An album can be a story as much as a novel or a movie. It doesn’t have to be, it’s better if it is. LA artist A.O. Gerber’s debut album Another Place To Need, which was famously three years in the making, tells a story so visually immersive that it really is almost as effective as a film. Another Place To Need is a love story.
“Old Blue”, the first single on the album, begins with regret. Whether it’s the feeling of loss one gets after a breakup, the loss of a friend, a family member, there are always things we wish we had said, a degree of honesty that is only possible in retrospect. It haunts you, and A.O. Gerber’s voice makes that haunting palpable. You don’t have to have a good voice to make good music, but it certainly helps if you do. A.O. Gerber has one of those voices where you feel like she doesn’t even have to be saying anything particularly profound and you would still have to listen to it again and again.
She is saying something profound though. If “Old Blue” was about never letting yourself be known, “Strangers” is about the idea that you can never really know anyone at all. Continuing with the theme of regret, “Strangers” tells the tale of two people who have been together for years without ever really revealing anything important about themselves. It is tragic, the way you can feel so close to someone and then years later realize, nothing you thought you knew about them was ever real.
Gerber says the album is supposed to be a record of the way someone can get lost in their own world, and she does an incredible job of displaying all of the intrusive thoughts and repeating fantasies that tend to fill our heads when we are alone. How isolating it can be to want to connect with someone but feel unable too. Those are very sad themes, but Gerber’s mind is also a beautiful one. It’s filled with natural imagery and light. Gerber’s 90’s rocker girl voice narrates the scene. I am reminded of The Cranberries and Dido, the kind of soothing lullaby that makes something sad seem endurable.
There is always one showstopper on every album, and for this one, I have to go with “Every Time”. I love music that is so catchy and gorgeous on its own that the lyrics can get lost in it, only hitting you in the aftermath of the song. “Why does living always feel like dying?”. Wow. I mean what do you do with that? I’m going to be thinking about that line all day. Talk about getting lost in your own head.
Music, film, stories in general, all of those things are just ways to connect with people. It’s funny to be reviewing an album that is essentially about isolation, love and the desire for connection during a time when connection feels so difficult. But I have always been someone who listens to a song or reads a book and immediately feels a kinship with the writer. “Another Place” doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending, but it doesn’t need one either because, obviously, this isn’t an ending at all. It’s a beginning.
