Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 1: Suzanne Vega, Nine Objects of Desire (1996)
A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME!
I bought Nine Objects of Desire (the first time) pretty soon after it came out. I was a Suzanne Vega fan already. I loved her from the time I first heard Luka, it stayed with me - then and now. And though I missed Days of Open Hand at the time, I was back for 99.9Fdegrees, the album that arrived just before Nine Objects - and is linked to it in creation; Vega at the time was married to her co-producer Mitchell Froom (he is credited with co-composition for some of the tracks). The albums play like sister-volumes, palinodes perhaps.
But, instantly, Nine Objects was, and remains, my favourite. It is the most fun and sophisticated batch of songs Vega has created. There are one-liners and zingers (“Do you know where friendship ends and passion does begin/It’s when the gin and tonic makes the room begin to spin”) and they are never silly, they are forever wise. There are tender lyrics about favourite plums (shades of William Carlos Williams?) and there is the most exquisite extended metaphor in World Before Columbus (“if your love were taken from me, the world would be as flat as the world before Columbus, sail to the edge/and I’d fall flat…”). Columbus is maybe her finest song ever. Which is saying a lot from the person that made Luka and Solitude Standing and Tom’s Diner and In Liverpool…
In fact, I think Nine Objects is, musically, her most adventurous, sophisticated, and interesting album - and lyrically it’s maybe her tightest and cleverest. So these are big claims, right? Big things to celebrate. And nearly every song does exactly that.
I bought the album in the summer that it arrived in New Zealand (1997). I was staying in Tauranga, visiting a handful of friends I’d made at university, and one of them had a job in a great music shop, Jim’s. So I think he possibly got me a bit of discount, but maybe not. It was a $34.95 CD at any rate. And I kept it for the longest time, and played it so often. Within a few months of owning it, I felt like it was a Desert Island Disc. Remember, when that was the ultimate accolade? I never had a full set of Desert Island Discs - from memory it was three? - but I always had reserved spots for this and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I kinda liked leaving one space open - for something newly discovered/discoverable.
I guess, briefly, I hoped for a vinyl edition for my collection, and maybe there is one…But by the time that would have happened, I had moved on from obsessive vinyl collecting. And then, I moved on from even owning CDs…for a while!
I’ve definitely kept listening to Nine Objects online over the years, but it feels like a CD. It’s always felt like a CD. So much so, that I’ve often thought about buying it again. I’ve seen it a few times in op-shops, etc. But that’s back when I was consciously trying to keep CDs to an absolute minimum. Now, I’m back buying (cheap) CDs. Mostly soundtracks. But as you’d guess, from this column celebrating the Compact Disc, I’m back. Buying up favourites.
So, it seemed right for the first edition that I mentioned this album. I bought it from a store in Grass Valley, California that felt very much like Jim’s Music Room in Tauranga. This one, Clocktower Records, had a box of $1 CDs out front. And I’m a sucker for a quick scan. Revelation to find Nine Objects of Desire there in the box. I bought it. And took it on a road-trip down to San Francisco. The first thing I played. Every song feeling as special as I first heard it. The listening experience taking me right back to 1997 and 1998 and through the early 2000s. When I tried my best to get others onto hearing that album, when I turned a few friends onto Suzanne Vega in general. And then, a few years back, when I met and interviewed Ms. Vega for my podcast.
