Album Review: “Valley of Annihilation” (Lyrics and Music by Debra Fotheringham)

MUSIC

Studio photo of Deb Fotheringham by Clark Clifford

We Americans are a mobile and restless bunch. The great historical migrations — from east to west across the plains, the desperate flight of newly freed Black slaves from the southern plantations to the growing urban centers of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia, and even our rocket launches into the great beyond all reinforce the power of movement — the narrative that a change of scenery will cure what ails us. We move because staying still can be a death sentence. We leave to stay alive.

Debra Fotheringham’s beautifully wrought fourth album, “Valley of Annihilation,” explores this theme of movement as an autobiographical wandering through a series of personal disasters, life troubles, and epiphanies — a journey, as the allusive title suggests, of one human heart in search of itself and … something else. The beautiful ache in this album’s best songs demonstrates Fotheringham’s deft skill as a poet, and the gritty airiness of her voice, plaintive and bold, evokes a determined flight, dropping baggage along the way, into the abyss, where all the best songs are born.

Live performance photo of Debra Fotheringham by Brother Chunky

This album is an homage to heartbreak, a tribute to the loss and the doubt that “pounds at the door demanding to be seen” when things fall apart. Its best songs, “Bright Eyes,” “Rosy View,” “Ebb and Flow,” and “Blue West,” which have been my close company over the past two weeks, all tell the story of a soul in transit. Fotheringham moves back and forth through time and space, questioning, broken but still curious and hopeful, seeking relief and confirmation in the ashes of a past that didn’t, or couldn’t, meet expectations. Her songs are both tender and angry, navigating that rocky terrain between despair and strength.

Traveling east, a literal journey Fotheringham made during the pandemic to find renewal and hope–what she calls the “rosy view” — is often described in the language of myth as a movement back into the past or perhaps, more accurately, a return to the self. The journey Fotheringham describes seems to be a search for answers to the question most of us eventually confront: When we are stripped bare, what is left? Her answer casts a pall across the verses: “... pain/That's all part of the change.” Romance, pain’s bright foil, while not dead in this collection of songs, might be on notice. “The fever got my heart,” she moans, “I couldn't tell the wolves and loves apart.” While love remains in the mix, it is a love recast, hardened, wary, ready for battle, retaining a certain “breathless beauty,” but sobered by time and pain. 

Fotheringham’s musical offering is a gift that has likely come at a cost. If her lyrics reveal a certain sharpness, it is because sharpness comes from grinding hard at the edge. “Give me a heart daring to be cut,” she sings, perhaps not so much as a challenge but as a reminder that life is more often a storm than a safe harbor. She admits wryly that she’d “rather be blown far from harbor/all alone and drifting farther/than not be blown at all.” Fotheringham’s journey has left her weather-beaten and worn, uncomfortable but alert, vigilant.

The most beautiful art, Poe insists, is the expression of melancholy — that cloudy combination of loss and absence that we seem to crave and fear simultaneously, its beauty resting in its ambiguity. “Valley of Annihilation” reminds us that the best art grows from these contradictions and that we live most completely in the ruins. Debra Fotheringham has moved among the relics of her past and returned to tell the story. Take a listen.

Debra Fotheringham’s “Valley of Annihilation” is now available on Bandcamp, and all streaming services.