Album Review: Inara George’ Dearest Everybody Is Truly For Everyone
Grief, nostalgia, and the overall feeling that your present life is not your greatest life seems to be a natural patch in human stories. We all go through that “moment” when we are not in the moment. Frankly, it sucks. Yet, Inara George’s Dearest Everybody celebrates the process of dissatisfaction we all undergo with life as a training in how to be happy.
What most stands out about Inara George’s Dearest Everybody is its tenderness. You feel like you are listening to the life of a flower: it is planted, it grows, it blossoms, and it dies only to have its withered stem and petals enrich the same soil it once came from for the next flower that will bloom. We are birthed from the past only to become it again, yet our lives are integral for the future. Thus, George’s songs feel like vials for the present; you unlock them by listening to the perfume of her voice.
George’s vocals are famously sweet. She is the titular pop voice that has managed to create some of the best indie, folk tracks of our time, in part, because of her thoughtfulness. Songs such as, “Take Me To Paris”, “Release Me”, and “Somewhere New” are just a few tracks that latch on to the record’s theme of movement. From the times where we seemingly run from our lives to the instances where we feel trapped by it, George swings her voice like a rose to the stage. She soulfully captures anxiety, yearning, and love, all at once, to show humanity’s darker emotions are defined by their lack of light; so why are you not giving them lighter? See your depressed heart like a flower you have left under the shade, and decide to put it back in the sun.
As expected, Dearest Everybody is lyrically stunning. “House On Valentine”,”A Bridge”, “Stars”, and “Crazy” feel like artworks framed to walls that you walk by in analysis. You look at their chords like brush strokes and words like palettes selected by George for a purposeful message: go through your life. While we often use the present as a reason to go the past and future, it is the past and future that should make us want to stay present. No moment in our life has ever not left, but there are so many times when we left the moment, as well. For Inara George, that is why we have nostalgia; because we keep on leaving moments to travel back to them in our minds, and make oaths we will never leave again. In Dearest Everybody, Inara George uses sound, style, and singing to us stay, which is why I HIGHLY suggest you check out her January 24 show at Nublu. Click Here to Buy Dearest Everybody on January 19.
