Resurrected: A Golden Pop Refresher

Invincible Summer, by k.d. lang (2000)

All Kinds Musick is almost a year old! Here is an early post, resurrected from the archives.

The summer of 2000 was a chilly one for our family.

We were starting our third and final year of living in England, and the dreary, eternal mist of Lincolnshire always seemed to blow straight into one’s face, no matter which direction one chose to walk. The weather might have been tolerable had I not been working a rotating 12-hour shift (two mids, a “sleep” day, two days, three days off), which all but ensured I wouldn’t see the sun for weeks at a time.

Our little family (one infant, one inquisitive four-year-old, two tired parents…and another baby already on the way) struggled to find things to do and then struggled some more to find the energy to do them.

But then, in June, a Canadian cowgirl chanteuse came to our rescue with 42 minutes and 8 seconds of pure sunshine.

Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind
And you my friend, my new fun thing, my summer fling

Reviewers at the time weren’t terribly kind to Invincible Summer, with Rolling Stone describing it as “quick-paced fluff with the retro exactness, and the soul, of a Pottery Barn sofa.” (Don’t tell J.D. Vance!) The implication is that making music based on simple lyrics with singable hooks and a specific sonic palate (in this case, “Sixties Southern California pop”) is somehow not artistic enough.

But we don’t need every artist to be Trent Reznor, do we? We are complicated creatures of many moods, and despite its apparent fluffiness, here we are, nearly a quarter-century later, and this record still gets played several times a year. True, the themes of the individual songs are simple - variations on that summer crush from Summerfling, some more overtly sensual than others - but they also lend themselves to other interpretations.

In Extraordinary Thing, for example, we have a simple opening verse that speaks for itself:

My ordinary days
Are spent inside the maze
Of never changing ways
Such ordinary days

My ordinary spin
Showed itself again
It never seem to end
Then you came waltzing in

My life at the onset of 2000 was a “maze/of never changing ways.” I had already determined that life in the military was not for me and that last year stretching out ahead of me had very little to offer. But when my son came “waltzing in,” it brought us some much-needed joy, and it felt right to sing to him:

I never knew the likes of you
Extraordinary thing
I do believe that you are indeed
An extraordinary thing

It’s unlikely that k.d. lang or co-writer Abe Laboriel Jr. had an infant in mind when they wrote this, but the great thing about simple lyrics is that they can take on a universality and an unintended meaning. It doesn’t hurt when they are blended with musical sunshine and served in a salt-rimmed glass on a beach.

The sunny production is consistent throughout, and whether a given song is more suitable for a volleyball game or a slow dance under citronella, Lang’s voice is always a joy. It doesn’t hurt that she has a solid band backing her up - including Smoky Hormel and Wendy Melvoin (of Prince and the Revolution and Wendy & Lisa fame) on guitar. And when it’s time to dim the lights and get steamy, lang’s multi-tracked harmonies add the sweet to the salty.

The balance between the bouncy, upbeat numbers and the lush romantic ballads allows space for songs like It's Happening With You, which was co-written with bassist David Piltch. On that track, the mood mixes the sixties beach theme with some disco and some danger - that guitar solo sounds like Marc Ribot or Elvis Costello.

Not too much danger. It still has the chorus,

In this crazy
World full of lemons
Baby...
You're lemonade

And if you need a glass of cold lemonade to get through the end of August, you just might find it in this album.