REVIEW: Debby Schwartz, Wrongs of Passage (Mercury)
- Chelsea Spear
Early in this decade, Debby Schwartz made a name for herself as the guiding light behind garage-pop sensations the Aquanettas. While the band mined appealing ground by grafting a singer/songwriter approach onto the chunky surf-n-turf rhythms and simmering dynamics of the Feelies, their albums reached a limited audience, and the band seemed to disappear after showing up on the high-profile soundtracks to Amateur and Kissed. Before you can say "whatever happened to...?", Schwartz bounds back into the spotlight with her solo debut, Wrongs of Passage.
The new album represents a growth and maturity since the last Aquanettas album. Though her former bandmates join her on a handful of tracks, Wrongs takes the band's sound in a more song-based direction, with influence coming less from the Glenn Mercer side of the equation and more from Aimee Mann. The press release states that Schwartz isn't afraid to rock out, but she's equally unafraid of pinning her heart directly on her sleeve and loosing a vulnerable ballad like "Revelations", which ends Side 1 with a rainy-day vibe.
Lyrically, Schwartz is also found in a contemplative, mature mindset. If the Aquanettas albums detailed a night in the life of a nerdy girl experimenting with sex and drugs, Wrongs looks at that girl as she grows up, learns from the mistakes of her youth and tries to make a better life of herself. The infectious one-two punch of openers "Venus Again" and "Never Come Down" finds the protagonist of these songs not only contemplating love with the proper old boyfriend, but proving herself sane enough to be worthy of such love. More complex tunes like garage raveup "Tribe" look at her relationship at large with the opposite sex.
While all of this information might add up to a ponderous sounding album, Schwartz imbues this growth with a terrific sense of humour and biting observational skills. Not every bug-eyed balladeer can punctuate a series of goosebump-inducing slow songs with "Because You Don't Love Me", a Zombies-esque four-on-the-floor rocker with a hummable analog-synth riff and the hilarious line, "I'm joining a convent because you don't love me!" The album ends with the gossamer waltz "Mousecraft", which makes the observation that "the cat is in a coma" during a spooky monolouge about a lonely night drinking at home.
The entire package is wrapped up with a nifty production job, giving the songs a candy-apple lustre while staying true to the dark themes at their core. Unless Syd Straw releases her much-threatened third solo LP by the end of this year, the exemplary Wrongs of Passage could be my favourite girl-with-a-guitar album of 1998. Hooray for a chick who can rock, think, laugh, and write a gorgeous melody -- sometimes all at once!
