I think I understood THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS (the album) when I saw a film by Ang Lee called The Ice Storm. I'm sure many of you have seen it: Kevin Klein, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen.
The film is set just a few years prior to the album's release and many of the themes explored on the album are brought to life in The Ice Storm. The themes of the record were further explored in American Beauty and really drove some of the points home for me. I think THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS is an extremely cinematic album. A lot of Joni's songs have that celluloid quality to them, but that album in particular seems to play like a movie for me. I feel like I'm watching these sad, lonely, desperate characters cavorting on immaculate sun decks or swimming in pools lit by dim patio lanterns, trying to remember and forget all at once. Their lives are shallow and superficial, masking an undercurrent of intense sadness and resentment - the humanity that they are secretly longing to retrieve. In any case, the epiphany for that album dawned in a movie theatre. -Andrew Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
