My history with Paul Dempsey is best summed up in the Longfellow-originated metaphor, “Ships passing in the night.”

• 2009: Everything Is True is released. I was immersing myself in Radiohead at the time, and it’s highly unlikely I would have cared anyway since I had no idea who the hell Paul Dempsey was.
• 2010: I was in my office when one of the analysts who knew my musical tastes burst in and cried out, “You have to listen to this!” She handed me her headphones, hit the play button and introduced me to Paul Dempsey via the song “Ramona Was a Waitress.” I was suitably impressed, but when I came home and searched iTunes and Amazon for Paul Dempsey I came up empty. I found out later that my colleague had a friend in Australia who emailed her the MP3 and the album was not yet available in the USA. Drat!
• 2011: I launched the blog to promote some of the Seattle-based bands I heard in clubs. After running out of options, I started reviewing new releases; when that proved to be less than satisfying, I started reviewing classics. I still hadn’t found a copy of Everything Is True and since it was no longer a new release or old enough to qualify as “classic,” it wouldn’t have crossed my mind anyway.
• 2016: After renouncing my U.S. citizenship the day after Trump was elected, I made a final trip to my former homeland to tie up loose ends and visit some of my old hangouts. While sipping a cappuccino at the Dolores Park Café, “Ramona Was a Waitress” appeared in the rotation. When I returned to Nice, I finally downloaded a copy of Everything Is True and reserved a place for it on my to-do list. I did some preliminary research and learned that Paul was the frontman and songwriter for Something for Kate, an Australian band with a string of five albums that had made the top ten on the ARIA Albums Chart (the Australian equivalent of Billboard).
• 2017-2024: Paul spent these years in review list limbo, in part because of my earlier failure to successfully promote promising new artists. As both Paul and Something for Kate had yet to chart anywhere outside of Australia, they would have been “new artists” as far as my heavily American audience was concerned. I didn’t want to experience the frustration of having another review of a talented artist fall to the bottom of the most-read reviews pile.
• 2024: Alicia and I arrived in Melbourne on April 25, where it was raining (it rained everywhere we went in Australia). I was particularly interested in Melbourne because the travel guide described it as “the live music capital of Australia” and a coffee-lover mecca. When we checked in to our hotel, I asked the guy at the front desk if he knew of any upcoming concerts or places to hear music. He gave us a few names of places, told us that he heard Nick Cave was sold out, and then said, “You just missed Paul Dempsey at the Northcote last night.” Double drat!
• Before we set out on our world tour, I had loaded my iPhone with every album on my to-do list. On long flights and train rides, I listened to Everything Is True several times. After listening to it again on the last leg of our journey, I told Alicia, “I don’t give a fuck if anyone reads it—I’m going to review Paul Dempsey!”

So here we are.

I will confess that my coverage of Australian artists has been rather weak: one album by Brody Dalle, one single by the Seekers and another single by the Easybeats. I did do a review of Nick Cave when I was reviewing new releases but I deleted it because I didn’t care for the album in the least and the review was kind of boring. The main obstacle I faced was that I had developed a very low opinion of most of the Australian artists who had managed to make a splash in the United States. AC/DC is on my no-fly list and INXS should be; pop singers like Kylie Minogue turn me off; and I never want to hear “Who Can It Be Now?” again as long as I live. I almost reviewed “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport” as part of my Dad’s 45 series until I learned that Rolf Harris was convicted for messing with underage girls.

It’s impossible to claim that I understand Australian culture after spending a mere ten days in the sub-continent, but I did get the sense that the country has a vibrant music scene (particularly in Melbourne) and the trip encouraged me to dig deeper and ignore the “they made it in the U.S.A.” stamp of approval. So far, I’ve found that I rather like Midnight Oil, who made some noise in the American charts with Diesel and Dust and Blue Sky Mining and I’m quite intrigued by Powderfinger. I hope to review more artists (including Something for Kate) before I land a job and disappear into the ether.

But karma demands I review Paul Dempsey first and I am delighted to do so.

*****

Here’s a brief introduction to Paul Dempsey from his website: “Paul Dempsey is the singer, guitarist and songwriter of one of Australia’s most successful and respected bands, Something for Kate. Equally known for his solo work, Dempsey is regarded as one of the country’s finest and most fiercely original lyricists. Preferring to tackle subject matters well beyond the realm of rock ‘n’ roll, Dempsey has released eight top 10 platinum and gold albums to date.”

