Word: downrightness
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Eclectic, eccentric and often downright funny, the album resonates with the hard-won truths of self-examination. Byrne still comes across as a man who knows that danger lurks in the shadows of even the sunniest day, but his attention is focused inward, and the result is illuminating. "I can barely touch my own self," he sings on Angels. "How can I touch someone else?/ I'm just an advertisement/ For a version of myself." Nothing at All builds from a funky guitar figure into a vaulting ode to alienation as Byrne sings, "And the knife is near at hand...
Unfortunately, these novel revelations about emotions and erotic desire seem to be accidental. Ogden spends the bulk of her time waxing poetic on the beautiful possibilities of sexual liberation, rather than presenting concrete ways to achieve those ends. At times, her analogies and explanations can be downright silly; Myrtle the Muskrat would fit better in a children's book rather than this presumed exploration of female sexuality...
...Norman Rockwell's America, good behavior was its own reward. Accepting cash for performing a civic duty or taking care of one's own health would have been embarrassing, if not downright degenerate. But that is exactly the approach that is being championed by a growing number of people desperate to reverse some of the social trends of the past 20 years...
What can you say of Los Angeles, so stripped of its civic pride? It is divided by the kind of social unrest that leads newscasts in every town. The demise of the defense industry has the L.A. population anxious, if not downright jobless, and has pricked the speculative real estate bubble that the sporting magnates rested on -- Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, whose empire was built on rare coins and, of course, real estate, is being hounded for $92 million. What can you say of a town that traded on sunshine and the scent of orange blossoms...
...baseball has done better. I'd say the season has gotten downright scary...