Kids love music. I always hear them make the argument that an artist's first album is his/her best, because it's the rawest, roughest and least polished. I've heard folkies cite Dar Williams, punkers mention the Clash, and power pop fans point to Big Star. I never have much to say to them, as I, too, am attracted to that time in one's life when failed friendships and broken hearts did not induce contentedness and resolve, but a thousand and two new arias to build into a pop song. It's for this reason, perhaps, that I always loved Elizabeth Elmore and Sarge. Sarge wrote songs with the immediacy and aggressiveness of youth gone insane with prickly emotion. They captured the inner rhythms of Elmore's voice, where confrontation and revenge mingled with pain, restlessness and a search for something new.
In 2002, something new has definitely arisen. Since Sarge's demise, Elmore has been to law school, toured as a solo artist and developed a whole new writing style, built more upon craft than the energy of a hurting heart. In songs with her new band, the Reputation, old subjects, remain, but the relationships between her loves and acquaintances are approached differently. The focus is less on diary-tight exactitude than on delivering the sort of swagger you'd expect from Girlschool or Joan Jett. It makes certain lines seem fictional, and others joyfully critical.
The most obvious musical comparisons to this new phase of Elmore's career is the Replacements' underappreciated Don't Tell a Soul. "The Stars of Amateur Hour" is the Reputation's more dour take on "Talent Show", while "This Town" is Elmore's daring reinterpretation of "They're Blind". Replacements fans hated Westerberg for this song, and it's likely that Elmore will face the same wrath from a public that hates to be the bad guy. Elmore might also receive the same Westerbergian criticism for recycling past images (her fascination for Alaskan boys, like Westerberg's rebels without clues), because it's hard for an obsessed fan to enjoy the craft of his favorite artist over that artist's soul.
As there are waves of fragility behind Elmore's words, I hope the disc's reception is better than I expect. These songs are a good, smart leap forward for Elmore, and as necessary as the humorless Interiors was to Woody Allen. Assuming that Elmore wants to continue making songs, craft is as necessary as inspiration, for no artist can weather heart-rending experiences on the strength of self-revelation alone. Eventually you need the perspective a fresh pen can bring, or the spark that a sudden Actor's Workshop growl can help to throw once-familiar rock terrain onto a rollercoaster ride, in which the raging twee voice for which we've raged suddenly sounds merely raging, and then soft, and then sweet, and then decked in leather and scuffed boots. With the Reputation, Elmore is telling the rock life she can withstand its abuses, and to give her all that it can, for she is equipped with the tools to endure it, on a day-to-day basis, now and forever.
-- Theodore Defosse