Paul’s grandmother introduced him to the piano when he was a child; at the age of eight he switched to acoustic guitar and then taught himself how to play drums. He has described his adolescent self as a metalhead with an appreciation for a good pop song; in his later teens he discovered Fugazi and learned how Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto emphasized the rhythmic-percussive power of the guitar, a lesson he would put to good use. He never had formal music lessons; his primary source of learning involved trying to figure out songs he heard on the radio. In an interview for the Australian Guitar Channel, he admitted he couldn’t identify many of the chords he stumbled upon while composing, and like many rockers, had little interest in learning musical language (rather like Andy Partridge). His approach to writing music can be described as intuitive and heartfelt.

Everything is True was Paul Dempsey’s first solo effort, recorded during a period when all three members of Something for Kate wanted to take some time to explore other interests and possibilities before regrouping for the next album. He worked on the songs for over a year, largely because he was determined to write lyrics that he could believe in. When he was ready to record the album, he headed to Los Angeles to work with producer Wayne Connolly (formerly of the Australian band The Welcome Mat) and rock engineer Doug Boehm, who had served as engineer for the Powderfinger album Dream Days at the Hotel Existence. Paul played all the instruments and came up with an eclectic set of lyrics covering a wide range of topics: the importance of imperfection, the superficiality of modern relationships, “virtual film noir,” artificial intelligence, life in a big city, the power of language to color reality, assholity, doomsday fans, insecurity, facades and entitlement. Though occasionally his poetry appears to drift towards the enigmatic, you can usually grasp the meaning of a song by keeping in mind how The Daily Telegraph summarized his lyrical approach: “Dempsey is a gifted observer of the human condition.” He talked about the album’s über-theme in an Austrade interview with Bernd Bruggemann:

Austrade: Why is your album called Everything Is True?”

Paul Dempsey: I guess it has it’s own paradox. If everything is true, then nothing is true because truth then no longer has any value. In some way every song of the record talks about the idea of truth. I don’t think that there is a such thing. I don’t believe in a sort of universal truth. It is a subject that fascinates me. People are constantly clinging to truth or what they believe to be truth, but it is completely in their own individual make up.

I read transcripts and watched videos of several interviews with Paul Dempsey and learned that he is incapable of peddling bullshit. You never get the sense that he’s trying to hawk his wares. When asked about this song or that guitar part, he responds directly, honestly and modestly. He always answers the question posed to him instead of engaging in spin or self-promotion and comes across as accessible, knowable and authentic.

In other words, Paul Dempsey is the polar opposite of a politician.

Lucky for me and my readers, Paul did an interview for J Mag (later “jmag” and now “triple j magazine“) where he summarized the inspiration and intent behind eight of the eleven songs on Everything Is True, transcribed by “pavlova” on songmeanings.com. When available, I will introduce each song with Paul’s summary then fill in the blanks and provide my take on the song.

*****

“Bats”:

“Angels and saints are supposed to represent beings in a state of purity and perfection… which is obviously completely out of whack with reality. Nobody and nothing is or can be perfect. I think it’s better and more helpful to accept and embrace some flaws. I liked the idea of an ‘average’ angel (something that’s supposed to be so holy and special being just ‘average’) or a misbehaving saint sitting down at the end of the bed nursing a hellish hangover, contemplating all the stupid actions of the night before and telling themselves they will try to be better.”

The song opens with a faint organ in the background followed by gentle acoustic guitar arpeggios, establishing a reflective moment. Three users on songmeanings.com who had seen Paul live or heard him on television remembered him connecting the song to the nightly twilight flight (excluding winter) of thousands of bats down the Yarra River that runs through Melbourne; during his introduction to the song in his performance for Audiotree Music, Paul described his fascination with the bats that circle the Arts Centre Melbourne spire at night.  Those references appear in the opening verse, where it seems the narrator is attempting to ground himself in pleasant memories (though here the seagulls circle the spire).

