j o e

Made over the course of five months in 1988 during the height of Offering and Vander's favoring of work at the keyboard over the drums. This is apparently a tribute to one of his friends who died earlier the preceding year. With this in mind, it is with regret that I must say I didn't really care much for this one. There are lyrics to this one, but they are in English, which is obviously not Vander's first language (sample: "If you glory the one you can be a soul," "Here now he begins to love/ He is all love/ He is OM OM OM"). There are even two made-up (to my knowledge) French words, with one of them receiving an asterisk footnote telling us what he means to say in French! Combine these sorts of things with a non-native pronunciation weighting down a generally strong emotional delivery, and the end result is that it sounds really odd, more in an awkward way than a pleasingly idiosyncratic one. Makes me wonder why Christian didn't just write the lyrics in French to begin with, if it was intended to be such a personal statement. review by Joe McGlinchey — undated —