Records I Never Get Tired of, Part 1--Letters to Cleo's "Aurora Gory Alice"
Written: Apr 18 '03
Product Rating:
Pros: The whole package.
Cons: It's just too short. Time really DOES fly when you're having fun.
The Bottom Line: One of those rare instances of everything coming together like a complicated, but well-made puzzle, lyrics, vocals, music--simply a great record.
cdm72's Full Review: Aurora Gory Alice by Letters To Cleo
Some records you just don't get tired of, no matter how many times you hit repeat. When my mood is one that doesn't look for a particular album to listen to, on those days when I look over everything I own and still NOTHING jumps out at me, there are a list of albums I own that I know I can put on and enjoy just as much as I did when I first bought them. This is one of them.
Letters to Cleo was formed in Boston in 1990 by guitarist Greg McKenna. Looking for a backup singer, he came across Kay Hanley. When the band fell apart, they stayed on, found new members in guitarist Michael Eisenstein (later to marry Kay Hanley), drummer Stacy Jones, and bassist Scott Reibling. Their debut CD, AURORA GORY ALICE came out 3 years later.
Letters to Cleo is nothing more or less than a simple pop band. Their music is catchy, their lyrics fun, and their songs addictive. Each member plays their part to the demands of the song, no one overstepping their bounds and taking center stage when it's not their turn, and everyone plays to compliment Hanley's childish, raspy voice. She sounds like a 10-year-old Marianne Faithful sometimes, after Faithful started really going hoarse. Add that to the pigtails and baggy overalls in the one video a lot of people saw ("Here and Now", mostly seen during the closing credits of "Melrose Place") and you got that little girl image that only made the band more endearing. People bought the record based on 30 seconds of a single, a round-faced little blonde girl rattling off that 80 mile an hour chorus, and they were rewarded with one of the best pop records of the 90s. That's a bold statement but I believe the merits of things like music, books, movies . . . pretty much everything reviewed here actually, is relative to the reviewer, and for my money Letters to Cleo's AURORA GORY ALICE is just that, one of the best pop records of the 90s.
These guys wrote their own songs, they played their own instruments. They didn't sample, they didn't borrow, and if there were any obvious musical influences here, it wasn't anyone I'm familiar with. They make everything their own and in doing so have us totally convinced, not only that they know exactly what they're doing, but that they've been doing it a long time.
On the fourth song, "Wasted", the pounding drums and thick bass, coupled with the distorted guitar and Hanley's cries of "The quiet that takes the place of the silence that takes the place of your voice. You're right, reasons are dumb and I'm just talking too much. And I want to be alone with what I am--wasted" work in perfect unison, convincing us she's in true emotional pain. Later, when she belts out "I'll just come apart or something. No one could be more empty than I am and I would take it all back if I could. But I can't", we're even more sure of it. This little girl can sing, cracking voice and all.
"From Under the Dust" evokes a laid back mood, a surprising turn from the opening bass part that feigns something more along the lines of a metal ballad. Again, Hanley's voice suits the lyrics perfectly. "It was another time. I guess you were a friend of mine. It was another time but not much to recall" she says before sinking into her gravely, bad girl voice (the beautiful thing about Hanley's voice is that it isn't the same from song to song--someone like Natalie Merchant could never pull off a record like this--and she can easily go from sweet raspy-voiced waif as in "Get On With It" to growling rock chick as on the aforementioned "From Under the Dust").
The writing is credited to the band, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out the lyrics were all written by one person--the entire record has a rhythm that is distinctly its own, the mark of a single person. That's not to say whoever wrote them is always clear in their meaning, but they've definitely got a feel not only for what Kay Hanley and the rest of the band can do, but in how to construct a line that's fun to sing along with, it's something in the way your mouth forms the words that makes it interesting, like the opening lines of "Here and Now", "Just living on a Sunday morning, got my toast and tea and I'm warm and I just thought I think about. All the things to get and keep getting, never enough not enough and never ending." It's a facial exercise to get those words out as quickly and clearly as Hanley does and whoever wrote them had to know how well the lines fit together. Another great line I love, from "Come Around", "Look your dreams walk away with mine. Stumble and cry but I'm clapping on the inside. So what your answer comes to me. I'm not saying I don't know it but it's not likely that I'll come around anyway."
But the one that would probably have to win the award for best rhythmic phrasing has to go to the album closer, the acoustic strumming and knee-slapping "ditty" "Step Back"--"Like that time you went back in time surface wounds could not scar that tough exterior far superior were you."
There's nothing deep or too serious about AURORA GORY ALICE and maybe that's what makes it such a fun record to listen to. Even the slower songs like "Wasted" and "Get On With It" have that certain something that keeps you from noticing what a down song it really is. There's nothing on this record that demands your full attention with its deep social or political message because there is no such message, only 5 people making a good record and sometimes that's really the best thing.
Unfortunately Letters to Cleo never got the full star status they deserved and in 2000 they broke up. Hanley went on to start a solo career--she also went on to provide the singing voice in the movie JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS for Rachel Leigh Cook-- and the rest of the band did their own thing. They may not have been around long enough to get a really good "Behind the Music" story and they'll likely never be Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, but with AURORA GORY ALICE, Letters to Cleo did something not a lot of other band can do--they made a debut record I can listen to every day--start to finish, mind you, I don't skip any of these songs--and never get tired of.
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