Songs that explore inner sprituality from an honest and vulnerably personal perspective; both reveling and reverent, they sound like music of commonplace divinity made in a shack in mid-Michigan on a rainy day for someone you love.

11 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, ROCK: Folk Rock



Details:
When Sari Brown set out to record her first full-length album, she described her objective in an interview as being "to make an album that you will put into your car stereo and listen to for the first time while driving around town crying and letting all the memories attached to certain streets or buildings come back to you, like a flood washing you clean. Whether you're crying from sadness or happiness is your decision, though I recommend both."

Over the course of 8 months, while saving her pennies working as a secretary in Oakland County, through becoming a producer and arranger without having had any previous experience, after many thousands of hours rehashing, rehearsing and rerecording, and because of the occurrence of several small miracles, Brown released her compact disc in the United States in May of 2004 under the title "For What is the Journey." It is widely agreed that she succeeded in every way with her complex artistic intentions for the album, and that at the same time she was able to communicate a universal and accessible piece of work. Indeed, it has been played and replayed by punk rockers, record store snobs, folk sing-alongers, Christian music fans, sad bastard country types, 60's soul purists, and even a few people who don't tend to like music at all.

The surprising thing about the diversity of attention that "For What is the Journey" has garnered is the very specific and particular nature of the release. It is a concept album in the tradition of Morrison's "Astral Weeks" and Gaye's "What's Going On", and the concept is that of Brown's inner spirituality. It is about the journey she has taken, and indeed is still actively embarked upon, in her spiritual life. Her Christian influences, her forthrightness with her beliefs, and her uncompromised artistic originality were expected to turn away or alienate some listeners, but the album seems to do just the opposite-it seems to be welcoming with open arms people of every mindset.

Perhaps the key to the universal appeal of the album is the playful, genre-bending nature of it's music, which sounds something like Van Morrison if he were a 17-year-old girl with a few of the members of The Band in his backing line-up. Though the album swings from country to soul to rock 'n roll, the talent and consistence of the backing instrumentalists, and Brown's abilities as a producer, fuse everything together with a continuity that makes it feel like a catchy and clever Cake record, if John McCrea sang all gospel songs.

Or, perhaps the key is the way that Brown writes lyrics. Her songs are intimately emotional and unswervingly understanding portrayals of hope, despair, traveling, wondering, working, and waiting. Her songs are about commonplace divinity: they're about only you, but at the same time, they're about everybody. She performs them as if she were sitting in a shack on a rainy day in mid-Michigan singing for someone she loves. Both reveling and reverent, all 11 of the songs on "For What is the Journey," by themselves or as a whole body of work, touch on something sweet, simple, and soulful within each of us.