Remind Me Tomorrow

Well, I want to start off this letter saying that I'm glad the Grammy's tried really hard last night to make themselves a little less irrelevant. Far from succeeding, they at least took a good hard look at what they were doing and did something different.

Anyway, trying really hard to get back into the swing of things after some time off. It's been harder this time, but I'm not ready to give it all up yet.

Instead, I want to talk to you all about peer pressure.

How many of you all remember something called D.A.R.E.? I know, blast from the past, right? Do you remember what it stood for? Did you even know it's still around?

According to Drug Abuse Resistance Education, as I remember it from about the sixth grade, all of you were going to be on drugs when I grew up and you'd all spend all your waking moments trying to get me to try/get addicted drugs. It felt like it was something that I couldn't avoid - I was a kid, it was the late 80's, and I was going to end up on crack sometime very soon. 

Thankfully, peer pressure wasn't really ever that bad. Sure, I had friends that tried to get me to join them on stupid, dangerous, or random actions. Yet when I told these friends I wasn't interested, they said OK and moved on with their life. They didn't try and convince me with every drop of energy that they had. There were even times when my friends exerted peer pressure on me to try good things, like sports, or vegetarianism, or scotch. 

So recently when a friend texted me something to the effect of "the new Sharon Van Etten album is really good," and I'd been interested in spending some time with her new record, I let that peer pressure push me in a direction I may have otherwise not explored.

Van Etten's been at this a while, though she's only been releasing music via labels for a decade. Her newest release, Remind Me Tomorrow, finds her in new territory. Five years since her last album and she's had a son, gone back to school, been an actress, and scored a movie. What's really changed about this new album is that she put down the guitar.

Usually when I hear something like "put down the guitar" said anywhere near someone that's made their career on playing said guitar, I get worried. But I gotta tell you - that peer pressure was right. It's good; not great, but real good.

It's chock full of lush arrangements by producer extraordinaire John Congelton (you may know him as producer of other acts such as St. Vincent, Explosions in the Sky, The Decemberists, Wye Oak, and many others) and he's a master at taking artists into new worlds. Free to experiment with synths, organs, and piano (but not completely forgetting her guitar) Van Etten journeys into sonic worlds previously undiscovered for her. It's the perfect blend of music you can't stop paying attention to while simultaneously music that becomes an underscoring for your day that you listen to five or six times in one day (hi there Monday!) and it lends the perfect note to an otherwise swamped day.

So let your friends talk you into something tomorrow. Maybe it'll be good music. Hopefully it won't be crack. Because Crack Is Wack, yo.