We live in an age when we, as a people, too often flip through the pages in the hefty tome of life and skip the moments and memories referenced in footnotes. Many prefer a macro view of our personal and collective past, as the micro makes them uncomfortable. Who wants to revisit sad (or worse) times? Yet, to paraphrase George Santayana, those who ignore or forget history are sure to repeat it. Healing from trauma, especially, requires us to strip off the sturdy veneer we use to conceal faults and blemishes. Once we acknowledge and understand what transpired, only then can we move on.
On her sophomore album, If I Had Only Been Better, Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Cassidy Waring shares her experience with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), which she developed following a childhood accented by her mother’s addiction struggles and eventual death. In the press release, she explains, “These songs became a safe space for me to name my most shameful fears about who I am and how I’ve coped. Writing gave me some distance. That belief—that if I had only been better, I could have changed things—was just my way of feeling in control during chaos.” The result is a remarkably evocative outing that mixes indie folk with angsty rock; that it echoes and articulates issues and feelings many of us have faced (or still face) only makes it that much more powerful.
The 10-track set opens with “Ambulance,” which revisits a panic attack that spurred Waring to seek help. The tense “Hearse Chasing” explores the family dramas, dynamics and denials that accented her formative years, while gradually churning into near-frenzied clarity: she’s a lot like her mother. (Anyone who’s ever glanced in a mirror and saw their parent staring back at them will identify with it.)
“Dead Hamsters” maintains the mood during a visit to her childhood home; though now empty, it houses memories she can’t shake. “I’m Okay” tempers the tension with a recognition that those traumas have led her to project her fears onto others.
“Hold Me Tight” finds her exploring how the ghosts of her past manifest themselves in her adult relationships, while the dramatic “Daughter” extrapolates the insights even further. “Lucky Ashes,” for its part, is an epiphany about intergenerational trauma; past hurts are ingrained in our DNA, to an extent. The upbeat “Reunion,” meanwhile, embraces the lessons she’s learned to overcome old patterns of behavior. To an extent, “Every Time I Fall in Love” mines the same vein, but shares the discovery of a healthier refrain for life. The album closes with “Family Chain,” which finds her breaking the shackles that have thus far restrained her.
There’s more than just the music, however: Waring’s journey through the past is the focus of a forthcoming TELUS Originals documentary from Teresa Alfeld, Hearse Chasing. It follows Waring on a visit to her childhood home in Calgary, where she reunites with family and friends in order to make sense of everything.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 