Review Summary: I gave it all to you, and you took it when you left here
I lost my dog a year ago, almost to the day. It remains the biggest loss I’ve encountered in my young twenty-one years of life. The troughs of grief are deep, and it can be immensely difficult to claw your way out, and I think some part of you always stays there, down in the pits of grief, when you lose someone close to you. A family pet can be that entity, especially when she is part of your family for twelve years (more than half my life). So, perhaps that has something to do with my immediate adoration of Orenda Fink’s third solo record,
Blue Dream, since it was inspired heavily by the loss of
her dog, and the bewildering dreams she began decoding in the wake of the departure.
Fink was questioning how we can love someone so deeply if we know it can only end in death. She wondered where that love goes. Does it leave forever? Or does it hang around like a specter? Pining for answers and trying to take hold of the sadness, Fink began writing her new record.
Blue Dream is suffused with this sadness. It is latent in almost every corner, from the melodies to the lyrics, from the vocals to the instrumentation. However, it also contains shards of light and hope that pierce through the grief, which flawlessly mimics the healing process. In the wake of a profound loss, we are thoroughly damaged, but we also have moments of joy, and both are important and deserving of respect.
As one of half of Azure Ray, Fink crafted gorgeous, minimal dream pop with her musical partner and good friend Maria Taylor. Their songs were small, intimate stories of love and loss and growing and questions. Their self-titled debut remains one of my all-time favorite records; a perfect little morsel. Their output has been less prolific in recent years, and the girls have branched off into solo careers. While I have followed both women with respect, I have favored Fink’s solo material; it’s rawer, more experimental, more spiritual. It felt like a dark but sensible continuation of her work wirh Azure Ray (she is, after all, the one who gave us songs like “We Are Mice”). But now, with
Blue Dream, Fink has produced her finest work to date by a mile.
Beginning with washes of cymbal that give way into a thudding, steady synth-infused beat, “Ace of Cups” starts the album with probably its most single-ready moment. But even this song is thick with tension and mood, excellently setting the stage. It is also, curiously, one of the more oblique songs on the record, with Fink refraining, “When you are happy, you are loved / You can fill up my cup.” Other moments on the album are a little more readily visible, like the pristine “You Can Be Loved,” whose stringy guitars remind me almost of a Modern Mouse tune. There’s the stream-of-conscious recollections of the title track, which could have jammed out for four more minutes with no complaint from me. Then there’s the lush, hooky “You Are a Mystery” that contains a fabulous use for the musical saw, reminding listeners of the canine spirit that is lying under the feet of the whole record.
But this is nothing compared to the two songs that more readily address the inspirational loss. First, there’s the stripped-bare “Poor Little Bear,” which Fink sounds as though she is singing directly to her departed friend and no one else. “My little bear / You can’t be lost / It isn’t fair,” she sings with a heartbreakingly childlike yearning. At the climax, she belts out, “In the moonlight / In the daytime / I think of your name / My poor little bear,” and the tears just start flowing right there, and it’s all done in under 2 ½ minutes. And then there’s “Holy Holy,” the best song she’s ever recorded. Spectral, spider-web guitars that sparkle like dew, and a classic-sounding melody give way to lines like “We come into this world all alone / And we leave with not much more.” The pain and sorrow is fresh, and when the chorus of “Holy, holy, my love” rings out in close, indelible harmony, followed by a perfect keyboard bloom, it leaves me weeping, reaching out for the answers Fink was trying to grasp.
The struggle of losing a loved one is almost impossible to understand unless you’ve been through it yourself. Not to put down art about death from people who haven’t experienced it as profoundly as they are writing it, but there is a certain knowledge that comes with feeling it first hand, even when it leaves us feeling like we know nothing. Fink may not have found all her answers, but as the album closes with the bright, hopeful “All Hearts Will Beat Again,” you feel confident that she has reached solid ground, and sometimes, as I can attest, that’s really the best answer we can find.
Final rating: 9.3
Key Tracks: You Can Be Loved, This is a Part of Something Greater, Holy Holy, Poor Little Bear
