The Lucky Valentines are the rare band to have an official motto: Making sad things beautiful. By that definition, Losses is an extraordinarily successful effort from Shaun and Jamie Carrier.
“Swallowed” accomplishes the task quietly and stunningly. It tells the story of Shaun’s father walking out on his family with details that engage the five senses and pull on the heartstrings. It’s a loss that shaped Shaun tremendously, from childhood pain to his desire to be a better father to his own children. The low guitar plucking and simple fiddle lines build from a place of absolute pain to a lasting message of hope. Few songs are quite as perfect as this one.
“Swallowed is about my first memory as a boy, which is the night my dad left,” Shaun said, fighting back tears. “There’s this pain that comes from the initial loss and then the ultimate loss,” he added, referring to his father’s eventual death. “Then there’s this other ingredient which is this fire that we carry and foster, which is the love and hope. I get to be a father to my children. I get to love them. That love gets to survive.”
Much of the album charts a similar, beautiful course. The loss and pain are well documented but there’s almost always a sliver of hope that somehow makes the pain both easier to handle and more acute with the knowledge that someone had to not only feel it, but also heal from it.
“Ashes to Ashes” is a different kind of farewell, a letter to deceased ancestors who build a beautiful home. It starts out by telling them that their property is in disrepair and their children have all moved far away. But it also celebrates the positive legacy they left for neighbors and family even if all reminders of it will eventually fade.
“It’s telling that person, ‘you’re so wonderful and I appreciated you and I saw how hard you worked,’” Jamie said. “The love is what sticks around even when the rest of it is blowing away in the wind.”
As for her own legacy, Jamie is concerned that people won’t express what they feel about her until after she’s gone.
“I know that it will disappear eventually but I’d rather see the fruits during my life,” she said.
Shaun is a member of the Chippewa tribe and Native spirituality informs Breaklands, a gorgeous imagining of dying and returning to the Earth. Native generational trauma and a drug addiction informs “Sober,” which rather bluntly describes a spiraling out and the imminent death that will follow if the character doesn’t change. Their hope for forgiveness and peace in the afterlife leaves little hope for their future on this mortal plane.
“Junkmail” is a particularly powerful song that returns to Shaun’s father. This time, he’s passed and Shaun is left to sift through his father’s belongings to find a will or some other trace of his last wishes. A particularly powerful portion of the song imagines Shaun wearing his father’s clothes, taking some of his possessions, and sleeping in his pickup. It’s a heartbreaking way to imagine getting to know the man who walked out on his family at the start of the album.
When it came to planning his funeral and processing his loss, Shaun referenced a Native writer’s work.
“She talks about this tradition of not using a person’s name once they’ve passed on because while they’re on their way to wherever we go, it can call them back,” he said. “For me, the way I take that is that if there’s anything I can do for the people that I lose, it’s to let them go as best I can. That looks like working through the things that are hanging me up about them and to engage in forgiveness.”
Much like he does in his best lyrics, Shaun engages directly with the sadness and winds up finding a beautiful solution. This band’s motto seems good for more than just music.
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Shaun and Jamie and the songs we discussed, starting with Ashes to Ashes, which is a strange and beautiful way of updating the dead on what’s happened since they left. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.luckyvalentines.com for more.
Country Pocket 