Whether someone is technically proficient or not, whether someone is a virtuoso or not, it's never about that, not really. Some of the greatest singers have terribly limited vocal ability, but they know how to use that limited range like no one else. Lewis is sort of the exception that lends insight to the rule. As she proves many times before the operatic lullaby, "Ciel Eternel," Lewis's abilities are singular and profound. If I say the opening three cuts move from a distinctly NOLA version of blues confrontation to an epic self defense that calls to mind the grandeur of "River Deep Mountain High" and then the kind of garage soul one might associate with Smokey Robinson sifted through Steve Van Zandt, this would be selling each song short simply because of Lewis's voice. This isn't about Lewis's voice being better than Tina Turner. It's about why such distinctions don't matter.
What matters is neither woman would entertain such a silly comparison because what makes them sisters is a vision as big as rock and soul itself. And that vision is why the three soaring piano ballads at the center of the album hit as hard as the rest. These songs ask the questions that are most central to the musical vision that waged a series of cultural revolutions. Lewis asks us to consider the weight of our convictions. If our one life matters, just what is indeed possible?
In the tumultuous currents of "Possible"--buffeting harp and piano crested by splashing cymbals--Lewis declares a fundamental conviction that is certainly core to why I have devoted my life to writing about this music despite the entire playing field and the role of writers themselves having changed in such quantitative ways that the work feels fundamentally different today than when I started--when rock and hip hop criticism played a prominent role in a series of great cultural upheavals.
But the basic job hasn't changed. The community feels as alien to me, in many ways, as Lewis's old sense of community (the focus of so much of this album) feels alien to her. If you've been in the room with Lilli Lewis playing her organ and singing or if you are immersed in it on headphones the way I am right now, it's every bit as huge as those rock records that used to crack open the eternal sky as well as the punk and hip hop records that blew holes in that vision of the sky.
All is forgiven here, for Lewis and for me, because we share an understanding that what matters is much bigger than our personal disappointments, our own failures, and the failures of our old communal homes. She says it plain as day in "Possible"--"I'll never be flattened by perfection/Best to expand by nature's laws."
We're all trying just as hard every time we sit down to perform because we know in this act we learn, individually and together. And it's been there since people began to recognize something new was taking hold, asking Beethoven to roll right on over because that's alright mama, any thing you do.
It's no surprise then that Lewis closes this album with the epic rock guitar of "Firefly." One of the greatest voices I've ever heard asks the listener, asks the music itself, to "teach me to sing." Like writing itself, that will never be a fixed goal, not if you want, like Lewis, nothing less than "to light the dark quiet sky."
"All Is Forgiven" at Righteous Babe
