Imagine Our Love

by

Lavender Diamond

Edit

Lavender Diamond has hypnotized me. I'm under their spell. Becky Stark's voice (with its classical roots) is transporting and ethereal, delicate without sacrificing its potency and confidence. There are songs on this CD ("Garden Rose", "Like an Arrow") that could accompany meditation. Indeed, the songs FEEL like meditation. Cynicism and apathy, pass by. The album's themes range from the optimistic and hopeful to the melancholic and hesitant. I find myself relating to both sentiments with equal verve. "When will I love again?" Stark repeats in the heartwrenchingly challenging song "Oh No" that opens the album, and wondering when and how a broken heart will heal is certainly an idea that everyone can relate to during their lives. (This beginning of this song left me breathless. "What a way to begin an album!" is what I thought, immediately wanting to hear more.) Even if your heart is now whole, it's not hard to put yourself back in that place, just as when you listen to a love song, it's not hard to remember when you were in love. "Open Your Heart" isn't exactly a love song, but with its cheerful tone and playful strings, 'oh oh oh' refrains, and handclaps, it feels like it should be in the background while you run across a field holding hands with someone. Other reviews have compared their sound to singers from the 1960's and 70's, and that is definitely true, although that is not to downplay their unique style and execution. The messages of love, love lost, and hope in this album are unlike anything I've ever heard before, and I subscribe to all of them.

Postscript/anecdote: there's a bit of serendipity in play here as well. I saw a Lavender Diamond show advertised in a Portland alt-weekly newspaper, described there as "winsome folk-pop." The description caught my eye and I made a note to investigate them. I later bought their album on this whim, and a few weeks after that, by some cosmic coincidence, Becky Stark, solo and acoustic, opened for a reading by author/filmmaker/artist Miranda July in a church in downtown Portland with a eerily beautiful three-song set. I'd been looking forward to July's book ever since I saw "Me, You and Everyone We Know" and it was suddenly felt like we had friends in common.

I didn't know anything about this cd when I bought it, other than that it was highly recommended by the current reviewers. Nobody mentioned in those reviews that this cd is of a "religious nature"...and this could turn off some listeners while attracting others who may like that sort of thing. I don't remember whether I liked the actual music or not, because the lyrics consisted of lines such as "Oh, I must be on the side of the Lord" and "find a way to love, to love, to love!", which are fine for me if I'm attending church, but not in music that I want blaring on my stereo.

I am doing this review to warn others who might find such lyrics as being overtly corny when heard outside the walls of a Christian revival meeting.