Nore Jane Struthers Carnival. I have been reading reviews of the new Love Language album. It is beloved, mostly. Strange. Stranger still that I agree with the Popmatters review which says nothing at all in that usual real record reviewer manner(apparently this voiceless writer has won a Canadian writing prize and I bet his parents are proud) but also realizes the record is a bit of a disappointment. This is the difficulty with expectations. I have set the bar low. I consistently travel beneath. I don't know anything at all about Nora Jane Struthers. I didn't have any expectations when I plugged in the high fidelity pink earbuds I was overjoyed with my undiminished lack of expectations. There are loads of banjos, violins played like fiddles and she's a real peach I'm certain. While Caitlin Rose is searching for some sort of authenticity at the end of a cigarette it feels that this record is more of a document of an idyll. The carnival, mama's boys and a jolly violin underpinning the well mannered stylings. It is rather excellent all in all and were I a member of the Popmatters staff I would now quote four lines of lyrics and discuss their penetrating insight into the human condition but I have terrible ears for sentiment. I love the wordless bits going about just now and I am convinced that only the most confident writers will substitute a whoa oh oh for their bathroom scribbled poetry. Second track The Carnival, brilliant. Cough medicine hidden deep beneath the sink to keep that breathy elegance on the first verse and then the rush of a chorus before the banjo walks us down the promenade. These all seem to be second records, these country albums that I have only just discovered my desire for. Nora is a proper looking young lady, lips painted on, hair do done just so, a fashion blog on her website even, all of which betrays her poshness. Possibly a podcast on events in the middle east in the near future? She's an english major and sounds it, from New York University so I suppose that makes her more folk than country doesn't it. Listen With Your Heart is playing just now, and her voice is wonderful and what I am discovering when making my shallow foray into country music is that the cliche is not dead in country music. While innuendo may be king on the pop chart in Nashville a good cliche can speak to the multitudes quicker than a tweet comparing Zooey Deschanel's eyebrows to a Luna Moth caterpillar. Am I saying that country fans are simple? They are. I am. Love songs don't need to be clever. Sure we love David Scott and his unending string of metaphors for that which defines most of us but there are moments when you want to sing at the top of your lungs(cliche) the most obvious proclamations of love love love. "Twirl me around Johnny", is she ironic? Do people in New York resent that question? But as the capital of heathenism in our god fearing country they must expect such scrutiny. Does anyone in New york accept the modifier "earnest" as anything other than an epithet? But then Nora moved to Nashville. She may have felt her sincerity out of place in the artifice of a hipster scene of "folk" singers in New York. This is all speculation. Speculation is my currency, I spend it immodestly. I used to spend all of my moments when writing about a record attempting to catch the rhythm of a record while I wrote and now in my old age I have turned to making obscure unfounded accusations and littering my posts with topical posts that relay my superficiality to full effect. When not listening to Nora I have been listening to podcasts on my commute. I am dreaming of the day soon, in 2016, when the light rail station opens near to us, just 1/2 mile from our front door, and I can listen to the Divine Comedy's Commuter Love properly for the first time with a french novel and a decent side part and fond memories of the days when I would listen to Nora Jane when I was not listening to podcasts. I have just recently finished the History of Mathematics series from the BBC and am desperate to pick up my Diff Eq's text and work my way back into the favor of the gods of Primes and Chaos and multiple infinities. How to distinguish between madness and pure mathematics? Unknown. Perhaps because i lack discipline and I don't actually resemble a mathematician I could just write a screenplay about Nicolas Bourbaki. Hugh Jackman as Andre Weil in passionate embrace with a dangerous bend and Nora Jane in the corner in a small cameo a new dress, featured on her blog in a movie tie in, and her song Let Me Fall playing over the final credits. But she's an English major so we would be Brighton instead of Paris and we would run around tennis courts with inaccurate Austen quotes written on our foreheads and we would smile because we're oh so much more clever than anyone who would bring up Lie theory in decent company. Party Line introduces a male voice in the background, a song about antiquated technology. My Uncle Ivan had a party line, you had to identify your phone calls based on the ring and anyone on the line could pick up and listen to the conversation. But when I was 14 I only remember the nudity on canadian television soundtracked, oddly, by the Cocteau Twins Lorelei. The party line was also in Canada. Chatham, Ontario. I feel prim and saddled by the reluctance to get too saucy with the cheerful demur stylings in my ears. It isn't challenging. It is soulful. Isn't it? I was lamenting Caitlin Rose not having lived it before singing about it just the other month but now I feel a strange kinship with Nora Jane Struthers. She's an approximation, a facsimile and I find it marvelous because of my general ignorance of this sort of banjo led folk music. I am also one more for the uptight bookish crowd than the head wrapped around a veil of tears cried through a filter of second hand smoke and stale beer. Two Women is the epic centerpiece? It could be. It is an ode to sorrow, the fabric of loneliness stretched over a spare frame. William Lee is begging for a reference(thank you podcast). But as I am walking across the room attempting to keep my laptop from becoming unplugged there just smoker's voices coming from the television and my rush to the restroom is made uneasy. Aging has never been her friend indeed. This track is a bit of a drag, I suppose it is meant to reveal the depth of a fashion blogger turned folk chanteuse but it just sounds a bit drab. The party line wouldn't be listening in on this one and the last bit of horses drinking champagne might have had those lonely enough to have held on to scratch their heads. Count my cliches. Orwell claimed that if you recognize the simile or metaphor that you have just written that you are compelled by good taste to delete it. I have no taste at all. I break most of the 6 rules in most of these inane entries. But I am not a barbarian. Truly. Country music would not count George Orwell as a fan I am sure. He was surely a jazz man, or Cole Porter? And the idea of an english major making a pop record would be close to sacrilege. I don't know anything at all about George Orwell. I haven't gotten to that podcast just yet. I have read his account of the Spanish Civil War though and of course we re-enacted Animal Farm on the playgrounds of our youth. I may soon become a father and I will let my children know that not all things are possible, that life is unfair but drams can come true if you work hard and you don't live life afraid. I have, for most of my life, lived with fear. I am determined that this will change when the day comes when I have to stand up to the scrutiny of my own progeny, when they look at their father and judge I will convince them of the quality of otherness in a life lived in a non-extraordinary manner. Nora could be exhibit A. This is a wonderful record. I am enjoying it immensely and I have found little darkness in the sentiments that are coalescing in my mind around the notes that fill my ears. the songs are probably too long. But this is the Nashville where I would dream in. Well tended landscapes, horses in the field, children with long, unruly curls and everyone dressed in white, brilliant white and Scorpio Murtlock lives in the abandoned firehouse just down the street. male voice weaves in an out near the ned of the record, unremarkably, but it is not unpleasant. Because the songs are somewhat protracted I find my head moving on, to Howland Isalnd, to Jarvis Island and shirtless photos of tiny Hawaiian men as forgotten colonists for the imperial spearhead in the south Pacific. Could I move the scene of action in my blockbuster screenplay about French mathematicians to a desert island in the Pacific with native Hawaiians playing the foil in this lord of the flies adaptation where Emmy Noether's name is used in vain while Jean Dieudonne reaches deep into the chest of a young boy and thrusts the still beating heart into the night sky to satisfy the gods of Mo'ai which have read the shape of the waves and sailed their canoes to this unchristian land and the handclaps in unison match the melody of Travelin'On and pixie dust covers the latest thriftstore book mark of Nora's.