Short Stories
Ran Birkins
Independent
2000
8 tracks
Artists, like children and flowers, grow and mature at varying rates. This is a process of becoming. While he clearly has talent, California writer Ran Birkins remains only on the verge of blossoming into that unique artist he could become.
A songwriter and performer for more than fifteen years, Birkins says he is most interested in selling his songs and has no interest in performing. He performs live and on recordings only in the hope that some other artist will pick up his songs. This approach suggests his recordings are not so much serious performances as elaborate demo packages.
In both the writing and the performance, the songs on Short Stories have a number of perhaps fatal weaknesses. Birkins would be well advised to take some time off from writing and recording demo material and polish his craft. With a relatively small amount of such polishing, he might be able to raise his art to the next level. However, to do so, he will have to step outside his work and become objective enough to realize that what he considers "A" material is not.
Both Birkin and Jeannine Floores, who also sings on Short Stories, have very good voices and clearly know how to sing. Birkin does, however, sometimes begin to slip off his tune, flattening slightly before regaining control. The resulting effect is just enough to distract the listener who may otherwise be caught up in the song.
The music itself has a very digital sound and is, I suspect, entirely midi material. As demo cuts, these songs might come off more effectively if performed with just Birkins' vocals and one instrument, perhaps a guitar or piano. As a commercial recording, they would almost certainly resonate more if Birkins were backed up by real musicians.
For Ran Birkins as a writer, though, the truly problematic area is not the music or the performance, but the Short Stories themselves -- the lyrics. While the writing here is not bad, it is fraught with flaws which require fine-tuning. This is where Birkins must be especially objective and very clear about what it is he's trying to do.
On the one hand, Birkins appears to lack the courage of his convictions. The content of his lyrics suggests that his inner artist wants to write Christian or at least socially conscious songs. All the songs speak to family values, including love and marriage, the relationship between a step-father and child in a second marriage, and the issues of abortion and adoption. The harder or more political the issue, though, the more Birkins pulls his punches, as though his commitment to the issue is less strong than his fear of censure.
On the other hand, at times Birkins is far too obvious in his declarations, slipping onto a "preaching to the converted" mode. "Somewhere Sarah" is a prime example of this.
"Somewhere Sarah" speaks in the voice a mother who has given her newborn daughter up for adoption some years before. This touching song recounts the mother's reflections on her daughter's imagined life as she is growing up. As both the story of a mother's dilemma and a parable with political and social implications, this song could work quite well.
The last verse, however, turns into an unsubtle political statement best placed elsewhere or retooled to better fit the mood of the rest of the song. Even more damaging is Birkin's shift in point of view at the end of the song. Although the entire song is written from the mother's perspective, Birkin ends the song in the child's voice: "I praise God my mother chose life, not abortion." It jars. While this may be a valid political assertion, as expressed this statement is far too unsubtle to fit the rest of this potentially fine song.
On a more basic level, many of the difficulties with these lyrics are of the sort often experienced by beginning poets. These have to do less with content than with the mechanics and structure of the work, that necessary framework upon which the words are hung.
Often Birkins' phrasing is awkward, so that even he has a hard time getting his tongue around the words. Birkins does things such as inverting word order so that he can make a rhyme. It is possible to make rhymes without contorting language. It just takes more work and thought. If he wants his lyrics to succeed, especially in the conversational style he appears to be seeking, Birkins needs to make that effort.
Rhythm also seems to be an area where Birkins has difficulty. There are places where his lyrics simply do not scan, but that's not the problem. Often song lyrics don't scan well as poetry, having been phrased to fit the music over which they will be sung. Often in Ran Birkins' songs, however, the words and the music seem to have differing rhythms and be running at different paces, so the singer is forced to stretch or cram words to the point where they can become unintelligible. This raises the question: if the author can't sing the song, how can someone else?
Over all, I would say that Ran Birkins' words and music tend to be cliched and clearly need not just polishing but serious work on their structural and dramatic integrity. Birkins appears to have some talent and, if he can do the work necessary, he may yet come up with some powerful material.
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