"I'll put on a record if you pour." That's one of the best lines on the new Elevator Ride album, "Pitiful Pulls at Cupid's Bow." It's the final line of the title track, and it resonates with simple sincerity and beauty. This song in particular has snuck up on me to become a favorite. The early faves were "My Sciamachy" and "Late Night at the Office Park," with "I Had the Line" running itself again and again in my head for a close third. "Impossible Paupers" has also grown to be a fave, but the title track is appropriate. In many ways I see it as a companion to "Paupers"—both are about "us vs. them" in some way, and that final, closing line to the title track sums up both with an earnest spangle of loving satisfaction. In fact, those two tracks combine into a sweet triad with "Nothing Without (Part 2)" to make this a love letter of an album, a suite of sweets for your sweet that perfectly encapsulates the satisfaction and security that comes from a fulfilling relationship with someone with whom you share a special and near perfect understanding.

Many of the other songs on the album fit neatly with the "album as love letter" concept in that they express a sort of nostalgic rebellion. Songs like "Sticky Truth" and the still-favorite "My Sciamachy" seem to speak of youthful dreams and fears, some conquered, others fantastic and not worth conquering anyway. In these songs is a sense of maturity, a realization that what was once considered of the utmost importance was perhaps just a figment of youthful imagination. Such songs of fear, anger, and even melancholy contrast nicely with the happy acceptance that echoes through the love songs that comprise the album's core.

Viewed in this way, the album is a progression from youthful rebellion and idealism to a more mature contentment and acceptance of life's limitations. That progression begins with "White Out," an admission that the protagonist is not all-powerful, and that, in fact, "she" can see right through him. It continues with "Plastic People," another in the series of "us vs. them" or "we are not like them" songs. And it progresses with "Wouldn't It Be Nice," a dream of idealistic possibilities, all of which are eminently attainable for two people in love.

The outlier here is "Late Night In The Office Park," a dark and haunting vignette of an armed robbery in the parking lot outside an office complex, and its companion, "Noisy Nancy Norris." But even these can be reconciled with the "love letter" theme. Consider, perhaps, that the"Late Night" is a sort of bad dream of what might happen to your true love as she's leaving a long day of work in the suburbs. It's the nightmare of one who has found his or her true love and worries about what might happen to that beloved in the chaos and unpredictability of our modern world. Meanwhile, "Noisy Nancy" might be simply a tale of empathy, a recognition that in each of our lives there are people who seem lost and out of place, and for whom we feel some sort of sympathy, even as we recoil from them in exasperation.

This may not be what the artist had in mind in the composition of this album, but the fact that the album can easily be grasped as a more or less unitary whole is a demonstration of its brilliance and coherence. In the end, whether it all coheres is less relevant than the fact that it's just great listening. I must have heard it straight through close to a hundred times at this point and I'm still happy to turn it on "repeat" and let it play.

Thank you, Elevator Ride!
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