Description
Befriended is the the sixth full-length studio album by the American alternative folk/pop band The Innocence Mission, released on Badman Recording Co. in August 2003.
Thank God. After years of having a major label try to groom them to be a pop act and then bouncing from one small imprint to the next after their major label home went under, Pennsylvania’s Innocence Mission have FINALLY landed with a company that understands what they’re all about. If there has ever been a better band/label match than The Innocence Mission and Badman, I don’t know what it is. And just to top off the fact that they’re finally with a label that will promote and support them properly, the band has added yet another stellar listing to a discography already crowded with near-perfect releases.
The Innocence Mission have always revolved around the husband and wife duo of Karen and Don Peris, a fact that has become even clearer since the departure of founding drummer Steve Brown prior to Birds Of My Neighborhood. The pairing of Karen’s vocals with Don’s guitar is the key to the band’s sound.
Simply one of the most distinct voices in music today – once you’ve heard her sing you’ll never mistake her for anyone else – Karen has an airy, fragile voice that draws you into her simple melodies and lends an enormous emotional punch to the unmistakable poetry of her lyrics. Karen’s style of writing – managing a balance between a deeply confessional style shot through with glimpses of her family and faith and more abstract poetry – is matched among her contemporaries only by Over the Rhine‘s Linford Detweiler.
If Karen is the singing voice of the band, then the primary instrumental voice comes from Don’s guitars as he moves from shimmering electrics to subtle picking on acoustic. Since the band’s departure from A&M Records and their subsequent freedom from the pressure to deliver a radio single, they have moved further and further into a sound marked by 70s folk sensibilities. They contributed a track to Badman’s John Denver tribute disc of a few years ago, and Denver is a fairly obvious influence on their own work, as is Nick Drake.
The Innocence Mission are a band that has managed to prove absolutely the old adage that record sales are not an indication of quality. Consummate musicians and brilliant writers, the band has largely slipped through the cracks throughout their entire career simply because they didn’t fit neatly into any radio programming format. They’re too mellow to be pop, not nearly angry enough to be alternative, too lush to be folk, and too positive for the indie hipsters who crave irony above almost all else. Perhaps now that they’re rubbing shoulders with like-minded musicians such as Hayden, Mark Kozelek, and Low over there at Badman, people will start to take notice. [Chris Brown, Opus, 08/09/2003]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/befriended/270127394)
CD tracklist:
01. Tomorrow On The Runway – 4:19
02. When Mac Was Swimming – 3:47
03. I Never Knew You From The Sun – 3:12
04. Beautiful Change – 2:57
05. Martha Avenue Love Song – 3:44
06. One For Sorrow, Two For Joy – 4:03
07. No Storms Come – 1:33
08. Sweep Down Early – 4:20
09. Walking Around – 4:49
10. Look For Me As You Go By – 3:25
Note: The album was released on both CD and 12-inch vinyl LP in Europe by Agenda, a division of Peacefrog Records. Re-issued on Limited Edition 12-inch vinyl LP in the US by Badman Recording Co. in 2019, pressed on Translucent Deep Purple vinyl and featuring a bonus track; the previously unreleased song “Words of My Brother”. Mastered by J. J. Golden. Available at Bandcamp: https://theinnocencemission.bandcamp.com/album/befriended-cd-2003
Befriended, Vinyl Edition, Badman Recording Co. 2019
12-inch vinyl LP pressed on Translucent Deep Purple vinyl
‘Befriended’ is the latest in the Innocence Mission’s series of albums that dwell in a holy sort of hush, focusing on fragile matters of the heart, spiritual longing, and intimate memories.
That does not mean they have become predictable. Don and Karen Peris offer a clearly-defined style, yes, but within those parameters, you will never encounter the same display of light and beauty twice. They have found their voice, and they raise it with more and more confidence. Karen Peris’s vocals could have easily made a mark on the Top 40, singing saccharine pop ditties. Instead, she dares to lead us into beautiful and fragile emotional territory, giving voice to delicate and personal poetry. She shows us deep reservoirs of sadness, lingering questions, and when she sings of hope and redemption, you can hear the smile in her voice.
Don Peris’s pristine production here achieves the finest mix the band has ever enjoyed, giving Karen’s voice unprecedented clarity, sparsely arranging his creatively choreographed guitars and drums to accent the vocals without overpowering them. Mike Bitts makes a welcome return as their bassist.
‘Befriended’ finds them exploring a complex weave of themes and echoing a host of musical and poetic influences from Paul Simon to John Denver to Gerard Manley Hopkins. The lyrics of the songs cross-reference each other heavily, bringing up recurring images and phrases: “beautiful changes”, “Flower forth, Branch of Easter”, friendship described in terms of sunlight, and blessings that come in the clouds. As these threads appear time and time again, the album coheres into a unified expression: a poem in ten parts.
The album gives us a measure of the painful distance between lovers and friends when separated. It opens with a friendly family of Don harmonizing guitars, cast against a backdrop of distantly glimmering keyboard tones. Karen is trying to climb out of the doldrums, calling to her faraway love.
