Published on Jan 7, 1999
There’s something comfortable about The Kennedys. Endearing,
even.
For a husband-and-wife folk-rock duo operating in the late
1990s, that’s a sharp double-edged sword. Chances are slim you’re
going to win fame and fortune in this flash-and-trash modern world
we’re stuck in by being comfortable and endearing.
Yet Pete and Maura Kennedy, bless their hearts, behave as though
oblivious to the deafening roar of American society’s increasing
drive to consume itself in a mad whirl of idol worship/destruction
and materialistic excess. Consciously, willfully, aggressively
oblivious? Maybe so…
In any case, instead of wallowing in all this free-floating
negativity, they write coffee-house intellectual songs that
celebrate nature, poetry, legends, romance and a sort of latter-day
flower-child political philosophy. All the while, they earnestly
cite Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Eliot, Anton Chekhov, Rainer Maria
Rilke and Czech President Vaclav Havel as sources of
inspiration.
It’s about as far from the state of modern pop music as you
could imagine, which is clearly just fine with The Kennedys, who
wear their heavily retro sensibilities on their sleeves (quite
literally, in fact — the “sleeve” photo of this CD shows them
sifting through a scattering of classic 60s LPs that includes The
Beatles’
Rubber Soul and Dylan’s
Highway 61 Revisited).
The music, you ask?
I’ll admit that as a raving fan of The Kennedys’s superb 1996
release,
Life Is Large —
my favorite
release of that year, a sunburst of propulsive, electrified
folk-rock, by all means pick it up — I find myself disappointed by
Angel Fire. The overemphasis on midtempo acoustic folk tunes
on much of the album diminishes its impact, and the lyrics, while
often graced with gorgeous imagery, seem in places overly
self-conscious. Somehow the enticing melodies of songs like “Bells
& Loaves & Letters” and “A Letter To Emily” are undercut by
the preciousness of the words they support — even as the lack of
drive in these softer tunes focuses more attention on the
lyrics.
That having been said, there are several stronger tracks here
where this duo’s secret weapon — the melding of Maura’s delicate
yet often soaring lead vocals with Pete’s patented
channeling-The-Byrds jangly Rickenbacker guitar leads — is given
free reign. “The Fire and the Rose,” “Jesse” and particularly the
closing “A Place in Time” rock in firm, steady grooves that echo
the high points of
Life Is Large.
Rather than producing a sequel to that energetic and highly
entertaining effort, which fully incorporated a rhythm section and
featured a horde of top-rank guest players (Roger McGuinn, Nils
Lofgren, Steve Earle), for
Angel Fire. The Kennedys chose to hole up in their home
recording studio in Virginia and make a deeply personal and
reflective album, playing most of the instruments themselves. The
results, while spiced up with some creative arrangements and Pete’s
turns on banjo and mandolin, probably sound more like the
acoustic-duo coffee-house shows they clearly prefer to any kind of
larger setting, sacrificing impact for intimacy.
The fact that this decision — whatever my own personal reaction
to the results — was a very intentional one speaks volumes about
The Kennedys’s mindset: they haven’t bought into the pop machine.
Fame, fortune and a bigger tour bus don’t seem to have the tiniest
allure for them. Instead, in the midst of one of the most
soul-deadeningly depressing episodes in American political history,
working in an industry that over the last forty years has pretty
well purged itself of warmth and innocence, The Kennedys have the
nerve to remain fundamentally, unabashedly idealistic. And that’s a
whole lot more than just endearing. Hell, it might even be
inspirational.
To learn more about the Kennedys, visit their Web
site at
www.kennedysmusic.com.