Some rolled across a misted clearing at dusk, whispering a moment of change that will resonate for a lifetime. The scenes in Saliers and Ray’s songs played with startling clarity. I stalked my way through all these worlds indiscriminately, shaping myself into a Southern voice. I didn’t know I was supposed to be making distinctions about what you could take seriously in literature and in a rock song. There, too, I recognized my world reflected back to me in their lush, furtive landscapes. I was too busy listening to the songs, while simultaneously falling into the worlds created by Welty, McCullers, O’Connor, and Faulkner. Flickers of the sacred rising up from the debased and discarded.Īt fifteen, I didn’t know that Swamp Ophelia was being dismissed in the press, in part for the presumption of being literary. Secret glories and gilded losses, every turn singed by danger and mystery. Burned-out backfields, lovers chased through darkening trees, wheeling summer skyscapes. What could be found there? Scenes from a South I understood. The world of that record fell around me like a thickly curtained wildwood. Perhaps a year later, Swamp Ophelia was released and handed me a new part of my future. They traded visions, supporting and collaborating, but each voice had its own say. Poring over the liner notes, I was struck by the fact that they did not co-write the songs. They sang like Southerners, too, but this sounded nothing like country music. And when their voices joined, the air in the room changed. Ray could swagger, growl, and belt-she could laugh without slipping off the note. Saliers’ voice could soar into delicate high notes, vulnerable but assured, strong even in the quietest measures. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray sang like women I might want to become. Later, to spin the album, context-less and unGoogleable, and find a roadside shaman named Chickenman, a vertigo-inducing plane ride, and a rowdy swipe at Nashville that this restless native was ready to hear.īut their voices were the true source of revelation. To rummage in the bins of Phonoluxe down on grubby Nolensville Road, the summertime I was fifteen, and to conjure up that album-titled Rites of Passage, as if this moment couldn’t get any sweeter. To be that young teenager, disgruntled and lost. It might, given the chance, begin to improvise. That raised-up voice might start to get ideas. But no choir to be found-to raise any voice above the congregation’s was to risk a slippery path toward worldly vice, toward vanity or individualism. Four-part, shaped-note, a cappella, wooden pew. Album Title Drop: The title of Swamp Ophelia appears in the middle of its central track "Touch Me Fall".In which Emily Choate considers the life of an album that, for one reason or another, went overlooked …īy Emily Choate, Peauxdunque Review Fiction Editor.They are known for their complementary vocal and guitar arrangements and popular songs "Closer to Fine", "Galileo", and "Power of Two", as well as for their activism both on behalf of and apart from the lesbian community. The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter/guitarists Emily Saliers and Amy Ray (who has also released six albums as a solo act).Īfter meeting in grade school and beginning their musical collaboration in college, they have been performing together since the late 80s and as of 2019 are embarked on an international tour with the University of Colorado Symphony Orchestra.
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