Do you eat, sleep, do you breathe me anymore?
-- Lisa Loeb, 1995
Oh, when I turned five I got a piece of cake,
the corner with the rose.
I leaned in close,
and I told him that I loved him, and he ran.
-- Lisa Loeb, 2004
Last night I dreamed of Lisa Loeb. Bad news for Lisa Loeb (especially if she knew I look like I spent my life in the Oregon penal system). Lisa Loeb and I are in a stopped rownboat on a languid lake. Lisa Loeb is dressed smartly in a black turtleneck and skirt, with her legs encased in black vinyl knee-high boots--an ensemble that declares business sensibility and a convivial nature. Her once-luxuriant brunette strips have been trimmed into what could best be described as Farrah Fawcett, her spirit exploding with freedom, stomping her foot on the gas pedal of a cherry-red Mustang convertible with the top down, barreling down rustic country lanes: a mixture of frazzle and dazzle. Lisa Loeb is wearing her glasses. Lisa Loeb, consequently, is fetching.
Lisa Loeb waits patiently for me to speak. So I do. "Lisa Loeb," I begin, "though I've been a fan of yours now for many years, I've never been sure of the pronunciation of your last name. There are days when it rains and my shoulders are hunched in melancholy, so I reach into my CD collection for some sad fare by Lisa LEEB. But on the days where my heart bursts with sunshine and there is fulfillment in my soul, you are known to me as Lisa LOBE." Lisa Loeb twinkles her nose. A delicate hand drifts like a blanket upon mine. It is Lisa Loeb's hand, which is attached to an arm which is attached to a shoulder which is attached to a neck which is attached to a head whose mouth purrs softly in a voice that tiptoes like a child around china, breathy and sage: "Always trust your soul." I sheepishly ask Lisa Loeb if she will autograph my copy of Hello, Lisa. Lisa Loeb giggles and says she will do so with delight. Because this is a dream, Lisa Loeb writes, "dhweuirfhfkdosdoughnuts, Lisa." Also because this is a dream, I do not question her words; they are gospel to me. "Lisa, I must," I start to say, but a "Stay (I Missed You)" ringtone cuts me off. It emanates from Lisa Loeb's Kate Spade handbag. Lisa Loeb lifts a forefinger to poke the air and says, "Hold that thought," and I do. She reaches into her purse and returns with a Hello Kitty cellphone not yet available in the United States. It bleats and mews until she pops open the feline in hugging pose. "Yes," she tells Hello Kitty--or, more likely, the voice of the person on the other end. "Yes, this is Lisa. Oh, hi. Yes. Yes." Suddenly Lisa Loeb's face turns crimson and she bellows down the circuitry, "MASHED POTATOES!" which I soon learn is Loeb-ese for "Goddammit," because Lisa Loeb does not curse. She calms down. "No, I didn't mean to shout at you. Look, can I call you back? I'm right in the middle of a rowboat in a dream." She rocks Hello Kitty back to sleep, where it remains for the rest of this paragraph. "Now," she smiles, "what were you saying?"
I continue saying that I love all of her albums equally--even the one she did for children--but the new one, The Way It Really Is, speaks to me like no other. It has not left my player. It will not leave my player. It drew blood from me when I tried. Lisa Loeb nods and tells me this is typical technological behavior for her discs; they have minds of their own. Fans have written to her about their copies of Cake And Pie stealing away while they sleep, to sneak into neighbors' CD players, where they spin for hours to their digital hearts' content. On tour she often sees homeless prints of Firecracker hitchhiking between towns. "It's a little special something I put into the mix," she teases. When I press her for more information, she says no more and plucks a bass from the river, kisses it softly, pats its head, and drops it back.
I confess to Lisa Loeb that there is an unknown quality to The Way It Really Is that will keep me awake at night. What it is, exactly, I can only surmise in stunted academic prose. It is a confident adult work, the victory of an artist who continues to mature long after physical puberty has ended her ascent. Unlike a number of her contemporaries—Liz Phair and Jewel in particular, though I will admit an affinity for the former's last record, in spite of the sharpened barbs and jagged charges of a fat, grizzled music press—Lisa Loeb shies from adorning her melodies with funky mixes and whistles that will one day date the recording, long after this dazzling young demographic has aged into plump hams, Dockers complacency, and weepy jaded motel-fucks. What she presents is pure and literate, a 37-minute life portrait that bares little but tells everything, and leaves enough mystery for us to chase her into the next chapter.
The simple "Window Shopping" is double-entendre librarian raunch with playful guitars; "Hand-Me-Downs," with its assured delivery, should easily become the Great Kiss-Off Anthem of the post-Bush Millennium ("So you'll lie yourself to sleep tonight/but you won't think of me/'Cause your world revolves around you/Or so it seems, so it seems...You speak to the weak/An old picture of me/Everybody says they want to be free/So I am leaving"); "Probably" manages to be both fearful of love and committed to it ("I probably want to hold your hand/I probably want to kiss you/You'll probably misunderstand/I'll probably miss you....I probably love you/Grass is probably green/the sky is probably blue/I'd probably do anything for you"), and "Accident" captures our innate human masochism and light taste for the macabre ("We crowd around the accident/we want to see the worst...we want to see what hurts...We think, 'I'm glad it wasn't me.'/and turn up the TV/and squeeze our eyes shut/and leave a space to see").
For a Lisa Loeb fan like myself, this is the sonic moment I've anticipated since Tails (1995), her otherwise shaky debut of 12 songs cowed and intimidated by the shadow of (and lashed to) the reluctant generational zeitgeist of "Stay." The difference between them is astounding. It's an easy comparison, but I think back to 1994 and the image of the young Lisa Loeb in a summer dress, wandering like a lost little girl through an apartment, dodging Ethan Hawke's cat, nervously biting her young lower lip, twirling her young right foot, her bespectacled young face troubled by the question, Am I ready yet for this ride? This Lisa Loeb said yes, and she loves it to the hilt. There is something comfortable about a Lisa Loeb record; it's like a generation visiting a mirror and accepting what stares back, grays, lines, and all, and welcoming the adventures to come.
"I like most of what you say," Lisa tells me, "and the faux academic way you say it." We stare at each other for a while. Our silence is friendly and warm. In the distance a rainbow spears the sky. Lisa Loeb notices it first and tugs excitedly at my sleeve. "Forward ho!" she cries, grabbing an oar. "I hear there is magic in rainbows. Answers. Riddles. Perhaps even love." At that last breath Lisa Loeb throws me a fastball wink and a coy grin, ordering me to paddle. And as we near the rainbow, and the rainbow giggles and skips like a child just out of reach, I know we'll be friends for life.
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