I no longer have a CD player at home. Everything is accessible through this pad on which I type. Increasingly, ‘things’ and ‘products’ become redundant as we move towards virtual storage, a space amongst the cloud.
Despite this lack of equipment, I still let out a squeal of satisfaction when, from time to time, the postman pops a CD package through my letterbox. They’re often delivered from PR companies eager for me to hear and review the latest artist they’re pushing.
I daren’t reveal that Dropbox is often easier. I still love having something to hold. My car has a CD player; never a tidy cocoon, it’s now full of promotional polycarbonate plastic.
One of the CDs that has really caught my ears in recent weeks is the new one from Kirt Debique, ‘Things Left Unsaid’. Before listening to the album, I had been drawn into the premise of it via the disturbing, yet ultimately (I think at least) redemptive video for the lead song from the album ‘Tell Me How You Know’. I’ve not heard many tunes this year that capture feelings of hurt, rejection, mistrust and anger in such laidback, calculated beauty.
Accordingly, ‘Things Left Unsaid’ is an album conceived as a series of letters to parents and partners, siblings and strangers. Its eight songs delve into themes of love, family, and loss. Sitting behind accessible melodies are dark ponderous, rumblings. This is an album that lays demons bare; it knocks down the walls and barriers we all create around our hurt in order to protect and encourages us to dig deeper within our key relationships to become better citizens.
Kirt says of the album, “my dream would be if two people could actually become closer together and have these kinds of conversations by listening to, and talking about, the ideas on this record. I’d love that.”
It’s the sort of record that I should invest in a CD player at home for.
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