If you’re not paying attention, it would be easy to underrate GrandEvolution’s recent album, “Tell Me Why.” There’s a pop brightness to the Worcester-rooted band’s music, driven by singer Sarah Kenyon’s sweet-toned vocals, that gives it a shimmer of youthfulness. A closer listen, however, reveals a heartbreaking portrait of watching a person slowly vanish before one’s eyes, and the cascade of emotions that come with that sort of helplessness.
There are mysteries here: It’s unclear who the vanishing person is, save that she’s a woman. A sister, perhaps? The vanishing, too, remains unnamed, although the obvious inference is addiction. Rather than obscure the narrative, though, these mysteries create a space for listeners to fill with their own experience, to connect their own losses — and everyone has losses — to the music, and that’s a deeply emotionally satisfying experience.
The band, which also features percussionist Scott Kenyon, bassist Greg Bromberg and guitarist Ray Celona, will perform at a CD release party at 8 p.m. April 21 with the Furies, Nate Cozzolino and the Lost Arts and Wicked Petty at the Cove Music Hall in Worcester.
The album begins on an almost flippant note with “Hey Drama Queen,” wherein the album’s persona sings, “Lately I can’t believe/all the nonsense that I’ve seen/Message received/and I can’t get that out of my head.” Indeed, there’s a sense where the behavior of the song’s subject is startling to the persona, although she acknowledges it was apparent to others: “never believed/’til you turned on me.” There’s a spark of anger and confusion that underscores the song, but it doesn’t feel like a permanent state, but by the second song, the subject has transformed from being a “drama queen” to a “ghost,” and annoyance has escalated to full-on horror, observing that her “ghostly skin and bones” was once beautiful.
“Can the real you come back?” sings Kenyon, but the question resounds with denial. Indeed, Kenyon’s persona rockets up and down the stages of grief, but the emotion that carries the listener through to the end is hope. To be perfectly honest, it’s difficult to say definitively whether that hope is a source of salvation or whether it’s a wave that crashes the listener on emotional rocks. Maybe it’s both, but there’s a sinking feeling that accompanies the desperate imploration of “You’re Not Alone” and the flat-out bargaining of “Escape.” Indeed, the album’s rock instrumentation plays counterpoint to the heaviness of the subject matter, but the harder guitar and percussion on the latter song lends the music a frenetic quality.
The album takes a turn with the lovely, understated “Whisper.” Here, Kenyon’s persona is still imploring the song’s subject to change, but here she acknowledges, “Time is slipping away.” She hasn’t abandoned hope — indeed, she’s driven by hope — but there’s a sense of acceptance of the truth, and that’s a markedly different conversation. That transition gets punctuated with guitar squeal in the subsequent song, “Destroy.” Like “Drama Queen” at the album’s beginning, this a song that’s driven by anger, but it’s not aimed at the subject, at least not indiscriminately. “We took too long to reach you,” sings Kenyon. It’s no longer mere annoyance, it’s the white-hot rage that comes with helplessness and frustration, and somehow the fact that she never raises into clichéd screams seems to make it all the more chilling.
“The pain you’ve caused,” sings Kenyon in “Wish You Well,” “the love you’ve paused/where’s that innocent girl under everything/fighting to be so free/I can tell you I love you/I can tell you I miss you ... you’re stronger than what’s taking you away.”
In some ways, this song is the album’s most heartrending, because while that ember of hope isn’t dead, there’s a sense of defeat that permeates everything. “Do you have a hero who can save you?” she asks, and the meaning is clear: I can’t save you. Maybe someone else can. That’s hope talking, and hope itself is the subject of the album’s penultimate song, “Hold On.”
“In time so much can happen,” she sings, “heal what’s been broken/dreams can shatter/hold on to what matters.” In a lot of ways, this is the first time the album’s persona is really talking about herself, how this struggle is leading her to depression, how she hates the way she feels. There’s still hope ... always ... but it’s pretty much all there is.
And then ... there’s a good 30 seconds of silence at the end of the track, before the album concludes with “Stranger,” and admittedly, there are a couple of ways to parse the ending. It really depends on who you believe is singing, and what you believe that dead space means. Is it the rolling forward of time? The transition of a point of view? Either’s possible, but the perspective changes the connotation of lyrics such as, “you gave me dreams/probably saved me.” Is this a final goodbye, gratitude to the person the subject once was, or is it the subject herself, and all of that hope against hope has gotten through? Maybe that’s an exercise best left for the listener. Maybe it doesn’t matter if we know exactly how the story ends.
“A stranger, a hero,” sings Kenyon, “you don’t know the meaning you hold/some kind of magic/an inspiration/it’s how we fight/how we connect/it doesn’t have to be mutual/to make an impact.”
Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.
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