Musically, the album is exhilarating. River Anacostia became an instant all time favorite. The Ministry of Defence, Chain of Keys, and Dollar, Dollar are tremendous.
But the day has come that I've found a Polly song I instantly (outright) hated, and that's A Line In The Sand- IMO, the worst lyrics she's ever written, which is a shame because the music is interesting. And Medicinals is pure silliness, could easily have been the best song on Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk. Still reeling from that which I do not like to fully appreciate the good without a few more listens.

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the correct term would be f****d-up

I try to ignore the lyrics per se, and focus on the imagery those lyrics are evoking, the scenes depicted here are devastating and poignant, that is enough to make the song work, but the way she pours it out fails, I have to agree, (most of) those lyrics are almost awful

"What I’ve seen? Yes, it’s changed how I see human kind"

"How to stop the murdering?
By now we should have learned"


Is so plain, cringe worthy to sing along, and the last two verses are terribly plain. Regardless whether she is borrowing words from someone else or not, it just doesn't work well, is just a poorly worked transcription. She did so better with Community of Hope, I don't know what went wrong here, perhaps she was too self-indulgent with this one.

Thanks god the music by itself - at least, I think - is great enough, is one of my favourite songs by now in the album and it is a bit disturbing to appreciate by the fact that it shows in my opinion the worst lyrics. Overall this album works really well, but is probably her strangest record to date, this strangeness is for better or for worse. But everything anyway we say here is so personal, I won't be pretentious.

Personally I just can't understand how can you write things like that. She always says what you can't separate words from the music and the way it sang (because those two elements could change the meaning completely). Yes, she works on the words separately these days, but there was a reason she made a song out of it instead of the poem.

Now, the voice she uses in "A Line In The Sand" - don't you think it suggests some (maybe, false) naivety? Maybe that's a mockery of Western point of view, how the politics always trying to justify themselves (for example, how Tony Blair was saying sorry for Iraq): "we got things wrong, but I believe we also did some good" - like, Polly is asking "What good did you make if people are forced to leave their countries and live in the tents?".

Lol, those are pretty clearly lyrics from thegardenforum.

ct4spinner, THANKS for posting all the reviews!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JelqPcoaAB8"

A constructive analysis from a local journalist

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/art ... ournalism/

.

Objectively speaking, yes, they not only sound naive as they clearly are naive - and humble - as well as they are honest, but that's what the worker believes, that despite mistakes, they 'did something good', that 'there is a future to do something good'. As far as we know, the lyrics are words borrowed from a worker in the camp. Not objectively speaking, the nuances and insightful interpretations on his speech are personal and surely they are valid for our appreciation, likewise, I can't be presumptuous to state anything about her decisions regarding her writing, but I think she left the worker's words as bare like that for the sake of honesty, just like she did to The Community of Hope, and if that is really the case, not only I respect her decision as I admire her commitment to ethics. The only problem is that her decisions are not a win/win case all the time, she favoured one thing and compromised another, my discontent is just about prosody, meter-wise speaking, and that is just my personal opinion as I said, one may have no problem at all listening to these simple worded verses or singing them along.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JelqPcoaAB8"