Album Notes

The Empty Bowl is filled with sumptuous textures and colors that wave nostalgically to mid-Sixties pop (such as Revolver, Burt Bacharach, and Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman”) as O'Brien follows her muse into the here and now. A song cycle about romantic hunger, The Empty Bowl moves like a roller coaster through obsession, elation, frustration, and sometimes even terror (as in, “There’s Somebody Else in My Soul”). Like a taoist glimpse of unity, these moments reveal and contradict each other—the 3 a.m. confusion of “Suffering” against the sunshine euphoria of “Water Street,” the “fall in love without you” surrender of “Anime” awoken by the phone call, the conversation, or the expected glance that never comes. It’s all there at once, like a still-life glowing with a quiet light of understanding, the kind that comes only to artists like O’Brien for whom life, dreams, art, and music are one and the same.