TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY, 2/14 @ 10AM!DOORS 6:30 / SHOW 7:30
"Always building up, falling apart. Love is an art," sings Vanessa
Carlton on the title track of her sixth album, Love Is An Art. Like
the record itself, the song is a meditation on the eternal seesaw that
is human connection: the push, the pull, the balance, the bottoming
out. It's that constantly evolving nature of love, expectations and
compassion that Carlton analyzes from all angles on Love Is An Art,
from romantic, to parental, to the friends that hold us up and the
leaders that repeatedly let us down. And on tracks like the album's
opener, "I Can't Stay the Same," that also includes the relationship
with the person staring back at us in the mirror, each and every
morning.
"Love is the energy you put out into the world," says the
Nashville-based Carlton, who was inspired in part by the 1956 book The
Art of Loving by philosopher Erich Fromm, and by stories and
struggles both in her interior world and the world around her. "And it
can be so incredibly messy at times."
Produced by Dave Fridmann (MGMT, Flaming Lips), Love Is An Art finds
Carlton reckoning with toxic relationships (the confessional "Miner's
Canary"), eternal partnership ("Companion Star") and the children who
fill the world with love and grace while politicians fill their
pockets (the passionate "Die, Dinosaur," written after the shootings
in Parkland, Florida). And true to Carlton’s skill as both a
lyricist and an instrumentalist, the arrangements on Love Is An Art
tell these tales as vibrantly as the words themselves: piano parts
that speak of rage and tenderness, synths that burst and glow like
dawn.
Love Is An Art doesn't just explore connections – it was also born
of one. Carlton wrote the album with the acclaimed Nashville-based
singer-songwriter Tristen, camped out and working while her daughter
napped. "This record is about being out of my comfort zone," says
Carlton. "What's going to happen when we do things that people assume
are not naturally a match, like working with Dave Fridmann? I loved
the idea of working with someone who’s known for a palette that
isn’t associated with me, but it was a fit the second we started
working together. Or what could happen when I sit with another writer,
and just collaborate?"
The result is an extremely dynamic LP filled with sticky melodies and
haunting phrases as well as experimental constructions: super high
highs, super low lows, and song structures that break the mold from
the expected. Unlike her previous, critically-acclaimed 2015 album
Liberman, which Carlton describes as having a calming, almost
meditative palette, Love Is An Art reads, and sounds, "red." Huge.
Passionate. The color of a beating heart.
"I want to run, but I won’t get very far," Carlton sings on "The
Only Way to Love," the album's first official single. "Cause I can’t
fight the force of my young beating heart. Like a soldier's steady
march, answering the call. It’s the only way to love." It's a song
about loving with everything you've got – that love itself is
precious and rare enough to commit to, above all. "When you believe in
a relationship, in a connection, you are actually believing in
yourself," she adds.
Carlton has constantly challenged that belief, in both herself and the
expectations that surround her throughout her lengthy, accomplished
career: she attended both the School of American Ballet and Columbia
University, and was discovered as a singer-songwriter/pianist when a
cassette tape demo was given to legendary music impresario Ahmet
Ertegun. With her debut single "A Thousand Miles," Carlton soared to
the top of the Billboard charts and garnered multiple Grammy
nominations, though that song is only a small fraction of the body of
work and artistic identity she's developed since then, ever evolving
and growing as a performer and songwriter. In the summer of 2019, she
pushed that even further, making her Broadway debut as Carole King
in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
There's a striking image on the cover of Love Is An Art: it's a
delicate hand grabbing a tiger by the tail, but it's not meant to
conjure the familiar colloquialism. Instead, it captures something
different. It’s a about going after something bigger than you, more
powerful than you, something that you’ll never be able to really
control: but you grab it anyway. Something like love. That's the
spirit of Love Is An Art – connections aren’t easy to make, and
sometimes we fail. But it's always worth trying. As Carlton sings on
"Die, Dinosaur," the hope comes when there's nothing left to lose.
"Why not grab the wild animal?" Carlton asks. "And see what happens?"
music
2631
Views
08/06/2020 Last update