The War Against Silence is a weekly music review that’s been running for nearly seven years now — the prose is lyrical and the insights are terrific.

On the good nights, or at least, the reassuring nights, everybody knows her, and they gather in unnervingly intent arcs in front of her instruments, forming her words with their own mouths as she sings them, shouting requests in the breaks for songs she hasn’t even finished writing yet. So the departure myths are easy enough to compose. She reaches the highway, once again, as if setting out on the next stage of a noble embassy, carrying some flickering torch from basin to basin. Gypsy tinkers would hang cups and plates off the outside of their carts so they’d rattle, informatively, as they pulled into town; maybe she should keep her guitar in an open tuning, bungeed to the roof rack, so that the interstate air could play it like an Aeolian harp, and as she came down off the exit ramps, and wove through these cities on the way to her tiny cafes and bookstores, people who need music would hear her pass, put down whatever they were doing, and bring their souls to her for renewal.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Fred!)