1200 Curfews

by

Indigo Girls

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Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, the Southern guitar duo better known as "The Indigo Girls," have been an international sensation for over a decade. 1200 CURFEWS captures a number of their best songs in a format that enhances the emotional impact.

The original concept for 1200 CURFEWS was to record the songs from the Indigo Girls' last CD, SWAMP OPHELIA, live in concert, but the concept expanded to include live recordings of other pieces by Saliers and Ray as well as their covers of songs by other artists. Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue" and James D. Wheatherly's "Midnight Train to Georgia" are my favorite covers on this set. There are also some unusual recording locations: a radio studio, a dressing room, and, most surprisingly, Amy's basement in 1982.

While a few of the songs do not fare as well recorded live as they did recorded in a studio (including their most famous pieces, "Closer to Fine," "Ghost," and "Galileo"), I found myself completely drawn into other pieces I didn't appreciate before. This is due to a number of factors: Saliers and Ray feed off the energy of their fans (as can be heard in "Joking"), they have found deeper meaning to their pieces upon repeated performances (such as in "Power of Two" and "Language or the Kiss"), their easy-going personas shine in their interactions with the audience (exemplified in "Jonas and Ezekiel" and the introduction to "Mystery"), and/or different instrumentation has added new dimensions (most especially the plaintive saxophone in "Love's Recovery").

I'm not a huge fan of contemporary "pop" music, but this 2-CD set is a favorite album of mine. The Indigo Girls always bring an unusual variety to their albums through the combination of Ray's raw emotional outbursts and Salier's introspective observations, but these recordings capture their individual personalities and their combined philosophies (exemplified in the gender change of the Dylan song) in a way that is rare. This is a great (albeit [pricey]) way to introduce newcomers to the Indigo Girls.