On her debut album,
Tracy Dawn presents herself as a rock & roll sinner who has found the way. The confessional song "Enter Savior" details her indulgences, as she sings, "Curiosity invited me to taste/A drug called xtc [sic]/Nitrous oxide, acid, shrooms/Enter darkness, enter doom." Then, the Christian God turned up in her life: "Appearing to me in a dream he came to set this captive free/Now I know that 'S' upon his chest doesn't stand for Superman."
Dawn's image of God coming to her in the costume of a cartoon hero may be laughable, but her plight certainly was not, and neither is her conviction. Yet for much of
Poetic Aftermath, the music is more powerful than the message.
Dawn and a tight little band turn out a series of excellent alternative rock tunes, full of raging guitars and thundering drums, with the singer's powerful voice cutting through the clatter to carry the catchy melodies. The oddity, of course, is that such aggressive music is carrying a Christian theme, but more often than not
Dawn uses the music to make her words stick. Not surprisingly, she is better at testimonials like "Enter Savior," praise songs like "I'm a Junkie" (despite the title), and evocations of the Devil like "Leave Me Alone" than she is at proselytizing, which sometimes reveals the simpleminded quality of her faith, notably in "Revelation of Romance," a ballad that speculates about God's need for a little romance in His life, which would give any theologian pause. Nevertheless, "Mock," in which she challenges a skeptic, is one of the album's best songs, very much in
Alanis Morissette's hook-heavy pop/rock style. The subject matter of
Poetic Aftermath may restrict its appeal to the CCM community, but it deserves to be heard well beyond that market. ~ William Ruhlmann