Come rebuild your memory with a small mountain of burnin’ leaves
And a swinging wire door that slams shut like a guillotine
Strum a note up in the wires
To chase bats down the river, seagulls around spires
And shred all the twilight, scatter it city-wide

At first glance, the second verse and chorus seem disconnected from the first, but it would seem the narrator’s motive for rebuilding his memory involves an incident where he was a “misbehaving saint.” Abandoned by his disgusted ex-partner, tells himself he “will try to be better”. Here the music begins to shift to a more powerful build with the addition of electric guitar; you can hear Paul adding more strength to his vocal and more than a touch of self-directed disdain; his falsetto leap in the opening line of the chorus evokes an image of a man in tears while the second line is sung with pure determination:

Those average angels
The drunken saints with heavy heads
They can keep dreaming
Dreamin’ of sleep down the edge of the bed

But nobody’s ever gonna break your heart again
Nobody’s ever gonna break your heart again

It’s important to note that Paul is the son of Irish immigrants and attended Catholic school for a while, for there is more than a hint of “Catholic guilt” in the lyrics. The next verse is a bit more enigmatic (as promised), but it seems to involve a female parent or grandparent imparting some wisdom to the imperfect angel:

And the high-pitched, crooked thoughts
That ricochet off the walls
She just set ’em down quiet, safe in her dresser drawer
She laid me out on the laundromat floor
And said, “you’ll be not nearly who you were anymore
And I’ll always be here to remind you what time is for.”

The increase in power heralds the return of the angels “cowerin’ under the table/And they’re still countin’/Counting the breaths under their breath,” which I interpret as additional wisdom from the wise reminding the narrator that flaws are part of the human package and we should try our best to rise above them. The build continues to strengthen through the fade where a piano enters the picture to reinforce the melody. The song ends on a gentle note with tinkly piano providing the melody over a swirling synthesizer. “Bats” is a challenging song indeed—and a gutsy opening track that earns my deepest admiration.

“Fast Friends”:

“One possible vision of hell would be an endless cocktail party where people discuss art and music and film and politics and sport and whatever else . . . and opinions and personal tastes are presented as facts in an endless game of charming and amiable one-upmanship. I think we’ve all visited this place once or twice.”

Yes, we have! The San Francisco I grew up in was a cosmopolitan delight with people enjoying quiet dinners and engaging in intelligent conversation. All that changed during the dot.com boom when the decibel levels exploded and dinner conversations turned into shouting matches. It felt like everyone in the City suddenly became terribly insecure in the face of change and had to compete with others to prove that they belonged in the new cyber age even if they didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. Eventually new restaurants were designed with high ceilings to amp up the noise levels and make them seem hip and happening. In-fucking-credible.

“Fast Friends” finds Paul playing with the idiom that held the original meaning of “steadfast friends,” friends who remained friends for a lifetime. In our highly mobile societies, such relationships are becoming quite rare—co-workers are your friends as long as you’re working there but once you leave you might as well have croaked off. Most of our friends today are connections—and you want to have lots of connections and remain on good terms with them in case you need them to supply a reference. My Dinner with Andre is yesterday’s news; now our conversations are filled with a weird combination of pleasantries and meaningless debates about not much at all. When Paul sings of “the fastest of friends”  he’s referring to superficial relationships formed quickly according to current norms and unlikely to last beyond a dinner or two . . . like the “relationships” you form on a cruise ship, the scene of our story.

The arrangement is outstanding, moving from acoustic reflection to high-intensity rock, with the mood shifting from melancholy to undisguised frustration. Paul makes excellent use of the soft-loud dynamic throughout the song, allowing listeners to fully grasp the meaning.

The lyrics are pure perfection and I was tempted to insert them in their entirety,  but if you play the video, you’ll find Paul’s articulation is as clear as it gets so you should be able to understand all the words (and the video is one of those rare productions that strengthen the song’s meaning). Here are my favorite passages—the lyrics that best capture the norms and expected behavior in our connection-oriented society that I have personally experienced (in the second segment he employs the metaphor of a pleasure cruise to emphasize the ephemeral nature of such relationships, but I wouldn’t be caught dead on a cruise ship).

We could get up from the table
And nobody would know
You could leave your mouth talking and
Follow me out the window . . .

I’m just a name in a black book attached to a face
At the back of your memory’s window display
It’s on the tip of your tongue, I’m sure
But I must await . . .

Must be good to know people who know so many people
Must be good to be somebody
Good to be somebody they know . . .

‘Cause I know no quicker way, dear, to the shiny gates of hell
Than a room full of handsome devils
Comparing everything to everything else

They just keep coming on like a driverless train
I can think of nothing adorable to say
It’s half past the hour, it looks like rain, do you like me?
Can I go now?

OH FUCK, CAN I PLEASE GO NOW?

