Indigo Girls - Beauty Queen Sister

The Indigo Girls have been making music together for more than 20 years. On this, their fourteenth studio album, they seem to have happened upon a new approach to their time-tested harmonies and folk-pop energy. No doubt, their work is still heavily driven by their duo collaboration, but the full band effort on this disc seems even stronger than in the past. There are harmonies thicker than just their two voices, hand claps which seem performed by a room full of people, and percussion syncopated in such a way as to create a bigger sound and scope. The result is an excellent collection of new, timely material.

Whether it's age, experience, a spark of new creative energy, these times we live in, or some combination of all four, the Indigo Girls seem to have opened a whole new door with Beauty Queen Sister. Though the album kicks off with an aching song about love's regrets ("Share the Moon"), and is full of songs about deeply emotional relationships, there's something about the disc which strikes me as less introspective than some of their previous efforts. This is interesting, since it was produced by Peter Collins - the same producer responsible for Rites of Passage (1992 | compare prices) and Swamp Ophelia (1994 | compare prices).

Unlike those efforts, which were focused heavily on the intense energy between the talents of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, Beauty Queen Sister is more richly focused on the songs themselves, and the stories they tell. While these songs could likely stand on their own with just the two women's voices and a couple of acoustic guitars, the fuller instrumentation feels more appropriate.

Stylistically, the pendulum swings from bubblegummy pop-rock to torch songs and folkier singer-songwriter tunes. What's most consistent is the way the band and the duo's various guests work together to build their sonic landscapes.

By the time the Girls get to "We Get to Feel It All" (purchase/download) - an easy and early highlight of the disc - Ray's backing vocals behind Saliers' lead sounds like a full chorus. Much of the verses on "War Rugs" (purchase/download)seem backed by the same chorus. Indeed, there are quite a few guests on this disc. Luke Bulla (WPA, Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs) lent his fiddle to "Yoke," while Lucy Wainwright Roche, Viktor Krauss, and the Atlanta-based band the Shadowboxers all pitched in with vocals.

Indeed the spirit of the album seems summed up in Saliers' lyric, "Can't do it alone though we've tried and tried and tried." Though the context of this lyric seems focused on the world community, the concept is practiced artistically throughout the album. It's a universal statement which rings true on so many levels - from the intimacy of a personal relationship to the making of music, to the orchestrating of a worldwide movement fueled by common people.

It's the latter theme with which Ray takes the lead on "War Rugs" - a tribute to the world community, about the tight connections we all now have thanks to the internet. With lyrics which are at once sensitive, sincere, and biting, Ray addresses the globe-sweeping spirit of people's movements:

Young Egypt seized the moment and brought that bastard down
You've got technology and you've got archaeology
We treated you like hunters until you kicked the goal
Now we're claiming you for our team 'cause what do we know?
Oh, we're all growing up together...

As previously noted, the disc starts with a love song and has several other moments of sentimentality about intimate relationships. But, after a few listens, even these seem like open love letters to the world. "Birthday Song" (purchase/download) even ceases to be a lament about expressing one's feelings to a lover and, in this context, begins to feel more like a statement about being present in the world, in general. ("I have nothing to give except for to live like the person you know me to be.")

I suppose with the balance of personal songs and topical tunes, you can listen to this album with either focus in mind. Those looking for music which commiserates with their broken heart will certainly find enough company on this disc. But the timeliness of the topical tunes is rather unignorable for anyone prone to paying attention to the news. Perhaps I'm a person more inclined to focus on the fine line between the personal and political, but the disc's tendency to tread that line - trading introspection for a community vibe - seems its greatest asset. Indeed, as Saliers sings in one of the album's pinnacle lyrical moments: "Nothing much has changed in this modern age / and it won't until the pain's not worth the pleasure."