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| Five Complex Honest Lullabies |
| band: Jansen, Laura |
| Album: Trauma |
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"I really don't mind if you sit this one out.
My words but a whisper -- your deafness a SHOUT.
I may make you feel but I can't make you think."
~ from Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" written by Ian Anderson
"We are strong, no one can tell us were wrong
Searchin our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield."
~ From Pat Benetar's "Love Is A Battlefield"
Laura Jansen is more and other than beautiful. Her seductive sounding lullabies are not to be taken lightly. The five songs on "Trauma" were given away at the CD release party like candy or vitamins from a holistic mother. As in each of these songs, what appears to have been given freely is also a challenge. I wound up with two copies of this EP without being greedy. Perhaps Laura, like Diogenes the Cynic, is looking for an honest man. I don't know. There was more in that EP than an audition for stardom. This music is looking to make some things felt. As the prodigy in Jethro Tull's This As A Brick wrote at a fictitious tender age: "I might make you feel, but I can't make you think."
Laura Jansen has the unfortunate malady of being a singer songwriter keyboard player, with that wall of instrument between her and an audience. I saw her sing at The Hotel Café, while waiting for another band. It was my habit to come early, because you never know what music might be waiting behind the door from the lobby to the bar. There is an artificial separation and lots of printed circuits between a keyboard player and the live listener that can only be surmounted by the song. Laura managed to bridge the gap, but it's a hurdle not to be seen much behind the thing that produces the music.
Months later, I drove 2,500 miles in a move from the City of Angeles to Ohio with a brand new CD player to keep me company. Laura Jansen's "Trauma" was there and it's five songs were responsible for getting me through a couple hundred miles of that drive with increasing interest. I was charmed and caught a little off guard. A song shouldn't be what it seems and these were fully certified tunes with enigmatic images of relationships subtle enough to make metaphors more than impressive comparisons. I thought for some miles there was a hidden anger in these ballads and lullabies. I don't necessarily know the deeper meaning of these lyrics, but I'm better for the effort. There's plenty more than understanding in these portraits of love after the free pass of the honeymoon period. I hope I crack these puzzles properly. I do believe they speak the truth. I'm convinced these songs describe an intimate understanding of intimacy and my comprehension may be tested in times soon to come. I have the patience not to know the whole story, but to know enough to want to hear it again. I think that will come in handy. My relationship to Laura Jansen's sweet sounding and complex descriptions of what it means to love somebody are just about exactly as complex as what it takes to walk that road my ownself. Patience with the ambiguous ironic is at least one of the prerequisites. I accept that the challenge of finding the dark at the bottom of these heart felt songs is boot camp for any enlisted as soljahs of love. I have done as Laura suggests. "Surrender, that's what you have to do." The effort is rewarded. There are five good songs on this "Trauma" EP. I'd have settled for one.
THE SONGS:
1. BELLS begins smartly with a plucked guitar like the ringing of a bell, develops the sound with a vibraphone with its tubular "bells" and doesn't resort to anything literal with a clapper. A song called "Bells" and yet the bells are "in my heart." Even the bell keyboard setting late in the song is an echoed suggestion of the bells felt inside. "I wish you could hear them," Laura suggests in the song. The lyrics talk of a rope swing over the river. Laura correctly describes the waking moment when something needs to be said without words because "the sky cracking in my heart" and there are bells she can hear and "I just thought that you should hear the bells." Do you feel it too? "Send me a sign. One if by land and two if by sea," because there is a sense of an American revolution having begun this morning as dawn brings comfort of knowing some deep feeling needs to be shown. I wasn't wrong to be so charmed by this song. This is more than cute happy talk. There are times a good feeling wants to be shared without being described. That would be too much. Like making strings ring or keys chime out instead of resorting to the prop sound in the song. There is beauty and some wisdom in choices made with the heart.
2. SOLJAH has a nursery rhyme or lullaby tone for what could be a love as a battlefield song. As though in answer to Pat Benetar's botched anthem, Laura suggests "surrender, that's what you got to do. I wanna be a soljah for your love." How better than in an unguarded comforting form to lull the intended listener to a complex, and just possibly ironic metaphorical song about love. "This is the truth, and the truth is the love" isn't a simple idea. "My eyes have finally adjusted to the light down here below," she says perhaps waiting for some acknowledgment of the inequity in the relationship. When "the music was revealed" it became clear that "This is the truth and the truth is the love. Surrender, that's what you gotta do." This song will mean what it means to each listener a different story. Laura's ability to make ambiguous the submission of this woman who feels "like a broken train" with a heart that "moved without a beat" gives this song something special as love songs go. A good poem should give the reader something to wrestle with after the reading. This song has that.
3. ELIJAH has, once again, the sweet tone not to be mistaken for a seductive ditty. "Somebody save me" doesn't sound like a happy moment in any relationship. This is the song for those of us who have lived with a self-righteous savior of a so and so. Smart to choose Elijah. He's the empty seat at any Passover Sadir. Maybe it's better that way. What must it have been like for Mrs. Elijah. I'll bet he would have spent his childhood on prescribed Ritalin and probably was an argument for corporal punishment at the age of 13. I feel the need to say a prayer. "Lord save us from saviors."
4. TRAUMA is politically incorrect, thoughtful, and somewhat provoking. "Trauma by the side of the road" but she drives right by. "I don't want to be afraid, and I don't want to shy away" is enough to say things are a little rocky this relationship. I'm convinced that earlier "surrender" line was more than a touch ironic. Laura is every lover boy's worst nightmare: A seriously attractive woman in any hair color you choose with enough insight to see through the façade. Watch out you Romeo's at The Hotel Cafe. You can't tell the pushovers without a program. This one has a bite.
5. SIGNAL is a mixed symbol, starting with the misdirect of a heart monitor. This is a piano ballad in waltz time, and that generally means it describes a cyclical series of events. This dance has a touch of "They Shoot Horses Don't They" in the end-of-a-marathon slow pace of "listening, I'm really listening" and "I'm running out of time." Sure, "something's going down" but Laura is looking for some indication "hopefully" that she is "not alone." I've often thought beauty is like being a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. There's a party going on, but you kinda don't feel you are going to have a good time. To get the signals straight, you might have to be a person of substance in touch with the way things are. Laura may be lonely in Los Angeles. It only takes one exception to prove a rule, or to make all other love appropriately insubstantial. Hope Laura is not alone. Best wishes. Nice work.
The players on Trauma as listed on Laura Jansen's myspace page:
Soljah, Bells, Trauma and the whole goshdarn EP were produced by the brilliant Rob Giles and recorded in a canyon. with coyotes. The talented Mr. Oren Hadar threw pixie dust at the computer and made it sparkly. The mysterious and svelt Laura Jansen played and sang to the great amusement of the hummingbirds.
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