Taking Sides: Indigo Girls "Closer to Fine" vs Edie Brickells "What I Am"

haha, I didn't know anyone who played "Closer To Fine" in the dorms but I can see that; on my hall it was Pearl Jam's "Black".

kinda feeling that Pearl Jam are the male Indigo Girls in some ways (note that I had a really high fever yesterday so my cogency ought to be taken with the usual grain of salt)

I keep wondering if we are ever going to have a collective change of heart and all accept that Closer to Fine is a tremendous song.

closer to fine is great but galileo is better i think

Was hanging out with some people who were playing the first two Indigo Girls albums all evening, and remembered how "Closer to Fine" was my freshman year of college and was so much a song about education and liberal arts. And sounded so different from anything on radio, being almost entirely just voices and acoustic guitars (+ a little tambourine and pennywhistle).

Anyway, I heard "Closer to Fine" and thought: wow, what a solid song. And heard "Kid Fears" and thought: wait, is this the best R.E.M. song? And remembered riding around in cars listening to that first album with the rest of the otherwise all-women literary-magazine staff.

I absolutely love their first album. The third one is great too.

I get how people can find "Closer to Fine" cheesy but are there really people who don't see it as a sterling instance of the kind of song it is?

Great Natalie Merchant:
Trouble Me
Candy Everybody Wants
These Are Days

Ok Natalie Merchant:
Kind & Generous
Carnival

I Hate it Never Want to Hear Again:
Wonder

Open to liking it, haven't found the melody after 25 years:
Photograph w/REM

1-2-3 is my Indigo Girls jam btw

I meant the s/t btw not Strange Fire

though that's good too

I ride for them through Rites of Passage. "Virginia Wolff"!

Listening more to s/t, realized that the first songs have few/no drums in a way that keep it from sounding dated.

a little tambourine and pennywhistle

Which I found out recently is by Irish band Hothouse Flowers!

Old-Skool ILM very much living up to the "bag of dicks" stereotype on this thread.

Is this truly the closest thing to a general Indigo Girls thread on ILM(??)

I'm realizing, very belatedly, how great they are... but intimidated at the idea of getting a grasp on an act with 15 studio albums (not to mention solo / side projects). Beyond the S/T (which I revisited for the first time since, probably, high school – it made me laugh at how good it is, on a song-by-song basis), and the Best-Of / Essential playlists, any tips on how to "get into them"?

Light some incense

Goddamn, for decades now I assumed they were saying "The closer I am to find," which I always assumed was an awkward but deliberate grammatical mistake.