"Chain Letters," the second Big Harp record, is a record that you can live within. It's the only thing I listened to -- almost obsessively -- for the first three months of the year. Chris Senseney and Stefanie Drootin-Senseney made an album that feels like an exploration of characters that we just barely get to see, but all of which seem fully formed. They are rich and they are maladjusted. They are deep and they are genuine. They are everything that we understand about ourselves. We are -- none of us -- normal. The record is a haven for these wondrous tales of men doubled down on their eccentric natures, on the various ways that we're all made to feel and look foolish and yet, the trick is always to keep going, to pretend as if there's glory in that, to know that we're stuck with no other choice but to own our issues and all of the weirdness that found us. It's usually never even all that strange, just different. The people that Senseney writes into existence are those who mull, those who wallow and those who find that they're able to locate what happiness has been allotted for them in the oddest places, if they find it at all.
The lyrics to "It's Easy To Be Strange," a perfect song, should be made into a novel. I read and re-read:
"Well once I had a wife, I had three children
I left 'em in the rain outside a Hilton
It's been so many years, I keep forgetting why
I guess I had to die to keep on living
And once I had a mother, one that borne me
But I killed the boy she carried, now I'm only Jack the Strange
I'm picking up whatever's thrown me
Oh Lord, it's easy to be strange
And everyone I meet is just a face
Oh Lord, it's easy to be strange
Yea, it's easy to be strange
Oh it's easy to be strange
I'm living now up north across the border
I've been working these few months as a loader
I got a woman, I suspect that I won't know her in a year
Maybe I'll head south towards Dakota
Nobody and no place is gonna keep me
You ask me if it's hard, I'll say it's easier by far
I'm gonna keep my wheels beneath me
Oh Lord, it's easy to be strange
Everyone I meet is just a face
Oh Lord, it's easy to be strange
Oh it's easy to be strange
Yea, it's easy to be strange."