Tender ForeverWider
2007
"On the cover of her second album, Wider, Melanie Valera, aka Tender Forever, is meditating next to a construction-paper campfire of her own design, beneath Post-It Notes posted together to spell the album title. The inside photo shows her constructing this scene. Taken together with lyrics from the album like “Yes, the best shelter / I guess / Is the one I build for myself” or “My home is my head / That’s the best place I know”, the cover has me picturing Valera as something like the protagonist of Michel Gondry’s film The Science of Sleep. That character created his own world of quirky little dream-fuelled toys and mechanisms, yet could not relate to actual people. As portrayed by Gael García Bernal, he was, from my perspective, unbearably narcissistic, the epitome of that romanticized notion that artists are special, misunderstood souls, which is so easily used as a cover for the most selfish and hurtful behavior. Valera’s persona on Wider is more charming than that, but there is a similar sense of someone who can engage with the world outside only through her own head, by creating her own universe(...)
No comments:
Post a Comment