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Nuvo's Review of Before & After
February 24th, 2010
by Marc D. Allan
A Carrie Newcomer album is basically a sure thing. You know you’re going to get some songs that capture the great joy of small moments (this time out, it’s peaches eaten by the roadside stand on “I Do Not Know Its Name” and the fairs and festivals mentioned in “I Wish I May, I Wish I Might”), a couple of tunes that express optimism tinged with melancholy (“If Not Now,” “Coy Dogs”), two or three with choruses you’ll be singing for days (the ha-la-la-la’s of “A Simple Change of Heart,” the chorus of “Do No Harm”) and a handful that become favorites for their lovely melodies and lyrics that share a universal truth.
On Before & After, those favorites are “A Small Flashlight” and “I Meant to Do My Work Today.” In the first, which sounds almost like a lullaby, Newcomer sings of feeling “wide-eyed and hopeful, lost and half blind” and getting by with a small beam of light pointing the way. In the second, over a delicate, lilting melody, she describes an experience we’ve all had — being distracted from what we need to do. She sings of plans to “save the world and sweep the hall” … “but I got waylaid by the morning sun/and I got absolutely nothing done.”
If I have a criticism of Before & After, it’s Newcomer’s tendency to overuse nursery rhyme-like phrases — “I wish I may, I wish I might,” “hush-a-bye,” “star light, star bright” — not to mention the closing track, “A Crash of Rhinoceros,” which, while cute, would have been more fitting on a Tom Chapin record.
That said, whoever handles Indiana tourism needs to incorporate “I Wish I May, I Wish I Might” into the state’s advertising of summer festivals. Because if you want to give people a warm feeling – “Gather kin and cousins near/And everything we love is here” – I can’t imagine a better song.