For the past 17 years,
Carla Torgerson,
Chris Eckman from the Northwest corner of the United States, and a revolving cast of players have crafted albums of fine, independent gothic (as in Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner, not
Bauhaus) American music and have influenced countless bands along the way, many of whom are too foolish to acknowledge their influence. Counting bootlegs and mail-order issues, they have issued no less than 15 albums and countless singles and EPs for labels such as Virgin, Glitterhouse, Sub Pop, and others, without receiving a whit of popular acclaim. Yeah, critics love them, so what -- they can't make a living on what critics write. The bottom line is that this band crafts exquisite songs from the shadowy side of the American experience, and
Ended Up a Stranger offers evidence aplenty. The opener is the gorgeous "Lazarus Heart," where a string quartet and a skittering drum kit usher in a weary protagonist who cannot even recount her stories in full, but instead just gives impressions, like flashes of light along a boulevard at night: "I keep crashin'/Into parked cars/Waitin' for a horse/And it's blue rider/Followed you that night/You tasted lucky/We staggered blessed/Your scars they...matches, my dress/Never mind/The happy ending...Lazarus heart, Lazarus heart/ We forget/We risk/We're tired/We're true/Veils and whispers/Rivers of ether."
Torgerson is haunted and resigned; she's been here before and knows that tomorrow the cycle begins again without the hint of a different direction, but she holds out, like Beckett, for that one glimmer where everything can change on a dime.