“Out the Airlock”:

“This whole song is built out of typical scenes from old suspense thrillers. The hero of the story is always persecuted and chased, put through hell. And when he finally makes it home his friends or his lover never believe what he’s trying to tell them, they think he’s making it all up, or that he’s lost his mind, or he’s crying wolf. The viewer can never tear themselves away until the hero is finally vindicated . . . which he always is . . . except in this song!”

The lyrics cover about every awful thing that happens to the poor bastard in a film noir flick, but rather than the blaring saxophones or overpowered orchestras that usually accompany those dramas, the music is largely soft, arpeggiated acoustic guitar with a few electric guitar fills. The mood is sad, not suspenseful. The expected non-vindication is only hinted at in the line “my sweetheart dreams of revenge,” but we never find out what she’s planning.

Puzzled by the contrast, I went through the commentary on songmeanings.com and found this: “Recently triple J played a live recording of Paul Dempsey from a show for triple j listeners, and before he played this song, he said that this song was about pain, suffering, heartache, etc, ‘all that shit that people think my songs are all about.'”

Now that makes sense.

Paul Dempsey has openly shared his battles with depression in interviews and in song, which is why many critics describe his music as “dark.” I think that description is only partially accurate and often reflects a critic’s discomfort when dealing with unpleasant topics like depression. Having traveled that dark road myself, I view depression as part of the human condition—something we need to talk about instead of hiding our heads in the sand or dismissing the topic as “dark” and “unpleasant.” “Out the Airlock” expresses Paul’s frustration regarding the difficulty he faces in trying to get people to see and accept the truth about our many imperfections.

This was the first single released from the album, and while I appreciate the studio version, his live performance for Audiotree does a better job of tugging at the heartstrings:

“Ramona Was a Waitress”:

“So this guy walks into a bar . . . and he sits down to have a stiff drink and he gets locked in conversation with this waitress who is actually like a ‘human version 2.0’ or something like that, and they start talking about love and life and death and all sorts of serious crap, except the conversation kinda starts to fall apart a bit because he’s really neurotic and worried about mortality and the meaning of life, etc. and she just isn’t really on the same wavelength because she’s like a semi-artificial intelligence in a semi-biological body and she just kinda ‘upgrades’ and never really has to die and . . . I don’t know what it means but it feels right to me.”

When I first listened to the song that ignited my love affair with Paul Dempsey, I had no idea Ramona was an android, robot or a sentient form of artificial intelligence. I fell in love with the melody, the rhythms, the latent melancholy, Paul’s warm and sensitive voice the stunning build in the fade with its crashing guitars and flashing drums followed by a slick return to the gentler opening passage. Now that we’re stuck with artificial intelligence—another human invention that will yield both good and evil—the song takes on much more meaning for me.

The no-nonsense intro establishes strong forward movement in a few seconds and validates Paul’s status as a solid drummer. The opening verse finds the guy who walked into the bar idly drumming his fingers on a “closed piano lid” when Ramona makes her entrance:

Typing letters to the dead
Late at night on a closed piano lid
She circles past, she fills your glass
But she don’t recognise the song

Since there is no “song,” the implication is that Ramona has difficulty processing illogical human behavior . . . hmm.

The pair strike up a conversation but we only hear Ramona’s side of the argument:

“Once in a Lifetime,” she said
The waking life stitched together in your head
Well, what if it’s only worth
The bundle of nerves it’s written on?

It seems Ramona has little affection for mortals and the organic matter in our brains. In the chorus, she points out her obvious (to her) advantages while Paul adds a second voice in high falsetto singing in unison, possibly to represent Ramona. The combined voices meld to create a sense of mourning  for what we stand to lose by ridding ourselves of our humanity:

And I don’t need these arms anymore
I don’t need this heart now to love
I don’t need this skin and bone
At all

We use our arms to hug others when they’re sad or when they’re happy; we use our hearts to love and care for others; our skin thrills to human touch; our bones provide structural support and bodily protection. I don’t want to lose any of those sensations, features and imperfections—I like being human! Ramona would prefer to free herself from the burden of projecting a human appearance and sounds positively upbeat about losing every vestige of humanity:

There’s a way you’ve always known her
Telephone between her cheek and her shoulder
And eyes like crystal balls
That just won’t shut up about the future of the future

Ramona was a waitress
All but made of information
In a bar under that third bridge
She says she’s looking forward to living forever

