Label: Badman Recording Co.

Release Date: September 2, 2003

Website: www.theinnocencemission.com

The Innocence Mission - befriended
Darryl Duer

The latest offering from the Innocence Mission will finally be followed up with a tour that begins in late March or so. The album, befriended, is a collection of ten songs. Most of the reviews of this album are, forgive the cheekiness, glowing. The critics seem to be saying things like dreamy, ethereal, melodic and bright. While these may be surface responses, I suggest after several months with the disc that there is something deeper and more profound going on here.

At this point it is necessary to go past the formula of marching you through the songs themselves. In a word, they are sublime. The more crucial experience are their strung-together impact. This sixth album seems to do many of the things that the previous ones did. (I'd have to throw out the first two perhaps; things didn't really start happening with this band until Glow several years ago.) The Innocence Mission, as their name tenderly implies, seem to pull you back in touch with childhood and the mixture of fear, surprise, love, and pain that mark that period of time for any self actualized person. Karen's voice, lovely as it is, is as a siren inviting you to blunder up against the rocks and get shipwrecked by the awful revelation that youth is over, not to be regained. Yes, there is darkness with the Innocence Mission that so importantly defines their light. Karen uses the expression, "beautiful sadness," and in another song mentions her reticence in taking the hand of her older brother. The songs are littered with brief "sayings" that strung together create a collage of emotional meaning. The sayings are sometimes the title, sometimes the refrains, and different listeners will have different sets. Most of time these moments get strung together like DNA to map out an interior that comes after a series of hearings. It is past brilliance.

I believe what happens lyrically dictates the emotional power of these songs. In Look for me as you go by, Karen and Don begin to satisfy your soul with the consolation that every burden will be lifted, and then they pause and heft into "It's me for you and you for me." This might be heard as a sun dulled love song. Listen more intentionally, and if you're vulnerable, you'll get cut open and realize that their underlying faith in a non-material abundant life has happened for them. And there's hope for the rest of us. Don, Karen and Mike know something that’s not a secret knowledge. The ticket in is a let down of the defenses and a willingness to mourn. Karen doesn't want you to smile; she wants to wipe away your tears.

So it's a dangerous album. The masterful songs will pull some in. They are crafted with such an intelligence that holds commercial insipidness and gushy emotionalism at bay.

The full effect is to bring you to want to revisit or rewrite your childhood, hoping somehow you can cut and paste some of these sentiments into your soul. Karen is so strong. She lulls you to her side by convincing you her tender weakness makes it possible for you to be that close and still be safe. If you're smart, you sit quietly and take the heart surgery.

posted 02.29.04

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2003 White Elephant Productions