Olender recorded Easy Crier with James Felice (of The Felice Brothers) at The Church in Harlemville, NY. Darkly comic and almost surreal, but absolutely real. The drumbeat mimics the way we think and feel as we remember something gone-yet-not-gone in the immediate stages of grief – when it still hurts deep in our guts and quickens our hearts – and yet, as she does through much of the album, Olender lends a little laugh by telling the story of a new tattoo at the funeral. Listen to “Keith”, an almost-pop song that paces faster and faster like a rising heartbeat as Olender explores her memories. At times, it calls to mind the sharp, honest, and almost-humorous qualities of Joan Didion’s reflections on loss. The catalyst for Easy Crier was the unexpected and sudden loss of her older brother, and that air of grief suffuses many of the songs and yet, she finds a kind of gentle clarity throughout, exploring herself, her relationship to the world, and her relationship with her brother.
Olender fixes her attention on hard topics, challenging herself and the listener with the kind of honesty we often find it easiest to avoid. She doesn’t strive to offer answers or even understanding she simply uses the truest gift of an artist – to observe what so many of us fail to recognize. Attention to the infinitesimal moments of life as much as the impossibly cavernous ones that swallow us. Somewhere at the core of Al Olender’s new album Easy Crier is the important of attention.
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