Did you leave the darkness without me?
You’re always miles ahead…
And you’re standing in tomorrow
On the runwayPerhaps the song is a prayer to the savior, the “sun”, whose grace can redeem a dark day and “replace the small disgraces.” There is the sense that the one who has departed is still very much alive and likely to return. The refrain is bittersweet and beautiful.
In «I Never Knew You From the Sun», she again suggests that the one who has departed could be Christ with a subtle reference to an earlier song – ‘Umbrella‘’s «Every Hour Here» – in which Christ was suggested by the “ticket half” she keeps in her pocket and often forgets about:
Deep into my sleeves
Deep in my sleeves
Pockets dark where I always reach
You are there…For every confession of longing and loss, there are affirmations and reminders of heavenly realities. On ‘Birds of My Neighborhood‘, it was the possibility of seeing a day we had not seen before. Here it is a «Beautiful Change». Finding comfort even though “the snow is here”, the song works as this album’s «Bright as Yellow»:
Flower forth in sun
Branch of Easter,
I want to be here
When he needs me…Faith is a central thread again, the source of hope and strength in a snowbound world. But for Karen and Don, family remains the stuff of storytelling. We get flickers of scenes, like a stranger’s home movies, in which deep affection and a sense of loss are palpable.
«When Mac was Swimming» is another heartening snapshot from family life, like the story of the girl with sparklers in “July”. This one gives us a picture of a boy playing in the pool, oblivious to the fact that his family is preparing a birthday party for him. It suggests the sense of greater things going on around us for our benefit. “Nobody knows how they are loved,” sings Karen, her voice coming to us clear across quiet guitar and piano, like birdsong over quiet water. “Don’t worry my darling / the sun is coming up.”
«One for Sorrow, Two for Joy» laments a different sort familial separation, the kind in which a lack of faith distances sister from brother. “Everything is going to be much better in the spring,” she assures her faltering sibling, and you wonder if she trying to encourage herself as well. Just as she does for us and for herself so frequently, she directs our attention to nature, to the signposts of God: “What is coming down from the north road/ What is coming up from the ground?” In offering this song, she reminds us that the faithful bear the burdens of those who do not embrace the hope offered them.
Alongside the strong bonds of believer and Savior, brother and sister, exists the bond of marriage, another thread throughout these songs. Don and Karen occasionally sing together to great effect on this record. Don’s voice has gained confidence, having put a solo record behind him. He collaborates and sings with her in the exquisite «Martha Avenue Love Song», one of the denser, more complex songs, and one of its most gorgeous highlights. Karen looks to the skies at “five o’clock in winter/ when the pink and green arrive”, which stands to her as a reminder of her friend to whom she must be faithful.
Now we’re blown around
and I can’t let you down
My sun and my sweetest sound…Don’s voice echoes the same words in a shimmering echo, as if the two lovers are singing the song to each other from a great distance, or perhaps both addressing their heavenly guide. Glistening notes from his guitar ring like bells or signals on the air.
As on most of their records, the seasons are a language of metaphor, giving poignancy to such simple sentiments as “Oh I had a friend I loved…”
Snow is on the ground
This is not my landscape now
Where I find myself without you
I never knew you from the sun…In fact, the use of spring, winter, snow, growth, and trees are heavy enough that it’s hard not to think of Chauncey, the inadvertent philosopher-gardener played by Peter Sellers in Being There, smiling and advising troubled investors “In the spring, there will be new growth.”
But such rich metaphors are hardly new territory – they are echoed in a Gerard Manley Hopkins piece, «No Storms Come» (adapted from the poem “Heaven-Haven”), a beautiful (and rare) performance of Karen with only a piano. This song was the centerpiece of 2000’s Christ is My Hope, a special Internet-exclusive album the band still offers as a fundraiser for the poor. If you enjoy this track, there is much more where that came from. It is a testament to Karen’s grace and skill that her own lyrics stand up so well alongside such tried and tested beauty as Hopkins’ poetry.
Sentiments like the call for reunion in «Sweep Down Early», a brilliant song of joyful anticipation, and «Look For Me As You Go By», a euphoric duet Don and Karen sing at its conclusion, bravely coax us to place our hope for fulfillment in God’s hands rather than in temporary, insufficient, immediate answers. «Sweep Down Early» puts our minds on the day when “every burden shall be lifted/ every stone upon your back slide into the sea.”
Some artists are travelers and wanderers, exploring new territories, enlarging our sense of the world and its possibilities. The Innocence Mission have a different role. Like a chapel in the woods, they have found their place, their style, their voice. We can go there the way we might retreat at different times of the year to our favorite spot on the ocean or a lake, finding familiar wonders and blessings that change like the seasons. These simple, natural patterns were given to us as a language for faith. And Don and Karen Peris are fine interpreters indeed. [Jeffrey Overstreet, The Phantom Tollbooth, 8/29/2003]
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.