Sacred by Lisa McCormick

A singer-songwriter from Putney, VT, McCormick mines her third release, Sacred, out of force and humor, delight and vision, unearthing a work lush and joyous and complete.

Like the Great Foremother, Joni Mitchell, McCormick uses the native sensuousness of words themselves to push her songs' melody and meaning. In "Call It Beautiful," she writes, "Lighting bolt come and strike my house/Set everything on fire/Walls fall down, the roof caves in/It's a pile of soot and wires." Her voice sparks on the taut "i" in lightning, strike, fire, wires, and lingers over the contrastingly long, lonely, bottom-of-the-well sounds of roof and soot. By the end of the first two lines, McCormick has already created a complexity of sounds, matched by an equally complex idea. The song weighs moments of misfortune and ugliness and celebrates them as full experiences, as luscious as love. On the repeated phrase "call it beautiful," McCormick opens her voice onto the word beautiful as a kind of suspended wave, nearly keening with reverent recognition.

"Grow Old with Me," a paean to lasting love, also marries its sounds and ideas. Romance floods a couple driving late at night, listening to the car stereo, and suddenly McCormick slips into a line of Italian opera, sliding the syllables over one husky note and rising to describe the simple bliss: "And you dive for the knob and crank it up to ten/And I'm thinking, If this blows out my speakers/I don't really care/This scene maybe the sweetest place/That I have ever been." McCormick risks cliché, and consequently, insincerity, in writing about love, but what saves her lyrically is that exquisite attention paid to the real detail of the instant, and the emotional dynamite discovered and released in specific sounds.

Almost every track on Sacred was recorded live, allowing McCormick's backing band a tangible personality. The drum intro on "From Adam," a compassionate yet clear-eyed account of a sleazy guy, is exuberant; the electric guitar is audibly a response to that lead rhythm, and the bass and organs feel their way into the open spaces. McCormick harnesses the instruments, varying her dynamics, her tempo, her emphasis, as she plays with her band. No track repeats another, musically: "Sacred" dangles on guitar, cello, and upright bass; "Do Something Stupid" begins with a sinuous drum beat and explodes into an electric ensemble; "Grow Old with Me" uses the cello this time to elongate and uplift; "Waltz Out Your Door" eerily and coyly dances off the album with accordion.

In that final song, McCormick warns, "It is not what you think/But it is what it looks like/I advise you don't blink/I won't be here for long." It is to our benefit to heed her advice, to follow her as she grooves through desire and purgatory, regret and faulty memories, faith and unforgettable bars, and to revel in her unencumbered joy." (by Becky Karush)

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