Nina Gordon
Tonight & the Rest of My Life
Warner Brothers
When I first heard the title of this album, and a few of the lyrical ideas, I knew it would be a good record. She had learned that important lesson. “I understand everything and now I can die.” That is a very important thing that many people learn, and I think it only makes sense to people who learn it. The manner in which she broke away from her previous position/mode and entered into this kind of new phase was done gracefully and cleanly. While the album moves a little more towards being marketed to the adult alternative audience, as far as I’m concerned, it’s got a shitload of cool musical ideas, making it well worth studying. A ton of rhythmical Easter-eggs and polyrhythms are all over the freaking place, but they are so huge and slow you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t count them out. And that, to me, is brilliant, even if they are not purposeful. The lyrics are great as usual; she always writes solidly about a certain subject; they’re never blurry. I like that. And just the ideas that the lyrics are based around seem completely interesting. “I’m here and you’re there so who cares what I wear on New Years Eve?” and “I’ll meet you here in 2003” are so different than the usual crap you hear on the radio every day. She’s got an esoteric, romantic sense of humor which I’m glad to see continued here. A+ Certified.
Warner Brothers Records, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019-6908; http://www.ninagordon.com
