[.ca] Days of Open Hand

shimmering, lucid, wondering, wandering...:
This is my favorite Suzanne Vega album. I'm puzzled that most of her fans feel differently. I wasn't as fond of the quirky, edgy Mitchell Froom production on the next two albums... I really enjoyed this one much more, the spaciousness and shadow, the sense of underwater floating or otherwordly journeying that moves through songs like "Those Whole Girls," "Big Space" and "Rusted Pipe." Suzanne and her keyboardist Anton Sanko produced a rich and poetic trail of songs here. A song I especially love on this CD is "Predictions", which features slow guitar, echoey synth, and percussive rhythm over which Suzanne recites, as a poem, many ways to tell the future. The song offers no actual predictions... it only beckons you to feel that universal desire for omniscience, the urge to visit the altar, to roll dice, reveal cards. The top 40 single, "Book of Dreams", was more poppy and neatly upbeat than the rest of the disc. I recall reading an interview with Suzanne when this album came out, and she mentioned listening to XTC's "Oranges and Lemons." I hear their influence in this track. This may have misled and disappointed buyers at the time; the single wasn't as compelling as "Luka," and much of the rest of the CD was veiled in ambiguities. The closing track "Pilgrimage" is simply gorgeous. It builds to become almost anthemic, a sure path, a promise: "I'm coming to you, I'll be there in time..." which I've come to imagine as an arc back around like outstretched arms to the tired, fever-dreaming girl who began the disc with an imploring waltz, "Oh, mom... I wonder when I will be waking... there's so much to do, and i'm tired of sleeping." Beautiful.

Beautiful and disturbing:
Disturbing, cryptic, mystical, haunting. This is indeed Suzanne Vega's darkest recording, and all of her recordings are dark in some way. Nonetheless, when compared with her previous two releases, this CD seemed a drastic departure into a world of dreams, fear, mystery, perhaps even insanity. I'm shaking my head at the reviews describing the nightmarish "Tired of Sleeping" as a pop song or lullaby - no. Ms. Vega experimented with atmospheric sounds here in a way that captivated me and perhaps anticipated her next CD with its more dramatic experiments with industrial sounds. My sense is that this is her most emotionally courageous material; that it is almost a stream of subconsciousness. It speaks in the language of dreams instead of the poetry of the waking. I am another of those for whom this is their least favorite Suzanne Vega CD, but I am also among those who find it challenging and hauntingly beautiful. In the end, I am more comfortable with more familiar feelings about divorce on "Songs in Red and Gray" or with the ever-so-cool music on 99.9Fº. If you are more open to being uncomfortable, even disturbed, you may find this a truly remarkable work.

• Tired of Sleeping
• Men in a War
• Rusted Pipe
• Book of Dreams
• Institution Green
• Those Whole Girls (Run in Grace)
• Room off the Street
• Big Space
• Predictions
• Fifty-Fifty Chance
• Pilgrimage