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| The Innocence Mission |
Songs of Innocence...
by Will Robinson Sheff
4.27.2002
Conventional critical wisdom rules that odds-and-ends collections are often enjoyable solely to dedicated fans but not worth investigation by the casual listener, packed as they are with B material and throwaway experiments. The Innocence Mission’s Small Planes is one of the exceptions (not so uncommon, actually) to that rule: though it was cobbled together out of tracks left behind between sessions for 1995’s Glow and the present, Small Planes largely displays the consistent wholeness of a new studio release.
"The band wraps Peris' meditations on love and life's fragility in arrangements themselves as fragile as the striations in an icicle." |
But, even though it could pass for a regular Innocence Mission album, Small Planes also partakes of a little bit of the magic of the odds-and-ends collection in that it’s so amazingly intimate and unassuming. Coming across, at times, as less a coordinated record than a series of diary entries jotted down in song form, Small Planes couldn’t be further removed from the slew of album-length campaigns for control of the zeitgeist that dominate today’s scene of make-or-break hype. These particular entries find frontwoman Karen Peris meditating on love, hope, uncertainty, and life’s fragility, as her bandmates wrap those meditations in arrangements themselves as fragile as the striations in an icicle. The result is one of the most modestly beautiful records of the year.
Clocking in at 34 and a half minutes, Small Planes is as slight and epigrammatic as each of its 11 songs, evaporating shortly after appearing and quietly requesting repeat listens. A few of the songs, such as the poppy “Too Early to Say,” are almost off-handedly anthemic, but largely the mood here is pensive and the distance between Peris’ distinctively affecting voice and the listener is about as thin as the speaker’s membrane. Reiterated images of flight and departure serve to tie these songs together without damaging the casual quality the album receives from its being a collection. A refreshing, airy listen, Small Planes is more than an essential purchase for even casual fans of the Innocence Mission, it’s the rare odds-and-ends disc that works as a perfect point of introduction to this ethereally beautiful band.
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