“ Past Life may have been cathartic to make, but it felt less like a personal statement and more like an acknowledgment of shared understanding. Anderson’s songs have blood and viscera and ache but they never feel like exhibitionism because we’ve felt these things, too. In “Red Star”, the narrator evokes the cosmos as a relationship disintegrates, and the song builds and builds until the “like a red star” refrain becomes “like a blue scar.” And then the album comes to an abrupt end. Blue scars are the ones that hurt, and the movement from infinite scale down into this small, private pain— the absurdity of that juxtaposition— is partly what gives Past Life its power.
EMA
buddhism
philosophy
—
Pitchfork: Top 50 Albums of 2011 - 13. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints by Mark Richardson
Apropos of what I said yesterday, this is some really good writing - and thinking - about EMA. ‘Red Star’, which I wrote about at length originally here (and posted the early tape-recorded acoustic version here) contains two of my favourite sections from EMA’s lyrics:
“Got a strange fascination
I been holdin on the one
for that strange revelation
I been holdin on too long”
and
“…if you don’t love me
someone will”
which I think are a pretty profound illustration of the juxtaposition mentioned above. They’re practically Buddhist in their acceptance of worldly pain and suffering and the inability to grasp transcendence rather than simply being it.
