Lisa Cerbone: We Still Have Sky
03/24/2025
The misty delicately flowering branch of this album cover is an excellent visual representation of its sound:
Some music forces itself on your attention by volume and busy-ness, and in pop music a steady and very assertive beat. Some does it by quietness and simplicity, causing you to grow quiet and attentive yourself--as if a mockingbird has come and perched on the railing of your porch, and you don't even take a sip of your coffee or turn the page of your book, lest you scare it away. On my first hearing of "Tomorrow," the first song on this album, I found myself similarly stopped cold, hanging on a finger-picked guitar pattern. A simple repeated figure in the bottom strings supports the song, the top strings comparatively faint. A distant electric guitar adds very restrained accents. Then the singer begins:
We drive for the longest time
We don't have a destination
Gradually through the song other sounds emerge and increase. Halfway through, distant backing vocals are added, and the electric guitar steps forth briefly.
The lyrics introduce an uneasy note:
Maybe there will come a time
When we can speak about it
Uneasy and mysterious: no more is said about this thing that they--the "we" seems to be two people--are not going to speak about now or anytime soon, possibly ever. Are they a romantic couple, or some other sort of pair? We don't know; we only know that there is some kind of intimacy between them.
That uneasy note appears often throughout the album. After I'd heard it a couple of times I was sure that many of the songs were hinting at and talking around some really severe trauma. My chief argument for that view was "Song for Susanna":
He took me
Over the line
Locked in the back
Of his truck
But I retreated from that when I noticed on the album's Bandcamp page a note that the song is about the experience of "being an immigrant in the United States." So the journey in the truck was not an abduction, but a clandestine journey across (presumably) the southern border, in the hands of strangers to whom the passenger, severed from her home, is cargo transported for a fee.
Still, there is an awful lot left unsaid in these songs, and I can't shake the feeling that behind that reticence there is something quite painful. Or perhaps not a thing, but several things. "The Waterfront Is Safe" is pretty clearly about some kind of domestic violence situation, though it seems to be someone else's story: it's all "you" and "she," not "I."
Or maybe I'm way off base, and these are just the ordinary troubles of ordinary life. If so, if the atmosphere here is merely subdued, it is certainly more melancholy or somber than otherwise. It's all very intimate and personal, yet reserved. Shy, even.
Musically, variations from the basic approach of that first song are pretty slight, but are enough to keep it interesting, at least if you're listening closely. On several tracks a strong but restrained backing vocal is provided by Mark Kozelek, who also produced the album. He is, I'm told, the mastermind of the very widely respected band Red House Painters. (I think "widely respected" tends to suggest that the artist is more admired by critics than by the masses, which is often a good thing.) I've only heard a little of their work but would like to hear more, and of Kozelek's later band or project, Sun Kil Moon. I'll venture a guess that his involvement is indicative of the regard in which Cerbone's music is held by her fellow musicians.
"Mary's Face" has a touch of percussion: a single heavy drumbeat and another, lighter sound that I can't identify. There's a bass and a decorative banjo. In "You Led Me Down to the Water" the guitar is strummed; it's the most vigorous rhythm on the album. The only other song where the guitar is strummed is the title song.
Offhand I can't think of another artist whose music is as quiet and simple as this. In comparison, a gentle band like the Innocence Mission is like metal. Thinking of the Innocence Mission brings out another comparison: on hearing the first notes of Lisa Cerbone's voice, I immediately thought of Karen Peris's: both have a slightly little-girl quality. Words like "delicate" and "fragile" naturally come to mind, but they're misleading: this kind of delicacy requires strength. And though the singing on this album is restrained, sometimes almost whispery, the voice can be more powerful, as you can hear in this live performance of "Tomorrow," which seems all around somehow tougher than the album version--far from aggressive, but still not quite as retiring.
Most of the songs are at least in part addressed to another person, a "you" who remains somewhat mysterious to the listener, though that person surely knows what the speaker isn't saying. Most mysterious is Natalie, to whom "You Were Wrong About Me" is addressed. Who is Natalie? Friend? Sister (my guess)? Something else? And in what way exactly was she wrong? Maybe it's just me, but I think I hear the rhythm of a familiar childhood taunt in the title, which is also the chorus: "NAH nah NAH nah NAAHna." The next-to-last syllable is longer than the others: "YOU were WRONG aBOUT me."
But the "you" is most often someone to whom the speaker is expressing love and gratitude, notably in "You Led Me Down the Water" and "Cold Dark Night," the latter of which carries that suggestion of trauma:
I am so happy
you were here...
Where would I have gone
If not for your quiet kindness
I don’t think I’d survive
But no more is said of that.
Whatever trouble lies behind these lyrics, it has been overcome. Not necessarily defeated, but endured, accepted, and put in its place, as the title song, "We Still Have Sky," which closes the album, says:
We still have sky
The sun, the stars on our side
You know,
You know,
We have it so much better
I find that I've emphasized the lyrics here. They seem to be what really sets the album apart, as it is not unusual or extraordinary in purely musical terms. Someone who doesn't respond to it as I did might say it's a fairly ordinary singer-songwriter, voice-and-guitar work, though it is exceptionally well produced in a minimal, subtle way. But the lyrics make it take hold, which I guess is because they fit the music so well. I don't mean that in the sense of perfect construction; in fact they have a sort of artless quality--they don't rhyme very often and are strung somewhat casually across melody and rhythm. What I mean is: the other day I felt obliged to explain to my wife that I haven't sung "Desolation Row" several times recently because I'm depressed, but because the structure of the song--the surging quality of the rhythm and the chord changes, the fit of the lyrics to the tune--makes singing it feel very satisfying. These songs are not like that.
But they compel in a different way, and not by the words alone--it's just as much the voice that sings them. I wasn't sure on first hearing that I was going to like the voice, but now I can't imagine the songs in any other. And I can say with something very close to certainty that if you like "Tomorrow" you'll like the whole album
A little background: I had never heard of Lisa Cerbone before I got an email from her announcing the release of this album, but she has been releasing music for some thirty years, five albums since the early 1990s. She has, obviously, never achieved great fame, but has not been entirely ignored, either: according to her Allmusic biography --proof in itself that she isn't completely unknown--she has had some very appreciative fans who have good reason to be glad she persevered, even though she doesn't make a living at it. She works as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher at Mt. St. Mary's University and Seminary in Maryland.
I don't remember where I picked up this odd bit of information, since my acquaintance with mathematics is very slight, but one of the great ones, Carl Friedrich Gauss, had as motto for his published works the Latin phrase pauca sed matura--few but ripe. I suspect that description applies to Lisa Cerbone's recorded work. Certainly, if others are in a class with this one. I'm especially interested in hearing Ordinary Days, which is also a collaboration with Mark Kozolek.
Bandcamp page (buy the album!)