"A picture is worth a thousand words."
Sometimes the most overused and cliched of sayings are still the most accurate. Take the album cover of Natalie Bergman's new album My Home Is Not In This World.
In a monochromatic photo, the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter stands with her arms folded in a barren and desert-like plain. It is spacious, otherworldly and mysterious, the latter compounded by the circle Bergman stands in and contemplates. Is she wondering how the circle got there? Is she trapped in it?
Regardless, the cover is a portal into the overarching sounds of the album. The production is wide open and expansive with songs that stretch out for miles, while Bergman's voice floats above like a voice carried by the wind from some far off place. Throughout, she sings of longing: for love, for a sense of place, for a home, for direction, often for something that seems just out of reach.
On the opener "Lonely Road," Bergman would rather be alone than be without one singular person. With an ambling low end laid down by the Daptone Rhythm Section, and guitar and fiddle from Zak Sokolow of La Lom, it introduces the Western film if soundtracked by a mix of Motown, doo-wop and the '60s pop theme of the album.
It was co-produced by Bergman's brother and former bandmate in Wild Belle, Elliot, and she has stated that his, Sokolow's and Daptone's help was a pleasant change from her previous album.
2021's Mercy was a completely solo affair, where the singer bared her faith and its role in overcoming tremendous loss for all the world to see. It followed the death of her mother and stepfather after they were struck by a drunk driver in 2019.
Her Christian faith is less obvious but still present across My Home Is Not In This World, often found in broader references to spirituality and mysticism. It is most overt on the sweet gospel plea of closer "California," which uses the Golden State as a metaphor for heaven or whatever "better place" you're trying to get to.
Love is again on the mind with the ESG meets Booker T & the M.G.'s on a desert dance floor of "Dance." Despite the long list of things she admires about her lover, there still seems to be a distance between them, as if she is admiring from afar and is still waiting to dance together.
The title track has some of the brightest production on the album, with crisp claps in the beat and a William Onyeabor synthline. Bergman sings of leaving the house to tell trees she loves them, dancing in the sun and swinging under the moon. These distinctly earthly activities seem antithetical to the message of the chorus, something the singer clarified in the previously cited interview with Vice.
It's our all-consuming and plastic-wrapped world, one that has no value for those things she mentions, that makes her feel out of place.
From front to back, the album is a captivating listen, one that creates questions as quickly as it answers them. I very well could be miles off in my reading of the lyrics, this is just what jumps out to me when I listen. I am guessing it will change as I spend more time with it.
Just like the cover, My Home Is Not In This World is a wide open and mysterious place, and it's our Album of the Week at KAXE.
Must Listens
- "Lonely Road"
- "Dance"
- "You Can Have Me"
- "My Home Is Not In This World"
- "Didn't Get To Say Goodbye"
- "Changes"
- "I'll Be Your Number One"
- "California"
