We Have Forgotten

It comes from nowhere, and from everywhere. It is gentle, but it is insistent. It is quiet and persistent. It grows and grows and grows like a garden, opening into something that envelops you in this new world. This is not going to be a rock and roll record; it’s not even an “alternative” or “folk” record. The guitars do not even really announce themselves as guitars -- they are watercolors, or, later, conduits of melody.

And oh, that voice: for the first time not hidden under reverb  that AM-radio sheen of Smiths/Cure-style production. It is pristine, clear, beautiful and sad. We have forgotten, she sings. You don’t know yet what she is singing about, but you believe her.

And just so we’re clear, a string quartet shows up about halfway through.

“We Have Forgotten” is, obviously, the first track on Sixpence None the Richer, the band’s third and best-selling, best-known, and best album --well, I say “best-known,” but I am not sure their albums are all that well-known compared to their singles. But this is well-covered territory for us.

So many things seemed to be in the right place for this record, even though its recording began more or less in secret as the band attempted to extricate itself from a raw deal of a contract from a bankrupt record label for what would of course by no means be the last time.

Steve Taylor is probably to be thanked for this album’s immaculate sound. I’m not really familar with his other production work, outside of (I’m embarrassed to admit) the Newsboys’ Take Me To Your Leader, but even there he appears to have had a knack for stripping away distracting sounds and focusing on melodies. 

(Thankfully, unlike the Newsboys record, he was not co-writing lyrics for Sixpence.  Not that he is an awful lyricist, but when Matt Slocum is writing your lyrics you are pretty much good to go.) There is very little in the way of extraneous instrumentation, or even “production,” on this album. It is drums, guitars, bass, vocals, string quartet, and the occasional tasteful keyboard or horn.

Matt Slocum was once again solely in charge of guitars for this record -- and to be honest I’m not sure how many, if any, of the guitars Tess Wiley recorded on This Beautiful Mess -- and he uses a variety of textures: jangly chords, e-bowed melodies, spacey delayed riffs, most of which are on offer in this first track.

J. J. Plasencio, who famously played a six-string bass, at least at times, recorded nearly all the bass tracks for this record before leaving the band, but he and Dale Baker on drums are an infinitely more restrained rhythm section here than on their previous recording with Sixpence. Baker’s beats on “We Have Forgotten” are a clue to what is to come: he almost never even plays quarter notes on the hi-hat in this song, and the first chorus is a study holding back.

It’s difficult to say more about Leigh Nash’s voice -- I tried at the beginning there -- and her voice is clearly the guiding light for these songs, but to my mind it is actually the string quartet (I’ll be honest: I’m not sure it’s always a quartet, but it sounds classier to put it that way) that makes this record. Earlier records had Slocum on cello, and Divine Discontent has its big-budget, Van Dyke parks-arranged orchestra (or what feels like an orchestra), but in the bridge of this song, we get a beautifully arranged, never-ostentatious string section that feels like a natural part of the band rather than a tacked-on extra, as it often did in 90’s rock. The cello, viola, and violin are essential parts of the sound of this record, doubling or playing off the bass and guitar.

“We Have Forgotten” is an immaculate-sounding, gentle pop song about life in an irreparably fallen -- yet somehow, indelibly lovely -- world. Its form is its function; its sound is its message. It is the opening chapter of Sixpence None the Richer’s clearest, purest artistic, spiritual, and musical statement. With each listen, the garden blooms again.