Hey, guys, remember that girl in college? The one whose intellect was sometimes intimidating, but sometimes eye-roll-inducing, depending on how far she ventured into cliché? The one you thought about dating, but probably never did, and if you didn’t you figured, well, she’s probably gay anyway?
If you’re buying into my obnoxious stereotype so far – and if you’re part of the distaff sector of the species, I sincerely apologize for it — then you know where this is going. Because if you’re old like me, you sat around with your buddies and called that girl “Janis Ian.” But by the time I got to graduate school in 1990, her name was “Indigo Girl.”
This album is why. And at this point I’ll pull out of the Neanderthal mentality of my opening and state, simply, that Indigo Girls was one of the finest major-label debuts of the ’80s. Its long-term impact is undeniable, not only upon the duo’s career but upon an entire generation of female singer-songwriters who gained a path to popularity on the radio and the concert stage in part because of its success. (more…)
My bags sat on the floor waiting to be unpacked while I looked around my bedroom — the same bedroom where I’d grown up, the same bedroom I’d escaped when I went off to Bowling Green, and the same bedroom I would now live in as a college graduate trying to save up money to move out west. Nothing had changed in that room for 15years; the wallpaper that my mother had put up herself still hung on the walls, the newspaper clippings and magazine pictures tacked to the corkboard were still there, and the clown portrait that hovered over the bunk beds my brother and I had shared still looked on, unable to manage a smile. As the smell of fresh cut grass filled the air and a breeze came in through the window, I felt lost. Four years spent in pursuit of a dream seemed to have stalled while I waited out the summer. To top things off, a bad hair dye attempt had left my hair orange.
Indigo Girls – Poseidon and the Bitter Bug (2009, Vanguard)