Plain speech

Sarge's Charcoal clears the air

by Charles Taylor

The songs on Charcoal (Mud), the ferocious debut from the Champaign (Illinois) trio Sarge, all seem to hinge on the moment when people wake up to the situation they're in and decide to speak plainly about what's going on around them and what's happening in their hearts. The lyrics, by guitarist and singer Elizabeth Elmore, are compact and direct, fresh even when they're bitter. The songs -- and the way Elmore, bassist Rachel Switzky, and drummer Russ Horvath play them -- combine the exhilarating freedom of people finding their voices with the piercing clarity that comes when they realize what it is they want to say. The plain speech of these songs ("I think it's time I made it clear that this will be the last time that I ever think of you") seems almost to surprise Elmore's characters, as if, having said their piece, they stepped back and thought, "My God, is that what I've been feeling?"

Elmore writes with too much experience for the songs to be about a loss of innocence. What gives them their weight is the realization in her voice that she's not too young to be dealing with break-ups, unfaithful lovers, anger that can poison memories of pleasure. "I know you think I'm just a kid/And I may be/But things aren't the way I thought they'd be," she sings on "Backlash," scarcely acknowledging that unfairness. When, as the song closes, she adds, "I think I've let too much be seen," it's almost a point of pride. There's as much determination to suck up the pain and get on with things as there is reluctance to open herself to being hurt again.

On "Chicago," Elmore sings, "I walked into the bar where you hung out/24 and I still hadn't figured it out/Eight months pregnant and sick with all these lies/Smeared red lipstick and your hand halfway up her thigh." The regret and disgust and pain she gets into those lines bleed into one another. A momentary surrender to heartbreak in the high voice she uses for "sick with all these lies" is immediately discarded, as if she suddenly realized it's not going to be of much use to her. Even before she's begun those lines, the music has been whipped into a maelstrom. The song accelerates, going from one harsh awakening to another, pushed ahead by the crack of Horvath's drums. With all avenues of retreat sealing shut behind her, Elmore rushes head-first into the center of the chaos: "And now this child will come into the death of me and you." Then, after an unbearably tense pause, she offers a curse: "to wait her turn." She sings those words damning her own naïveté, and what she knows will be her inability to prevent her child from making the same mistakes.

At first, Sarge appear to be playing off the obvious tension between the harshness of their sound and Elmore's sweet, girlish voice. Keep listening and you'll hear that sound in the vocals. It's present (in "Smoke") in the melodiousness with which Elmore delivers the line "And you are so [pause] dumb," making the last word a cold slap in the face. The drama in these songs is internal; the band's sound gives it shape and urgency. Switzky's bass playing is inventive throughout, ominous and fleet, sometimes used to sketch out a melody or to enter into a dialogue with Elmore's guitar. She creates a briny, sensuous undertow for the rage and freedom in Elmore's playing. The simply strummed bass line that precedes the clash of guitar in "Bedroom" tells you everything about the uneasy lovers' truce the lyrics sketch out. The giddy guitar rush that follows the line "It's time I got out" in "Dear Josie, Love Robyn" (a Dear John tossed off like a gleeful fuck-you) is the sound of someone impatient to get on with life. These songs are dark but not hopeless. Sarge's sound is a determination to translate private defeats into shared triumphs. On Charcoal, the truth doesn't set you free, but it sure as hell clears the air.

Charcoal was released in the fall and promptly fell through the cracks, though it's easily the most impressive debut of 1996. At the Middle East recently, with new drummer Chad Romanski (Horvath has left to teach high school), Sarge were unassuming and extraordinary. Switzky played with visible delight, shaking her long wavy hair like a cocker spaniel's ears till it obscured her face. And Elmore displayed the mixture of self-critical reticence and helpless candor that characterizes her lyrics. Keeping well behind the mike and regarding the crowd a tad warily, she unleashed one number after another, and they all leapt out at you. I left convinced that the band love what they do and have no idea how good they are.