Ramona repeats the chorus with greater confidence as indicated by the verbal shift from “don’t” to “won’t.” The chorus is immediately followed by the build, a celebratory moment for Ramona and a passionate reminder to the humans in the audience of the long-lasting dangers of dehumanization:

And I won’t need these arms anymore
I won’t need this heart now to love
I won’t need this skin and bone
At all

At all, at all, at all, at all,
At all, at all, at all, at all
At all, at all, at all, at all
At all, at all, at all, at all

I love the song even though it brings me to tears to think about the prospect of human self-destruction, whether it arrives through climate change or turning ourselves into androids. I think Paul’s decision to make the lead character a waitress was positively brilliant. The waitress is the epitome of humanity, engaged in the act of serving others, taking their shit and struggling to pay the bills. You can’t get any more human than that.

And the video for the song is . . . what was that 30’s phrase? . . . Oh yeah . . . killer diller!

“Take Us to Your Leader”:

“I was trying to describe the experience of being in a really big city at night where there’s a buzz and electricity in the air. The feeling is that anything could happen, anything seems possible if we go out and run around and explore. The tables could be turned in so many different ways . . .”

Well, nobody’s perfect. I don’t think this song comes close to describing the big-city experience, either musically or lyrically. The slow tempo dampens any chance of buzz or electricity and the opening passage featuring acoustic guitar and harmonica is more suited to a rural environment than the urban experience. Some of the lyrics sync with Paul’s intent (“And the street is a river/And the sounds drift up to our window up above/And we run down to drown under the current”) but the rest of the narrative is enigmatic in the extreme. Can’t win ’em all!

“Bird in a Basement”:

“It’s about words as a powerful means of escape and renewal. The somewhat whimsical idea that, if somebody gave you a small wad of cash and a plane ticket and topped it off by saying the greatest thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life, then that would be all you’d need to go and live happily ever after. The ‘grandmother’s purse’ is a childhood memory, the secret repository from which springs all things good and mysterious in the world. I thought that addressing someone as ‘living thing’ was funny, your name or species doesn’t matter, just the fact that you’re somehow miraculously alive.”

For some reason, this song doesn’t grab me. I get more out of his explanation than the song itself. I do have fond memories of my Irish grandmother’s purse though, because she always managed to pull out a box of Hot Tamales when I was a good girl.

“Theme from Nice Guy”:

From a user on songmeanings.com: “When I saw him live he announced this one by saying, ‘This one’s about waking up one morning and realising you’re a cunt.’ Take from that what you will, but I think he was being pretty unambiguous.”

Uh . . . no. Paul is a pretty deep guy capable of writing songs full of ambiguity and double meanings. This song is essentially a defense on behalf of cuntiness with a “no more Mr. Nice Guy” message.

I can really relate to this one!

I’ve been called a cunt or a bitch so many times I could be in the Guinness Book if they had such a category. I see no problem with cuntiness or bitchiness when it involves standing up for one’s rights, having to deal with guys who view me as nothing more than a piece of ass or trying to express my views to people who think they have all the answers. You can be a cunt without being mean about it, and if they interpret your rejection of their pickup line or their allegedly superior knowledge as cuntiness, that’s their problem. I will admit that sometimes I get so angry that I resort to personal attacks, and in that case, I deserve the cunt label.

The song opens with bass, drums and muted guitar joined in a pleasant mid-tempo rhythm following chords that hint at the song’s catchy motif. Paul begins the lyrical passage in a lower register and does a damn fine job of setting the scene and describing the interpersonal dynamics in play:

I could catch up to
To where you are
See if we can make it right
If I thought meeting you somewhere in the dark
Was gonna shed any new light
Oh, we’d sit around, we’d talk a while
Make polite excuses
But the cat has my tongue
And I’m not saying much
‘Cause I get shy around bullshit

Lesson #1: when you’re dealing with a dickhead, it’s best to say as little as possible. This is particularly important in the USA where the dickhead might be carrying heat.

The electric guitar finds its way into the arrangement, with Paul playing a complementary counterpoint that appears in the interval between verses, setting up the octave leap in the second verse. We find him watching ice melt in his glass and thinking it’s time to move on from this useless conversation (“Gets me thinking ’bout/It’s time to empty out/These pockets from their idle hands/And sing la da da dee da da la da da da.”)

My move is to either start humming or whistling but I can go with “la da da dee da da la da da da.” In the chorus, he seems to express some regret for his aloofness, which I interpret as frustration with the inability to connect with someone who is unconnectable.

