This Baltimore singer-songwriter’s sixth studio album is a welcome antidote to the plethora of brash, attention-seeking modern music that is sorely lacking in subtlety or emotional restraint.
Cerbone explains: “This collection is about people trying to find their way while carrying things that hold them back, like trauma, loss, and sadness.”
The songs draw from family stories and her experiences growing up in New Jersey. For example, she reflects on how difficult it must have been for her grandmother to cope with losing her mother to the Spanish flu when she was only 5 or 6 (The Missing Year). She muses on her own father’s love for another woman after her parent’s divorced (What Country Are We In?).
Good Time Charlie is written from the perspective of her grandmother who is drawn to a man who seems to offer a way to escape the monotony of her work in a factory despite his reputation as a ladies man. This was the man she subsequently married and he is the protagonist of Where Are You Going So Late? the question being one asked of his late night jaunts most likely to meet women.
The sparse arrangements and intimate vocals owe much to the involvement of the mighty Mark Kozelek who produces, plays guitar and adds backing vocals. A radically stripped-down cover of ELO’s Can't Get It Out Of My Head is the same vein as Kozelek’s redefinition of AC/DC songs on his brilliant ‘What’s Next To The Moon’ album.
Cerbone says that Elliot Smith is a big influence and another source of inspiration can be gleaned from the closing track, Tied to Sorrow, which is a tribute to Daniel Johnston’s music.
Whatever the muses, it is unmistakably her own voice we hear in these highly personal songs which draw you in to make you feel a privileged confidant.
