July 18, 2004: a review of The Innocence Mission's Befriended. I removed some obsolete links and information about eMusic.com, which is still around and to which I still subscribe, though it's changed a lot since 2004.
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I love that album. I think the lyrics are deceptively simple. The more you listen to them, the more you hear. I almost typed "deceptively symbol" before and that might almost be what I'm talking about.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/12/2012 at 01:23 PM
Yeah, I think it is what you're talking about. A happy accident (your phrase).
Posted by: Mac | 01/12/2012 at 04:33 PM
So, do you still concur with your judgments at that time?
I love that record too, but I don't think I could have explained why as well as you have. "I Never Knew You From the Sun" is one of my very favourite Innocence Mission songs.
Posted by: Craig | 01/12/2012 at 07:50 PM
Mine too, although once I start going through the songs in my mind, I think, "Oh, well I really love that one, too--and that one--and that one."
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/12/2012 at 08:51 PM
I haven't heard it for a while, but I would probably still concur. I think I like the next one, We Walk(ed?) In Song just as much, or nearly. I haven't really listened that much to the most recent one.
I don't know, but I would guess that Karen Peris was probably also a pretty serious literature/writing student in college.
Posted by: Mac | 01/12/2012 at 10:01 PM
Befriended and We Walked in Song are the two albums that I have. What I really like about WWiS is that it's an album of songs about a family: a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, and, I think, her mother who has died. Who else does this?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/13/2012 at 06:17 AM
There may be some but I couldn't name one off the top of my head. I only say that because I've read reviews of albums that are described somewhat similarly. I very much doubt anyone else has approached it with her kind of sensibility, though.
I've often wondered who some of the people in the Befriended songs are. Who's that on the runway tomorrow, for instance?
I was asking myself, after I posted that last night, why I haven't listened to their most recent one very much. It's partly because I'm overloaded with music, but even more because I want to sit and *listen* to it, without a lot of distraction, and that's very hard for me to do these days. I don't want to just play it in the car on the way to work and miss half of it because my car is pretty noisy.
Posted by: Mac | 01/13/2012 at 09:27 AM
I've wondered that, too.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/13/2012 at 10:12 AM
I have We Walked in Song, but not Befriended. I put it in my amazon cart, which I will purchase on pay day (it currently has 17 items in it:) ).
Posted by: ex pat | 01/13/2012 at 02:04 PM
!! I'm pretty sure that if you like the former, you'll like the latter.
Posted by: Mac | 01/13/2012 at 04:22 PM