Peter Himmelman

Item: Unstoppable Forces
Author: Steve Stockman

Unstoppable Forces

(2004)

Reviewed by Steve Stockman

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Label MajesticThe Phantom Tollbooth2004

folk rock rock singer-songwriter

It has been over 5 years since Peter Himmelman's last intentional studio album (there have been kids albums, outtakes and soundtracks in-between) and as a result I had forgotten the potency of this songwriting sage who takes a Jewish faith and torpedoes it against the ramparts of all the soul's enemies. Locate his musical space as the same piece of territory inhabited by Elvis Costello and Peter Case and you get the drift. He's come out of new wave to mature into a much broader person but his guitar is often still at the end of its leash raising him above lazy folk/rock labels.

It is the spiritual vigor of his writing that sets him apart. He wraps his earthy vocal around clever poetry that reports back from the war weary frontline of all the world's ills and then tops and tails it with heavenly insight. Unstoppable Forces could be either the cultural malaise that drags us under or the Divine love that is the only hope we have of being pulled up towards a deeper meaning and higher purpose.

This is an album that faces reality. In "All Used Up," Himmelman is a weary fighter who confesses his energy sapped, "And I thought I was going to change the world/But now it's me that's changed/And I'm all used up." In "Racing To Nowhere," he is doing just that cursing the world's demands that take him away from his family and ultimately love. There are "Ceaseless Dins" and "Death of Dreams;" there are so many little lies that the truth weighs a ton; and Babel is clanging and it seems heaven's raining rocks against a roof of tin. Yet don't miss the hopefulness. It was fellow Jew Leonard Cohen who once sang, "There is a crack in everything/That's where the light gets in," and there are cracks in culture's onslaught on our lives and it is there that Himmelman flashes laser slits and slants transcendent beams to brighten up the darkness that surrounds.

"The Deepest Part" claims that there is something at the heart of the matter that never changes. "Love That Lasts" reminds us that when the idols all come down it's love that lasts. "The Scent of Autumn Burning" ends the album and gives up on this ruse that we chase to believe that "Still restless, still waiting/Still the Spirit flies/It's love that never dies." The frequency is corrupt is the warning but Himmelman is energizing us to have one shot at love before it's gone. There is no small talk here but great tunes, well played and wisdom to fill a whole new book of proverbs.