And lock all the doors
Pull the phone from the wall, run and hide
Oh, I used to be, I used to be such a nice guy

The third verse, chorus and mini-verse combine to present the insurmountable obstacle, the possibility of a second chance, a picture of what the new Paul may look like and the cold reality that the cunt isn’t Paul but his immovable friend:

Maybe clarity will creep up on me
And reset my senses like a clock
And you’ll convince me that your reality
Is a better idea than the one that I’ve got
And you’ll give me a second chance at my second chance
And we will laugh about my near-miss
And the good lord will reward my ignorance with a little bliss

And I’ll see a welcome face in the mirror that I don’t recognise
Oh I used to be, I used to be such a nice guy
But now the details are vague, it’s so strange, like a previous life
Oh I used to be such a nice guy

But now you say I don’t know when to admit that I’m lost
When to stubbornly insist that I’m not
Oh dear bless every thought in your thoughtful head

He doesn’t mean that last line but the dickhead is oblivious to irony and exits a happy camper. The fade features a dozen or so Paul Dempseys repeatedly singing “la da da dee da da la da da da” in thrilling triumph.

Hmm. I could use a “I’m a Cunt and Proud of It” t-shirt.

“Have You Fallen Out of Love”:

“There are some particularly hardcore religious types out there who basically can’t wait for the end of the world to come so they can go and live happily ever after with their particular god, and all the bad people (who picked the wrong god, damn!) can go and suffer in their jocks for eternity. They knock on my door every weekend and pitch this idea like the salesmen they are. I simply wonder: can you find so little to love about the beautiful and precious planet we live on that you would rather subscribe to this violent and totally hypothetical idea? I live safe in my own view that there is no afterlife. I mean… prove it. I accept that we’re all entitled to our own views, but I see no reason to believe otherwise. Just like I see no reason to believe there’s a big pink elephant orbiting beyond Pluto . . . I just haven’t seen it yet.”

During the combined acoustic performance/interview session with Audiotree Music, Paul explained that the genesis (pun intended) of this song came from stumbling across a website devoted to the Rapture. Predictions of the apocalypse have been around for centuries and according to a comprehensive list on Wikipedia, Christians hold the record for the highest number of failed guesses (130 to be exact). Fear has long been a feature in Christian marketing plans, be it the threat of hellfire or end-of-the-world fantasies, and the tendency among religious leaders to “lick the boots of death born out of fear” (thank you, Ian Anderson) seems to be a job requirement. The reason why Evangelical Christians have embraced Trump is because he speaks their language: fear.

Paul describes those engaged in marketing efforts as “overwhelmed,” “Delivering postcards from Heaven/Urgent telegrams from hell.” Rightly skeptical of those who continue to insist that the end is at hand despite an impressive string of failed predictions, Paul asks for nothing more than one simple favor when they show up at his door:

Bring me some stolen jewel
Some ring of truth
When you come around

As Paul is preaching to the choir when he sings “time turns my heresy into gospel,” I think I’ll stop here to minimize the spam I’m likely to receive from Christian marketing agents.

“The Great Optimist”: I love the lyrics but I think the song suffers from an excessive use of power. Paul successfully paints a picture of the neuroticism that arises when you do everything you’re supposed to do but still fail you to get what you want. Happens all the fucking time:

You know you did everything right
Tried to be dependable every time
So it’s hard to understand why
You’re the one who should find it harder to sleep at night

Getting needled by the thought
That you may have been mistaken all along
While you wait, wait and wait for a call
But the phone, it doesn’t cry from its cradle at all

I can relate because I thought I nailed my last interview with the EU but haven’t heard a word since. I’m trying to be The Great Optimist but I also wonder, “Was my hair out of place? Was there a wardrobe malfunction? Did I leave a piece of broccoli in my teeth? No, I’m too finicky about my appearance for that to happen. Maybe they just didn’t like me.”

Thank you, Paul, for letting me know I’m not the only neurotic in the universe.

“Safety in Numbness”:

“I read (Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace) for the first time a few years ago, and then read everything else he’d ever written. I missed his writing and I missed the characters. It’s so huge and so vast, I feel like I know those people and I missed them. I ended up writing ‘Safety in Numbness’ inspired by a particular passage.”

Well, I’ll be darned. David Foster Wallace began teaching creative writing and literary analysis at Pomona College during my last year there. Having already completed my “Breadth of Study Requirements” (general education), I did not take any of his classes. I made it about halfway through Infinite Jest before I experienced a severe bout of irritation spiced with boredom and had to put it aside.

