Reviews

Artist:Vanessa Peters
Album: Flying On Instruments
Label: Idol
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.vanessapeters.com/

Having rocked out on her previous album, Peters takes the temperature down here for a return to more folk-pop pastures with piano rather than guitar as the foundation for most of the songs. Again working her core Italian (save for drummer/producer Rip Rowan in whose Dallas studio it was recorded) backing band along with a string quartet and contributions from Joe Reyes on 12 string, mandolin and lap steel, the title is an aeronautical terms for relying on the equipment to keep moving forward when you can't actually see where you're going, and as such a metaphor for trust in what you're doing rather than being influenced by external clutter.

It leaves the runway with the shufflingly early Vega-like catchy five-minute 'Beauty or Grace', which pretty much entails the idea of the serenity prayer as she sings "this is the year of making do with what's right in front of you, within your grasp and I no longer have the audacity to ask for things I don't think I deserve/'cause I've already exhausted my reserve of miracles and gifts, surely they've run out/and I don't want to press my luck", capturing the sentiments of the creative artist frustrated that these days it all comes down to "balance sheets and bottom lines", but impressed by those who continue to press on a pursue beauty and grace. There's a weariness and resignation in "I have emptied every sleeve I have but never found the ace…I'd just like to afford to keep doing what I love and I'm long past needing recognition or a sign from above…I don't think much about the past these days the now's enough to handle on its own/'cause it takes all day every day to keep rolling up that stone". It probably worth noting at this point that, despite the song's downbeat tine, Peters has enjoyed consistent critical acclaim and substantial commercial success across her eight albums, so maybe this just caught her on a bad day.

Even so, a similar sense of feeling stuck is also there on the steady chugging 'Halfway Through' ("I was always hanging on/stuck somewhere off in the past/trying to make some feeling last/when I should really let it go") and that, "an emotional pack rat" with a metaphorical Mary Poppins bag, she's "still trying to figure out what to carry, what to leave behind, and what I can do without". Riding a slow guitar chug, 'Blind Curves' continues the introspective reflection and the feeling of beating herself up for falling short ("my uncle wanted me to be a doctor/my sister just wanted me to come home/I might have made a good teacher/or a pretty decent mother/but I tried not to look back/and I struck out on my own/so many paths that I could take/well lately all I see are possible mistakes/staring back at me when I confront the day/sometimes it's so hard to get out of my own way") finding herself with "no map to follow out of town/the one I have must be broken/it keeps taking me over the same ground and coming home don't feel the same/'cause I've grown tired of the travel and the ache… I think more these days of leaving loved ones on the ground in wait/weighted down by the grief that I create every time I have to go".

However, while the opening set of songs might adopt the view that "we're in the same boat but it's not much consolation if the boat is going down", things take a turn with the aptly titled 'Better' with its steady drum beat and guitar chimes as she declares "I've spent nearly all my life worrying about what other people think of me… I've spent a lot of mornings shaking off bad dreams trying to make peace with the past/and I don't know if this truce we made is gonna last but it's better, it's a whole lot better", capturing a more glass half full perspective in "I snatched half a day from the jaws of the rain/put on a coat and went outside/an unexpected walk in the sudden sun/it always makes me feel so alive". That renewed determination and rebound carries over into the driving rhythm of 'Pinball Heart' where, a renewed fire in the voice, she sings "I don't wanna save my best punch and never get a chance to throw it/so sometimes you gotta go for it/'cause if you're stuck in the way that it was/then you'll always be missing the way it is" and not holding on to a past that keeps you from moving forward.

The musical energy flow persists on 'Out To Sea' but the lyrical mood pulls back into a theme of loss and the addictive nature of a past relationship that still haunts ("this week I called you at the office knowing you aren't there/just to catch your voice recording/so I could practice trying not to care/and if I saw you in the daylight would I know what to say/would you stop and smile or would you walk away"). Loss - here painted in colours of mortality, love and health - is also there on the lap steel shaded, deceptively musically upbeat shuffling 'How Long' ("a friend called today, said he lost his wife/she was only 52 and still so full of life/and the way his voice cracked across the line raised the hair on my neck/and for a moment it stopped time"), the track from whence the album title ("we're all flying on instruments/no one's got a crystal ball") and the theme of staying optimistic when "moving forward, while always sliding back" comes and "we judge our past on the greatest hits/looking back on it we only see the best bits/but we judge the present on how it's going now". But while we may be "in the forest still", unable to see our way out, she's optimistic about the future however long it takes to get there.

The repeated point is that, while we may be "stumbling in the dark", 'Hey Claire', a letter to a friend brought down by the weight of the way life's turned out, says simply accepting defeat should not be not be an option but rather "unkneel and hit rewind and don't accept that sentence". It ends with Meynes on 12-string for 'Wasted Days', a reflection on how, while "I'm clinging stubbornly to the little momentum I've got left/swallowed up by apathy, inertia has me in its debt/redoubling my efforts…I've got my resolutions and a brand new checklist that won't cooperate", and on how it fell apart ("if you'd been different, well maybe I'd have stayed/but if I'd been different I wouldn't have wanted you to change") and while she suggests "know when to get out, when you're on top/or as high as you can get/you may not have won the gold but take your consolation prize and go", the message is to learn from and not be imprisoned by the past as it ends with the wisdom that "there's no shame in coming home to rebuild a bridge you burned/as long as you don't forget/the lessons you've learned maybe then, they weren't wasted days".

An album by an artist seemingly in emotional flux but clinging to a guarded optimism and the faith that her internal control panel will ultimately navigate the dark skies, she says the songs are about removing the dead weight from your life. There is, though, not an ounce of dead weight in her music.

Mike Davies

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