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Title: Indigo Girls – Become You (2002)
Genre: Folk
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. Become You is their eighth studio album, released in 2002. Indigo Girls’ eighth studio album, released 15 years after their first, finds the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in a sense starting over. Using their regular backup band of keyboardist Carol Isaacs, bassist Claire Kenny, and drummer Brady Blade, but only a couple of guest musicians — in contrast to albums that featured lots more players, many of them well known — and returning to producer Peter Collins, who worked with them on their second, fourth, and fifth albums, they have stripped down their approach to something approaching the folk-rock style with which they began. The restrained instrumentation and arrangements focus attention on the songs themselves, and Ray and Saliers, as usual writing separately and alternating tracks, have similar things to say. Eleven of the 12 songs are addressed by an “I” to a “you” (the exception, “She’s Saving Me,” might as well be), and for the most part they deal in romantic complications, with the “I” looking back on a past romance or detailing the difficulties that may lead to a breakup. In the opening track and first single, Ray’s “Moment of Forgiveness,” for example, the narrator notes that two years have gone by since her lover left and asks, hopelessly, “When are you gonna come home?” Ray is characteristically more raw in her singing and in her expression; she also provides the album’s musical contrasts, whether it’s the “Games People Play”-style Southern soul of “Moment of Forgiveness” or the Mexican tone of “Nuevas Senoritas.” Saliers is more abstract, titling one of her laments “Deconstruction” and, in “She’s Saving Me,” even offers a more positive statement. But it is Ray’s title track, in which a daughter of the South confronts the region’s reprehensible mythology — not a song of romance — that is the album’s most wrenching and powerful statement.

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Title: Indigo Girls – All That We Let In (2004)
Genre: Folk
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Nearly 20 years on, and Indigo Girls are still spinning their dualistic tales of love, anger, and life. Over the years, the formula has had its bouts with rigidity — for a while there, it even threatened to reach obsolescence (think of the phoned-in late-’90s effort Shaming of the Sun). But Emily Saliers and Amy Ray did a wise thing with 2002’s Become You, returning to the threads of personal experience that had made their folk-rock tapestry so strong in the first place (and reducing their sound). All That We Let In continues Indigo Girls’ throwback arc, opting for just their longtime band with a few well-placed guests. (For example, pedal steel player Mark Van Allen and cellist David Henry make Saliers’ darkly searching “Come On Home” a particularly velvety moment.) All That We Let In has some fun before getting to the serious stuff, opening with a pair of strong tracks taking different routes to a rootsy hook. Carol Isaacs’ organ shines on the warm and inviting “Fill It Up Again,” which despite musing about getting dumped does so with the promise of refueling and hitting the open road. And despite it being the same old trick, darn it if it isn’t comforting to once again hear the intertwined yearn of Saliers and Ray’s harmonies. Ray’s “Heartache for Everyone” opts for a skipping ska off-beat, in its own way suggesting the 1986 Housemartins jingle “Happy Hour.” “Perfect World” is a well-crafted Indigo Girls single, broadcasting its message of universal hope with earthy lyrical allusions and tasteful touches of accordion and recorder. There are still demons in their world, which they take on with typical pluck. “Dairy Queen” deals again with relational drama, while “Tether” is live-wire raw with its Crazy Horse distortion and desperate foment. “Do we tether the hawk, do we tether the dove?” Ray and guest vocalist Joan Osborne wonder. A neighbor spits out his chaw. “We need a few less words dear,” he says. “We need a few more guns.” Like the best Indigo Girls work, All That We Let In continually dwells on the dynamic of internal, emotional tumult and outward-looking, world-wondering fervor. Its strongest example of this comes in the album’s twilight. As Saliers’ inner Joni Mitchell resurfaces for the heartening but bittersweet prodigal friendship number “Something Real,” Ray’s trademark activist fire smolders mournfully in “Cordova”‘s darkness. It’s the album’s truest stretch, and proves Indigo Girls haven’t lost a step even as they look back to their musical roots.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

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