by Steve Bell

I am always astonished at how much Carolyn Arends can pack into a pop song. Her songs are consistently like those mythological abodes of fairy-tales that are magically bigger on the inside than they can possibly be from the outside.

Love Was Here First (release date: Oct 20 / 09) is Carolyn’s 6th career album and I have experienced it much the same as I have all her works:

• First listen – usually in a car where all nuances are rendered inaudible by  road noise. Conclusion:  great pop record. Clever lyrics. Good job Carolyn.

• Second listen – usually with headphones in a quiet space.  Conclusion: masterful production and arrangements.  Who’s the bass player? Wow.  Love the mature, melodic interplay and musicianship. Something is going on with these lyrics… must look closer at the lyrics.

• Third listen – headphones again with printed lyrics in hand. Conclusion: this is a deeply intelligent and thoughtful woman.  Gosh I wish I could write like that. What has she been reading?

• Fourth Listen - inspired, humbled, moved and grateful.

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Roy Salmond, Jesse Bell, Greg Reely, Steve and Carolyn

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What follows is hardly a review as I am not, in the slightest, an unbiased listener.   I’ve written a few thoughts about each song. But before that, you might as well just listen to a song from the disc.

I happened to be in Vancouver with my wife and son Jesse this summer as Carolyn was putting the last touches on her album.  She graciously asked if I’d be willing to sing some harmony vocals on a track and I was quite pleased to be part of it.  Here is Never Say Goodbye:

Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!

Click player (arrow) above to hear song.

Love Was Here First |Album Cover

Love Was Here First opens with a surprising lyric for a wordsmith: “Words fail, but I just keep talkin.” It’s as if Carolyn is wanting us to know, before all else, that she knows her own limitations  and the pretensions of her craft. The song itself,  Be Still, (ironically the bounciest track on the CD,) sets the tone that her confidence rests in God and is nurtured in stillness.

Standing in the Need of Prayer, an inventive swamp-roots adaptation of a traditional  spiritual, follows the opening track with the Louisiana-gospel singing of the Vancouver-based Sojourners and Gayle Salmond’s  haunting country-blues descant.

My Favourite Lie is the song that first caught my ear lyrically. “I am a caterpillar who will not cocoon…feels like a tomb…. I will not die.“  And,  “I am a sucker for my favourite lie, that you don’t have to die to live the resurrection.“  Carolyn touches on the western preoccupation with resisting death at all costs; managing vulnerabilities at the expense of real living: “I am the girl who is sore afraid, that the life I’ve made’s no life at all.“  Adrian Walther’s bass on this track is wonderful, as is the signature Canadian-celtic melody line that let’s us know that  Spencer Capier’s violin-voice is still a worthy favourite of Carolyn.

Something Out of Us is a brassy, bawdy, east-European romp that almost sounds like it could have been on the soundtrack of the movie Everything is Illuminated.  A fun, lighthearted track that explicitly carries the redemption theme  woven throughout the whole project. “You made cosmos out of chaos, you made Adam out of dust. You made wine out of water,  you’ll make something out of us.”

I Am a Soul – I think my favourite of the album; an introspective anthem that ponders the unquenchable hope of the human spirit:  “Why beauty? Why Poetry? Why no! no! no! to every tragedy?“  Later, “It’s in love songs, in symphonies… In funeral marches and in liturgies…It’s in whispers, in rally cries …In dreams that won’t say die.”

Willing is the obligatory prayer of personal dedication that properly belongs on every evangelical musical offering    Carolyn’s however, is lovely and compelling. Without the  bravado of  I Surrender All it humbly declares “I am willing – to be willing…. I am longing- for the longing.“  This is the prayer of one who has prayed the other many times and knows only too well the inevitable disappointment following such prayers.

Roll It – a fun, gospely number featuring again the harmony vocals of the Sojourners; reminiscent of the Rhymin’ Simon’s Loves Me Like a Rock. My only complaint about this track is that the soloing never really takes off like it seems to want to – feels a bit measured.

The Last Word: Spencier Capier’s ethereal lap-steel sonically sets this track apart. Lush vocals and classic Carolyn melody line makes for a memorable song that celebrates the primacy of love.

According to Plan – lyrically, wrestles with the question of how God’s intervention in history. “I’m not so sure that God moves everything… like pawns in  a chess game, or puppets on a string.” This could be the epicenter of the album as Carolyn insists (humbly) that God’s involvement in history is redemptive, not coercive.

Nothing Can Separate – a very singable folk/Celtic anthem of confidence in the scriptural promise: No foe – neither depth nor height… can separate us from the love of Christ.

Never Say Goodbye – you’ve already heard this one above. May I just point out once again the great job I did of the back-ground vocals

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Love Was Here First is scheduled to be released October 20.  I hope you’ll check it out.