Saved: The Secular Vibes of Shelley Segal
My Thoughts on Her First Release — An Atheist Album. Part 1 in a series.
I first heard about Shelley Segal during an appearance she made on the Dogma Debate podcast wherein she talked about her career and, in between these segments, played a few songs from her release ‘An Atheist Album’ in studio. I was so elated to find an Atheist singer actually singing about Secular issues that I made it my mission to purchase her music for my local Atheist community to enjoy. Being able to convey in artistic or musical terms what it is that defines and drives the Secular perspective is a challenge at the best of times, and a near-impossibility at the worst of times but Shelley makes it seem effortless.
It’s been an absolute pleasure these last few years to have a relationship with her music; a most rewarding relationship to be sure. Her style and sophistication as a singer/song writer just seem to get better the more time passes. As a creative talent, she is, in a word, diverse. After reviewing her early releases when I first discovered her music, I found myself amazed at how difficult it was, or rather, is to pin her sound to any specific musical era. She plays with so many different styles over the course of her catalog of releases that there are few music fans alive today who wouldn’t find something to enjoy in her offerings.
One of the first things which stood out for me was that so many of her songs present a prominent and well executed bass sound; not bass-heavy, mind you, but the bass elements do stand out in the right measure. When I took up the bass as a means to fill a slot in my first and only band during college, I realized through that challenging experience that bass had been a very profound part of my musical identity almost from the beginning, whether it came in the form of classics the likes of Bon Jovi’s ‘Born to Be My Baby’, Digital Underground’s ‘Humpty Dance’ or Pearl Jam’s ‘Jeremy’. So I suppose it’s no great surprise that the bass elements of her music would rise to the fore in the midst of my listening experience.
With regard to ‘An Atheist Album’, her song ‘House with No Walls’ has a permanent place in my musical heart due to my previous devotion to the four-stringed Excalibur. Not only is the bass a prominent part of this particular composition, it is so eloquently and perfectly paired with an arpeggio intro, the combination of which defines in large measure the exquisite flow this song generates over the three minutes and change that is this piece of sublime musical ecstasy.
When properly engineered in studio, any sequence of arpeggios can be as powerful as any mantra chanted by a Buddhist monk during his daily meditations, but the power generated by this supreme combination of arpeggio, articulated bass, well-chorused vocals and masterful poetry is beyond compare. I could easily and confidently put it side by side with some of the better Van Halen compositions of the Sammy Hagar era, as it regards compositional sophistication.
The following track, ‘Afterlife’, comes very close to generating an energy very similar to the many great songs released on No Doubt’s break-through release ‘Tragic Kingdom’, such as ‘Spiderwebs’, ‘Just a Girl’ and ‘Excuse Me Mister’. Regrettably, ‘Afterlife’ falls just short of this greatness in one key area. In certain parts of the vocal track, she seems to struggle with the lyrical arrangements in relation to the music, almost as if the skill needed to execute it properly was a mere half of a degree above her level of talent at the time of recording.
It’s a minor issue to be sure, because she recovers quite well, wraps up the track in admirable fashion, and then closes out the CD with an acoustic rendition of the second song ‘Saved’, which is a scathing, yet gentle, indictment of the presumption many religious people have with regard to their beliefs and their mission to inflict those beliefs on the rest of us.
The remainder of the album is laden with musings and laments on the state of religion and Secularism in the modern era. Track 3, ‘Gratitude’, is an empowering anthem of the joys one can take from life absent the belief in a creator. And track 4, ‘Apocalyptic Love Song’ is an endearing ode to the finality of life as seen from the Secular perspective as well as a powerful statement on the comfort one can take from knowing this and making the most of the one chance we have on this rock we call Earth.
Sufficed to say, this record is a very validating take on the Atheist way of life and is wonderfully peppered with musical influences the likes of Melissa Etheridge, Jewel and Letters to Cleo (as well as the afore-mentioned No Doubt) though I will admit that the Letters to Cleo influences I’m hearing may be more to do with the similarities that Shelley’s vocal style shares with that of LtC’s vocalist Kay Hanley. I will have to examine this in more detail but it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. ‘An Atheist Album’ stands on firm harmonic ground and will be a permanent part of my musical collection for the rest of my life.
For Part 2 in this series, visit this link.
