Album from 2007
"Free Life" by Dan Wilson is one of my favorite albums of all time, and Dan Wilson is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. The guy just know what he's doing. He's like if a slightly-lesser Elton John had a baby with a better lyricist than Bernie Taupin (and somehow that baby acquired exactly all of it's parents music skills). He writes perfect melodies stuffed with beautiful, clever, heartbreaking, and hopeful lyrics.
There's a tendency in writing, especially today, in TV's golden-era of anti-heroes, to be dark. Ending something on a down-note, or being cynical, has critical cache. It's cool to be sad, to be misanthropic, to be snarky and sneering and sardonic. You know what else it is? It's easy.
It's easy to write a story, and tack on a downer of an ending to make the story seem aloof, or deep, or like its turning its back on goodness. And sure, plenty of stories with dark endings earn that ending: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," (both the book and the movie), "The Lord of the Flies," "Fight Club," to name some off the top of my head. And cheesy movies with happy endings that try to teach us a lesson, or try to force us to smile? That's the worst, right? It's fluff.
But a well-done piece of optimistic writing is always going to be better than a well-done piece of pessimistic writing. "It's a Wonderful Life" is always going to be better than "Fight Club." That's what Dan Wilson does. He writes songs about hope and peace and love, and he does them really effing well. He's the "It's a Wonderful Life" to grunge's "Fight Club." I compare him to grunge because Dan Wilson's been doing this a long time: his band Trip Shakespeare released their first album in 1989; his more successful band, Semisonic, released their first album in 1993. Now, none of this was nearly that popular, and there were plenty of other light-hearted musicians that changed the pace of the mainstream after Nirvana, and this album, where all of this optimism and hopefulness really comes to a peak, came out in 2007, but Dan Wilson is among the better of these musicians, and his album in the '90s carry plenty of similar themes.
I know that sweet and caring, kind and positive, aren't really rock and roll, and aren't really James Dean/Rolling Stones cool, but Dan Wilson is so assured in it, that he makes it cool. He turns a phrase like no one else, and there's always something clever in each one of his songs. This is such a strong album with strong individual tracks, that I'm going to write a track-by-track with a quick note and some stand-out lyrics:
1. "All Kinds" is about telling someone that they're beautiful, and in a way, that everyone is beautiful. It's tender and it's empowering, and it builds slowly, into a crescendo of a chorus. Dan writes choruses so perfectly, it's like they're so tight that there's no other way that they could have been written, and yet, it still surprises you. (I happen to think this about a few other people: Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, Rob Thomas, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon.)
"One life is all we ever get,
And all we ever give up for it in return,
Is all of the ones we might have been
Just one kind of beautiful each in our turn."
2. "Free Life" might just be the crown jewel of this album (it is the title track, after all). It's about making something of your life, but not in a contempt-laden way that's derogatory to the person who isn't doing anything with their life (see: "Captain Jack" by Billy Joel), but instead, and not to overuse this word, in an empowering way, like a rallying cry to spend your life the way that you want to spend your life.
"Let's fall in love again, with music as our guide."
"We got these lives for free, we don't know where they've been,
We don't know where they'll go when we are through with them."
"Whatcha gonna spend your free life on?"
3. "Breathless" is a break-up song, but it still finds an upbeat spin on said break-up. He's still praising the person who dumped him, and he's still praising the relationship they had, just pointing out a simple flaw, and he never turns on her, never showing anger, just heartbreak and loss.
"You were always pretty reckless with your love,
Come with the sun and get it restless when it's gone,
And when you go you'll leave me breathless and alone."
"I've been dreaming of revenge,
To make you love me more than even you can try."
"All words converge to where you are."
And there's a couple lines not necessarily on that topic that are beautiful nonetheless, like the opening stanza:
"I'm hunting shadows in the dark,
In steaming jungles of the world,
Either to kill or to be killed
By creatures never named or heard."
4. "Baby Doll" is a little bit jazzy. It's a sweet and complimentary song (again), that is pre-break-up. What makes this album from simply being the same themes over and over again, is the different angles that Wilson takes to each one. "Baby Doll" is about grasping to hold on to a relationship.
"I've been circling the whole world 'round,
Trying to find the ones who stole my sound,
So I could bring it back to you, girl."
"I've been knitting candles into wings,
So I can fly up high and buy you things,
Diamond rings and pretty horses, too.
It's much less than you deserve, but if I don't I'm guessing
I won't get the chance to make amends."
"When I saw you laughing, you would shine like the sun,
And reflected in your eyes, I would shine like the one."
"I don't want to love, no one else, no, I only wanna love my baby doll."
5. "Come Home Angel" is so much more than just your average "you're so pretty you must be an angel" pick-up line slash compliment. Yes, the singer does open with lines about his significant other being "too perfect for this world, a visitor, a wanderer from somewhere better," but the song moves past that pretty quickly, eventually getting into his internal fear that because she's so perfect, that she's actually too good for him. It takes a standard compliment for a women and takes a unique turn, revealing why he's giving out such a compliment in the first place; "someday, I'll come to an empty house, they'll call you back, the silence, the celestial beckon."
