Howdy stranger: I is for Ivy
Ivy, "The Best Thing"
Ivy, "Get Out of the City"
Welcome back to my alphabetical tour of my lonesome, forgotten CDs.
It's slim pickings in the I’s. I’m not sure how many CDs I have in A-Z, but I do know that I only have 14 albums in my I’s. That led me to ponder just what obvious letter-I artists I was missing. Shouldn’t I have some Isley Brothers? Icicle Works? In Sync? Maybe a little Iron Maiden? A few of the obvious letter-I culprits can be found over in my vinyl collection--Billy Idol, INXS, and the International Submarine Band. But, truth be told, I’m not too big on I’s.
For one two-month stretch of college, however, I was big on Ivy. And they’ve since faded fast from my memory. Today, their 1997 album, Apartment Life, rests on the shelf between Iron & Wine’s latest album and a compilation of stuff by The Jam.
Breaking out the CD again brings back one memory in particular--that of moving in with my ex-girlfriend when I first arrived in Champaign in 1999. I was naive, and finally sharing an apartment with the girl I had been dating for three years felt for a brief while like a utopia. Apartment Life, appropriately enough, was my soundtrack for those happy days.
The bubble popped soon enough, and I no longer needed the services of Parisian-born chanteuse Dominique Durand to brighten the corners. I should have listened a bit closer to the lyrics of some of these songs, I suppose, as the subject matter might have been more to my liking:
The cat's on the carpet.
The phone doesn't work.
I hate when it's quiet.
It means that you're hurt.
It gets so complicated
'til I can't pretend.
I thought I could do something good
But I'll never do that again. ...
And you put your book down
And stare into space.
You turn all the lights down
So I won't see your face.
It gets so complicated
'til I can't pretend.
I thought I could do something good
But I'll never do that again. ...
Matter of fact, a good deal of the record deals with a certain sense of longing and uncertainty. Durand isn’t going to win any awards for her lyrical content, but the general undercurrent throughout the album is that of a calming melancholy. There’s absolutely nothing spectacular about the record; it’s simply a likeable slice of adult indie rock lite. In many ways, it reminds me of Luna, or at times a female-fronted Holiday.
A couple selections from Apartment Life appeared in the Farrelly Brothers’ hit movie There’s Something About Mary. Apparently, the trendy movie-makers have a crush on Ivy, as they used another Ivy song in a follow-up film and allowed the group to score their recent film, Shallow Hal. So, Ivy is still at it in the year 2005, having just released their fifth record, In the Clear, on Nettwerk. Absent is songwriter Adam Schlesinger, who I presume left the band to focus on his certain paycheck with The Fountains of Wayne. But, Durand and husband/band founder Andy Chase are still together. Apparently, Apartment Life worked out better for them than it did for me.
