"I want to be champion of evening, forget not the beauty of the in-betweens"

Let me tell you about one of Claire's and my most enduring obsessions.

Her name is Deb Talan, and she's the wife half of the husband-and-wife team that is The Weepies (our favoritey favoritey favorites ever ever). Before she and the husband half got married, she recorded three albums by herself. And we. love them. and her. so. much.

I think the thing that really gets me about Deb Talan is her utter lack of pretension. She's never glamorous, or flashy, or slick, or idealized. Her voice is unassuming and crinkly, and most of the time instrumentation is just an acoustic guitar. She thinks and writes like a poet more than a songwriter, and sometimes her lyrics don't rhyme. She doesn't rely on hooks or catchy choruses to craft her songs. What she does rely on is beautiful images, the just-right phrase, good stories, and original, intuitive melodies.

She's like the amazing older sister or best friend we all wish we had, who doesn't tell you how to be but just puts everything you can't express into beautiful, real words so you can figure it all out for yourself. Listening to her albums is like being with a dear friend.

She writes songs about Amelia Earheart and Vincent van Gogh and Christopher Columbus. She quotes Pablo Neruda and Edna St. Vincent Millay. She wrote a whole song about our favorite Chagall painting. She compares love to yellow curtains and bright red boots. Claire and I are pretty sure that if we just had the chance, she could be our best friend.

I would love to end this post with some of my favorite lines from her songs, but if I start doing that it'll go on and on and on. So I won't. Just go listen to her for yourself.