“The Indigo Girls … have been friends singing together since they were kids in 1970s Atlanta,” (New York Times). “They make a good living as working musicians, touring regularly to delight a loyal fan base … But their music — songwriterly, acoustic-forward, aggressively emotional — hardly seems a good fit for our strange and cynical times. They are, as the kids would say, cringe … Cringe: the ultimate insult of our era. It implies a kind of pathetic attachment to hope, to sincerity, to possibility.
I asked (film director Greta) Gerwig why the Indigo Girls were in Barbie. ‘The Indigo Girls were part of my growing up … ‘Closer to Fine’ is just one of those songs that meets you where you are, wherever you are. It has spoken to me throughout my life, like a novel you revisit,’ … This is what the Indigo Girls are all about. Sincerity coupled with wisdom, which is a recipe for something durable: solidarity. A sense that we are in this together. The Indigo Girls are great. Cringe but true. That’s because the kernel of who we are is cringe. That is what it means to be open to the world. To be open to the possibility of a future different from who you are now.”
“Reunion” is a track from the duo’s fifth studio album Swamp Ophelia (1994). Tim Paul, a first-time contributor to MotD, explains that “the song is in A major until the instrumental interlude around 2:21; they modulate to B major, then back to A major at 2:51.” Many thanks, TP, for this wonderful submission — doubly good because it marks the Indigo Girls’ (long overdue) MotD debut!