The connection between Wallace and Paul Dempsey goes beyond their shared fascination with language, as both men suffered from depression. Wallace chose to end his life when the drugs stopped working and I fervently hope that Paul never feels the need to go there. I’m not sure which passage in Infinite Jest inspired Paul, but the chorus in “Safety in Numbness” shows all the signs of the author’s influence in its apparent embrace of subjectivism:

I believe I appear neutral, maybe even pleasant, though I’ve been coached to err on the side of neutrality and not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasant expression or smile.

Wallace, David Foster (2009). Infinite Jest. Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

So practice your boredom
Look a thousand times removed
‘Cause only a freak would sing in a crowded waiting room
They would turn you out in the cold
Because everybody’s in on the joke

Paul Dempsey, “Safety in Numbness”

The couplet containing the key to interpretation opens the second verse: “But naming the feeling/It just, it kills the charade.” Because naming the feeling is often the path to dealing with many forms of mental illness, I think Paul is expressing his impatience with people who choose to wallow in their misery and inauthenticity. The chorus is intensely ironic in that part of the cure involves “poison.” If you’ve ever paid close attention to those stupid fucking pharma commercials where the narrator speeds through the dozens of risks associated with anti-depressants, you’ll appreciate the irony:

Are you missing a stranger that you might have loved?
Do you feel that there’s something you don’t feel enough?
There’s a perfectly good poison for the perfectly numb
If you want some

When I had my first significant bout with depression, the shrink prescribed an anti-depressant. In my case, the meds turned me into a zombie so I poured the pills down the toilet and chose to name my feelings via therapy. The main thing is to keep fighting, whatever course of treatment you choose—and I think Paul would embrace that philosophy.

The musical experience is quite compelling in that the song is set to the key of G major but Paul only resorts to the root chord in the resolution, thereby extending the tension and making the resolution all the more satisfying. Continuing to make good use of the soft-loud dynamic, Paul opts for a full-power display in the chorus, ensuring its memorability. His exceptionally passionate vocal tells me that the song has special meaning for him—and when the singer is feeling it, it’s much easier for the listener to embrace the song.

“Man of the Moment”: Everything Is True closes with a hauntingly beautiful song that sums up many of the album’s themes: self-doubt, the failed promise of religion and life in a world that often seems unknowable. Paul’s almost-whispered vocal expresses doubt, uncertainty and more than a touch of bitterness regarding the distribution of power in our world.

In the opening verse he paints an image of “the man of the moment” as somewhat mysterious, and he wonders about the source of his power:

The man of the moment is just way ahead of his time
Could be why you see just distance in his eyes
He could be watching ashes grow
Where all your best seeds were just now sown
But for all I know, there’s far more I don’t

In verse two Paul resorts to the story of Abraham to attempt to explain how power is gained and how entitlement extends the right to wield power to the next generation:

New rays of light must fight for a place between the leaves
So son, don’t seem surprised to find no shade beneath this tree
Just like Abe, you can’t think twice
When offered your piece of the franchise
Now every kid expects a birthright

His puzzlement regarding the power structure produces the saddest truth of all: the game is fixed and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it:

It’s some privilege to claim that only the strong survive
If you can choose the time and place and what you’ll sacrifice
We’ll all get our piece of the dream
And the have-nots will have to take another hit for the team
Well that’s just how it’s always been

That verse is strongly linked to the succeeding verse; despite the fix and the innate stubbornness of the power structure, Paul remains faithful to his belief that the measure of a man is not linked to power or money but to a constant search for truth and learning:

It went something like; garden, Tree, Adam and Eve, and father, pray, forgive
But if I never hear that shit again, I’ll live and live and live
And whatever made the world go ’round before
Is probably what will keep it going ’round after they’ve gone
But for all I know, there’s far more I don’t

*****

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of listening to Everything Is True several times. I’m even fond of the songs that didn’t particularly thrill me because I know that Paul Dempsey was trying to do his best. As George Harrison pointed out, there are a lot of musicians in our world who play ego-driven music, writing and singing songs for the sole purpose of giving the people what they want and basking in their appreciation. Paul Dempsey isn’t afraid to challenge listeners by writing songs that may not be what they want to hear but have the ring of truthfulness and artistic integrity.

Bloody rare, that.