Indigo Girls
Rites Of Passage

THE REVIEW

Beautiful 1992.

Especially that summer. I remember speeding (so to speak) with Ugo (my Ciao) along dusty country roads. Ugo was probably the only non-"tweaked" scooter in the area so much so that once, in a group of friends "stopped" by the police, I was the only one not "invited" to follow them to the station: to my protests ("can I come too?") the officers replied with a proud "are you making fun of us?" to which I said "no, it's just that I would be left alone and I prefer company." Ah yes, beautiful 1992: the summer of my eighteenth year, of Denmark being the European champion despite everything and everyone, of the sky "that is never ugly," of not compromising even when you feel out of place even in the middle of nowhere, of her "ethereal und qvasi celestial" and of when she left me alone, of the speculations found at the bottom of Adelscott bottles...

"I struggled daily with the voice of the devil lurking in my bones" (Amy Ray)

Yes... In short, a period of rites of passage faced while humming "Tear in your Hand" by the Redhead, "Childhood's End" by the pranksters of Albion, "Midlife Crisis" by those Californians and "Galileo" by the tireless activists of Atlanta (also "Symphony of Destruction," of course, but not for humming).

The folk-rock of the Indigo Girls is as simple as can be imagined: four basic chords, a decent technique on the six strings, two beautiful voices from the southern States, and lyrics imbued with "adolescenctude" (which is that mix of desire and fear every teenager finds in trying to be a bit different and a bit conformist in a tribe). "Rites of Passage" is certainly not an essential album in the history of Pop-Rock music, but it is a good testimony of a period in which "innocence" and "simplicity" were not yet overused words by certain smart guys, and over time, it has seen a "small" cult grow among those who understood that the sky might never be ugly but sometimes it's just not exactly beautiful.

Mo.