[Les]

The first time I heard the album I was interested, not altogether enchanted - but I felt challenged..compelled to understand what was going on. Because on some visceral level it just seemed clear to me, on first listen, that there was something deep going on here. It seemed discombobulating at first, but by the time I reached the end of the disc each time, I felt the heaviness of the feelings. It's hard to explain, but at some point - probably on the fifth listen - it just clicked in. I had this overwhelming notion like, "I really get this" -- the controlled, but straining chaos of the music & added sounds paired with the unencumbered, unprettied, naked, raw depth of emotion...the overarching themes... the realness of it all just suddenly revealed itself and was so palpable. It became an experience more than a mere record and has remained so since the original epiphany.

I totally see this album as a story. I don't know if I can exactly rate them, but I'll give it a shot --

1. I Want You

So wildly honest in its dark obsessive love. The elements that make this so great are the two narrative voices - the man who saved himself vs. the man who didn't want to be saved. I love the spazzy vocals and guitar playing on this.

2/3. Bang the Drum & DW Suite

"I got this deep down sorrow that won't let go, I just don't think I'm tough enough..." So much sorrow to try to find shelter from, so that when DW begins, never has the abandonment of reality seemed so warm and welcoming and unthreatening. The sense of isolation and the chimes and echoes and wind, which should be cold, are somehow softened and made fuzzy and so inviting. But then the capper, by the end of DW, is the return to sanity so peacefully and beautifully with understanding, love & joy (absorbing the sorrow as best as possible).

4. I Must Go

When your best efforts to get through to another aren't good enough, and you've faced that fact and rediscovered your individuality enough to let go. It's hard, but it's also a celebration, as reflected in the great harmonies.

5/6. Play In The Rain & Play In The Rain (Continued)

At the low ebb of loneliness and looking for someone/something to feel complete. As the first version starts he's timid and scared and searching, but as the second version explodes and becomes totally, rhythmically hypnotic, he's found it. Part two is enthralling somehow. Lindsey once said "music is more connected to things inside than speech"; I think instantly of this song when I see that quote.

7. Loving Cup

A plea for someone to return to reality... very passionate and perhaps more openly sexually intense than anything previously recorded by him. That makes it simultaneously erotic and funny, which is definitely part of the appeal.

8. Go Insane

I'm surprised myself to see this coming in so low on the list. Maybe it's just because it's the one off of the album that everybody knows best, so I somehow let is slip down here out of my familiarity with it. Much as I love the reworking of this, I still like it in its original form quite a lot too.

9. Slow Dancing

My least favorite, I suppose - just a little too straightforward, if you can believe that. Though the closing revives it for me. I love Lindsey's exchange with Mary Turner about the closing of this song in his Off the Record interview in 1984. He's quietly but so utterly delighted with where the song took her imagination.

There's always something new to discover on this album. For the first year I had it I thought of it as not being a guitar-oriented album. It's not guitar-oriented like Cradle is, but I find now that I think there is a ton of guitar splashed all over this thing that is just used in really interesting ways.