It's a way for Dan Wilson to be self-depracating, revealing of his vulnerabilities, and appreciative all at the same time.
"Angel don't go."
6. "Sugar" is about right now. He speaks to someone who seems to be pretty set for life, and maintains a busy and future-focused life, and he begs her to sit down and take a moment, and, even if what they have isn't going to last, to enjoy it while it's here. The back-up vocals in this song, that don't come in until the last minute, are so perfectly contrasted and just a little bit off from Dan's lead vocals that, while remaining beautiful in their own right, reiterate the gap between the singer and the one he's singing to. Oh, also, it's Sheryl Crow.
"Sit down with me and let the time pass away."
7. "Cry"is a plea. Here, check it out:
"Don't you wanna make me feel like I'm a thousand stories high?
Don't you wanna make me feel I'll never fail, I'll never die?
Don't you wanna set me free, we'll override the history?
Turn to find our destiny and never turn away."
8. "Golden Girl," especially the verses, is probably the weakest part of "Free Life." It's not one to skip or anything, and it certainly doesn't drag the album down, I've just always felt it broke everything up just a little bit more than it should have been. For me, there's a distinct feeling in the first seven songs together, and then the last five together, and then there's "Golden Girl" in the middle. It's just a little bit too slow to start. The chorus has a lovely sound, but the verses are just so slow, almost to comedic effect, and the lyrics there aren't anything that jumps out as needing to be that deliberate.
9. "Against History" begins the part of the album that has more upbeat but still mild rock songs. It jumps right into it's bouncy riff, and keeps the pace up for the entire song. I can't say that I know what it is that they're trying to do differently, but I enjoy that it's a song that says that what has happened in the past isn't the way that things should happen in the future. So many people excuse things that happen to "well it has happened before" or "this is the tradition, so this is how it should happen," but in "Against History," Dan points out the flaws in this thinking.
"It's you and me against history, it doesn't have to be the way it's always been."
10. "Honey Please," is another slightly slow-paced song, but it seems to keep the tone of the back half up. It's another song about both self-depracation and self-preservation. It's a preemptive move about how wonderful the woman in his life is, and how she's too good for him, so it's inevitable that they'll break up.
"You're the only one who makes me wanna run away."
"Love is always right."
11. "She Can't Help Me Now," is a really good pop song. The whole thing just sounds awesome, almost like an old Semisonic song. It wasn't until I looked at the lyrics online that I realized how little was actually in it. Apart from the chorus, which is just the title of the song, there's three short stanzas:
"I always counted on my love to carry me,
Always depended on her love to cover me,
And I always had someone who let me play the lucky one."
"She finds the rooftop door and climbs out to clear her head,
I've fallen through the floor, my line has gone dead,
And I always had someone who let me play the lucky one."
"I always counted on my love to carry me,
But now I can't turn the page,
Standing all alone on the stage."
It's a post-break-up song about suddenly finding yourself alone and realizing what you needed that person for. Whatever he needed from her, it's gone, and she can't help him now.
12. "Hand On My Heart" is one of the best songs on the album, but also one of the most complicated. It's about our place in the world and our connections to what comes before us and what is yet to come. It's about generations of people and people across the globe, people who should be living in peace. If there wasn't any beautiful specificity in the verses, this song would still be pretty awesome because of the simply stated but all-reaching statements at the end of each chorus:
"Peace is more than a dream," "love is more than a dream," and "life is more than a dream."
13. "Easy Silence" is the one that challenges "Free Life" as the best song on the album. It was recorded by the Dixie Chicks and was on their 2006 album "Taking the Long Way." It's about finding a little bit of solitude, of smallness in a world stuffed with bigness. It's about the easy silences between two people, sandwiched between "busses, cars, and airplanes leaving/Burning fumes of gasoline," between "monkeys on the barricades," and "anger play[ing] on every station," and how these small, quiet moments keep the rest of that stuff at an arm's length and allow us a little bit of clarity. Clarity for us to make realizations and see the world clearly, to recognize things like:
"Children lose their youth too soon
Watching war made us immune
And I've got all the world to lose
But I just want to hold on to the easy silence."
And that's it. I'm not usually a fan of albums that extend as many tracks as "Free Life." I've found that anything over 10 tracks has to be really good, each and every song, and "Free Life" has 13 tracks and still qualifies in my mind. If you hunger for any more songs like this, check out Dan's "Be Free EP" with a song recorded by the Dixie Chicks that Dan wrote ("Lullaby"), a cover of a Jimmy Webb song ("All I Know"), a "Free Life" radio edit, and two songs that would definitely have been out of place on this album ("I Can't Hold You" and "Hello Stranger"). Check it out.
And since it's December now, here's Dan's clever take on a Christmas song:
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