimental goo.
As vocalist for the Golden Palominos -- an ever-shifting group of players led by percussionist Anton Fier -- Carson contributed to 1993's "This is How it Feels" and last year's "Pure." But where master-tinkerer Fier favors lush arrangements and layers of effects for the Golden Palominos, his production here shows admirable restraint. The band on "Where It Goes" supports the singer discreetly, giving her songs room to breathe. The result is an album that lingers after the last song ends, the pure notes shimmering in the air like a flash of long-forgotten memory.
Carson's intimate lyrics peel away like so many translucent layers of onion until finally exposing the raw nugget at the core. It's a brave thing to bare oneself so utterly in public; "Fell Into the Loneliness" finds her confessing, "I should have risked something/ I should have kissed you ... Instead I fell and fell/ And fell into the loneliness/ I know so well." Carson turns her soul inside-out and shakes it until a pile of frustration, yearning and melancholy spills out like a nasty secret finally seeing the light of day.
On "Anyday" she recalls, "Love was only a pain/ To be falling in and out of ... But it was fun riding in that car/ I've never laughed that hard." It's a joyful epiphany that happiness lies in the small stuff -- if you only pay proper attention. You've got to slay the dragon get to the happily-ever-after: "Where It Goes" ends with the reflective "Christmas," where Carson discovers that "It doesn't take less my love/ To stay when you want to run/ To open and open and open and open."
It's a ray of hope breaking through the clouds of regret, an unexpected rainbow at the end of a long winter's storm.
By: Julene Snyder