Review Summary: Fitzsimmons' relentless and catarthic celebration of love lost forever.
I was lucky enough to catch Fitzimmons play the Jericho Tavern in Oxford (UK) last year, and what really stood out was his banter between songs. He was witty, foul-mouthed, and self-deprecating, which is what you'd least expect coming from a man who wrote a sub-concept-album about how the break-up of his parent's marriage caused his own relationship's messy break up. Because this is what The Sparrow And The Crow is all about, and it certainly makes for sad, sad listening. All you people who don't take to sensitive singer-songwriters outpouring their grief, turn off now.
Actually, don't turn off, because there's a very good chance that through the veneer of Fitzsimmons' depression you might actually glimpse what makes this album stand out from the rather large crowd of Damien Rices and James Blunts that have accumulated in the pop world over the last ten years. It is Fitzsimmons' painful honesty, and his unwillingness to dress up his sorrows in cliché and drama to sell records. Though it may have been said before about other singers, he REALLY does mean what he sings, and this is strongly conveyed throughout the album. You really get the sense that you're personally engaging with one man's tragic life, and by all accounts it has been just that. Raised by blind parents, enduring their break up, and having worked in a mental asylum previously, you get the feeling that Fitzsimmons genuinely knows a thing or two about psychological pain.
After the lovely organ and piano introduction of 'After Afterall', its four chords and the opening lines 'I still love you, I still want you, I still need you' setting the theme of the album, we enter Fitzsimmons' metaphorical prison of love and loss. The man can really write a lovely tune - repetitive yet not boring, poignant yet not depressive, and simple yet not banal. His guitar lines flow effortlessly, are often syncopated, but always perfectly executed. The lyrics are for the most part extremely simple, and this adds to the direct nature of the subject matter. Never before has the loss of love been so straightforwardly conveyed, without pretension, cliché or unnecessary theatre. This can be seen most clearly on 'I Don't Feel It Anymore' and 'Please Forgive Me', and perhaps it's not a coincidence that Fitzsimmons has named the two best songs on the album with telling attachments: 'Song of the Sparrow' and 'Song of the Crow.' The first is the woman's confession that love has faded, and the second the man's desperate plea for forgiveness, for crimes largely unexplained.
This is a consistent album, and like many of the same genre ploughs the same trusty furrow from start to finish. Fitzsimmons finds his style, and from there on in there is very little deviation from the basic blueprint of guitar, maybe piano, light percussion, breathy vocals and occasionally some female harmony. To some it may sound a little melodramatic, but when considered as a single unit of songs, it is anything but. The direct and genuine nature of the emotions conveyed is startling, and this is what marks this album off from its musical contemporaries. Since its release, Fitzsimmons has produced songs that have more backing, and are fuller and more polished in production. However, he was right to keep The Sparrow And The Crow largely acoustic, with the bass and drums in the background. It's a moving and endearing effort, and hopefully the increasing popularity Fitzsimmons is gaining as time goes on is doing something to console him for the emotional trauma of his past.
