Dessa - Parts of Speech (2013) VBR

Dessa - Parts of Speech

Year 2013

Tracks
1. The Man I Knew
2. Call Off Your Ghost
3. Warsaw
4. Skeleton Key
5. Dear Marie
6. I'm Going Down
7. Fighting Fish
8. The Lamb
9. Beekeeper
10. Annabelle
11. It s Only Me
12. Sound the Bells
13. Icing Burns (Bonus)


I anticipate that "Call Off Your Ghost" is the song most likely to break out and ensure that Dessa gets the broader recognition she deserves. It's a song about the simple challenges about living with and moving on from your past, in the form of running into an ex at a mutual friend's wedding. It's at once poignant and driven, plaintive and defiant, and, for the record, sounds better the louder you play it. And onstage, she's confessed that she literally started writing the song in her car during the reception of a wedding where this happened. I think many of us have been haunted by previous relationships.
As noted, this album is extremely personal, with all but two tracks (the Springsteen cover and the philosophical rumination on humanity's dominion over nature in "The Beekeeper") being open letters to ex-boyfriends, critics, friends or former abusers. Dessa contains multitudes, though it seems none of them are straightforwardly happy. As Sean McPherson describes it, she is optimistically depressed, and her songs embody this contradiction beautifully. She speaks proudly of her ambition on "Fighting Fish" ("I'm not above apologies but I don't ask permissions/ Got a lot of imperfections but I don't carry my ambition in them") but then is humbled by her friendship hubris in "Dear Marie." She feels helpless to help "Annabelle," but relishes restrained control over a former tormenter in "The Lamb." I love her recognition in "The Man I Knew" that she could be wrong about her conceptions of the way someone should live their life.
Then there's the heavy electronic bass and warping of "Warsaw," whose lyrics, like "Easy to please/ But hard to impress/ I'm in a mood, new shoes, and a bulletproof dress" hew closer to the defiant slam poetics of earlier tracks like "Mineshaft" and "Bullpen." Contrast that with the spare arrangement on "It's Only Me," which brings in beautiful cello work by Nick Ogawa in an elegant counterpoint to her lyrics about needing to call a lover after a dream and declaring that "I didn't come to play it safe/ I came to win or lose with you/... and I win and lose with you." It's amazing that these two songs are on the same album from the same artist.
As voices at MPR station The Current have noted, Dessa is a local treasure in Minnesota and has little left to prove here; she can stand on the world stage without hesitation or reservation.