Years long ago, one of my humanities professors pointed out that many folks are uncomfortable with quiet, so when alone they turn on the TV or radio to create the illusion of company. It’s a simultaneously conscious and unconscious act. They’re aware of the action, obviously, but not necessarily of the underlying reason driving it. It’s not the being alone that actually scares them. It’s the being alone with their thoughts.
Melbourne-based singer, songwriter and visual artist Sarah Mary Chadwick speaks those thoughts aloud on her Messages to God album. It’s a metaphoric excavation of the messy essence of life come the 21st century. Accented by sparse instrumentation and black humor, Chadwick digs through the soul with shovels and trowels until hitting bone, then switches to a brush to remove sediment. What’s left is stark and dark. I’d add cathartic if only for rhyme’s sake, but she told Zo Magazine in 2021 that she doesn’t think that psychological term applies to her songs. Rather, “I view things as being part of a long arduous process of slowly getting some cloudy sense of understanding of a feeling or occurrence, as opposed to an explosive kind of expulsion from which you emerge unencumbered or purged.”
Imagine Nico intoning the poetry of Sylvia Plath to the accompaniment of two slightly out-of-sync pianos, with an occasional guitar, flute and tom-tom beat of drums echoing from deep in the subconscious. That, in a way, describes the 10 songs here. Chadwick muses about the madness of life, from a friend’s suicide attempt to a family visit to a broken relationship. She lashes out—at herself, at friends and family, at God—but with a refreshing self-awareness. Call her a self-actualized chanteuse. (As she sings in “Sometimes I Just Wanna Feel Bad,” “Sometimes I wanna forget that I’m broken/By concentrating on your shortcomings.”) She also, as I mentioned above, integrates humor into her songs. In “Looked Just Like Jesus,” for instance, she observes, “If you’re tryin’ to walk with God/It pays to wear good shoes.”
That said, Messages to God is not an easy listen. The blithely unaware, so accustomed to filling the void with custom-made playlists of vapid tunes, will find much to dislike, from Chadwick’s off-kilter vocals to the scant instrumentation to the songs themselves, which come across far more as monologues than conventional musings on life and love. But for those willing to make the effort, there are many riches to discover. Chadwick processes the ugliness of life with empathy and humor and, in so doing, helps us do the same.
The Old Grey Cat 