Description
Umbrella is the sophomore full-length album by the American alternative pop band The Innocence Mission, released on A&M Records in July 1991. The album was recorded February 21 to April 6, 1991 by Tony Phillips at Dreamland Recording Studios in Kingston, New York; and at The Kiva in Los Angeles, California; with Larry Klein and the band producing. Mixed by Phillips at Secret Sound in Los Angeles.
There is something wonderfully whimsical about the music that Innocence Mission creates. It’s like mist or driving into a bank of fog – deceptively denser than its actual substance. Innocence Mission is Mike Bitts, Steve Brown and the husband/wife team of Don and Karen Peris, but it is Karen who is the rudder for this college/alternative band out of Pennsylvania. Her music and words are filled with the juxtapositions of the surreal and ordinary. Family, faith, love, fear, trust – trips through the past and present – Peris uses her words and music with dreamlike economy.
Producer Larry Klein returns for this second, seamless album that has all the freshness and hope of its tartan album cover. Peris’ writing is freer and less self conscious than the group’s self-titled debut. And as always it is Karen Peris’ voice – strong yet fragile; airy and focused – that captivates the listener. Ironically, the album was recorded in an old Catholic church – Dreamland – that is now a studio. Peris is Catholic and symbols of her religion slip in effortlessly. Jesus, family, the Virgin Mary, rosary beads, cemeteries – important parts of Peris’ life and thus her music.
The observations that Peris makes are common and oddly comforting; encouraging friends, loving family and in «Every Hour Here» the struggle to keep faith in the present reality. “You are a like the ticket-half/ I find inside the pocket of my old leaf-raking coat/ There all the time/ All the while/ Forgotten/ I so often seem to leave You in churches/ And other islands/ And on my beads/ Where I can see You, I can feel You/ I take the ticket-half and put it on the table, saying/ This is God/ And He’s here in my comings and goings/ But I walk past the ticket-half/ Just as I walked past the Cross on the wall.”
In «Beginning the World», discomfort, shyness and beginnings are her albatross. “Aren’t you bursting with butterflies on the fourth of September?/ Like you’ll have to get on the bus in your tartan dress/ With your lunchbox/ Though your mind is twenty-nine/ Though your mind is an old thing/ I mean don’t you ever sigh/ … I am always beginning the world”.
Karen Peris is very good at putting her finger on common emotions and making music out of them, and Innocence Mission proves once again that there are gems to be found for the discerning individual in the marketplace. Intelligent music for the mind, the heart, and especially the soul, Umbrella is an alternative music listener’s delight. [Kathleen A. Ervin, CCM, October 1991]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/umbrella/1801248175)
CD tracklist:
01. And Hiding Away – 3:34
02. Sorry And Glad Together – 3:26
03. Umbrella – 2:40
04. Every Hour Here – 3:27
05. Evensong – 3:41
06. Now In This Hush – 4:24
07. Beginning The World – 4:50
08. Flags – 3:00
09. Someday Coming – 4:03
10. Joan – 3:22
11. Revolving Man – 4:33
12. My Waltzing Days Are Over/Minta’s Waltz – 3:25
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette, 12-inch vinyl LP, and CD by A&M Records.
“And Hiding Away” (PROMO VIDEO)
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