FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Half Gringa – Force to Reckon
__________
FOR this outing…
of Revisiting…, I am coming to an album from 2020 that I missed out on. I have found it since, and I would recommend people check out Half Gringa’s Force to Reckon. Many might not know about the band but, if you look at their Bandcamp, we get a description and overview (“Emerging from Chicago’s indie music scene, Half Gringa creates music informed by contemporary indie-rock and Latin American and midwestern folk. The name Half Gringa is both a tribute to and study of her legacy, stemming from a childhood term of endearment as “la Gringa” in her Venezuelan family and her bicultural experience growing up in the United States”). I am going to come to some positive reviews of a wonderful album from 2020. Before that, VICE listed Half Gringa’s Force to Reckon as one of the most overlooked (and best) albums from 2020:
“Izzy Olive makes empathic and twangy songs about grief and getting stuck in your own thoughts as Half Gringa. Her band name comes as a nod to her bicultural experience growing up in a Venezuelan family "in the Midwest really into alternative rock, but heard a lot of country music in the supermarket,” and that charm comes through in her music. On her sophomore LP Force to Reckon, the Chicago alt-country songwriter hones in on the death of her grandmother who passed away while Olive was on tour. She sings on the gorgeous "Transitive Property," "And every sadness I have ever felt / it manifests as hunger." It's this drive that's the LP's propulsive energy that culminates in the cinematic, string-laced, and mournful closer "Forty," one of the most beautiful songs of the year. — JT”.
Many people might not be aware of Force to Reckon. It is a terrific album, and it is one that did not get a lot of attention from mainstream sites and journalists. I have found a couple of reviews that, hopefully, convince you to give the album a try. This is what Audio Femme said when they looked at one of the great albums from 2020:
“It feels appropriate for an album loud with nostalgia to kick off with a track about memory called “1990.” The opening licks of Half Gringa’s sophomore release, Force to Reckon, took me back to the early 2010s, when I lived in the South and would careen around bends along the Appalachian Mountains with Defiance, Ohio, Mirah, and Rilo Kiley spilling out my windows. If I could distill that sound into a time capsule — along with the freedom of those drives or the way my heart felt things so much more intensely then because many experiences were still new — it would be this record.
Singer Izzy Olive croons in that intimate, confessional style that came to maturity in the aughts for alt rock women — but without the vocal flourishes or gushing reverb more apparent in newer artists, like Angel Olsen. Force to Reckon is punctuated with a mix of folksy violin and pop riffs that have declined this last decade. In some ways, it sounds suspended in time.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. COVID-19 has many people looking to past sources of comfort, with music acting as a particular sort of time machine. This album offers familiarity to a moment where everything from the future of live music to what’s happening to Portland protestors is uncertain. And it does it vibrantly, masterfully. Half Gringa doesn’t reinvent the wheel — but makes sure it’s polished and strong. Force to Reckon is unflinching in what it does.
The standout track is the second song, “Binary Star.” It’s a rich journey of yearning and rejection that comes in waves, but many lines take on their own meaning. When Olive repeats with a pained longing, “Nothing feels like almost touching,” I recall the ache of having not hugged a friend since February. Now we see each other at six-foot distances outside, if we see each other at all, and even brushing elbows with strangers on the train feels worthy of fantasy for how foreign, even forbidden, it’s become.
Olive sounds like she’s waxing about a past lover, but certain phrases transcend the specifics of the story. In another part, she says, “Everyone leaves for California, New York, Chile, Berlin.” If you’re from the Midwest, as I am, Chicago seemed mythical growing up — the BIG “big city” of the region where grit and aspiration are tested. But that also makes it a pit stop, not a final destination. In comedy, you hone your act at someplace like Second City, then take it to Los Angeles (actors and musicians, do this, too). If you’re a writer or artist, you rub elbows with poets, maybe get an MFA, then head to New York.
Olive came from a small town in southern Illinois to study poetry at University of Chicago. Adopting the moniker Half Gringa as “in tribute to her Venezuelan family and her bicultural experience growing up in the United States” (according to Bandcamp), she’s stayed in Chicago to make music. So when she follows a list of common relocations for former Chicagoans with, “I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere,” it sounds bold. Bolder than telling a lover she’ll wait for them despite all indicators she shouldn’t. Then she says, “The bar’s warm and I’m easy to converse with and denial runs its long hands/Through my fine hair with a final, fatal smile.” Knowing Chicago is just a chapter for most transplants, you hear the defiance mixed with self doubt in that line as being about here, specifically. This city is a gamble – there are opportunities elsewhere. Maybe she’s kidding herself, but she’s choosing opportunities closer to home, relishing them rather than feeling resigned.
To say “I’m not going anywhere” also evokes a willing immobility because of Coronavirus. By chance, so much of the record speaks to being stuck at home — time in isolation to reflect on our pasts, contemplate our futures, and fixate on both the personal and structural conditions that brought us where we are now. On “Transitive Property,” Olive sings, “I don’t understand this country/I don’t understand my own grief/How could you have seen what I see?/I’m in disbelief and bereaved.” I’m unsure what she’s specifically responding to, but when I hear it, I hear my own anguish about the murders of people such as Breonna Taylor or Riah Milton. Or my outrage that, in the United States, healthcare is tied to employment, so over 30 million people don’t have either right now. It’s a cathartic song for discomfort and lack of resolution. I take comfort hearing someone else is hurting and upset by our country, too.
Force to Reckon tries to make sense of so many things specific and abstract that bring us ache and confusion. Every song searches — tunes that probe childhood trauma, grieving at a distance, and other prescient themes — but never reaches a tidy conclusion. Like so much right now, the album is open ended. Unlike most, it’s beautifully so”.
I want to wrap things up with a review from New City Music. As I was quite new to Half Gringa, it was interesting reading their review and getting a good and deep take on an album (and group) that I really love and would definitely recommend anyone to listen to:
“Chicago singer-songwriter Isabel Olive has planted her flag solidly on the city’s indie scene. As reviews have pointed out, she’s a gifted composer and singer, and her stripped-down sound honors the grunge and alt-country she grew up with as well as her half-Venezuelan heritage (hence her project’s name). The Latinx elements are limited to flourishes, sudden blossoming of melodic sumptuousness, in the midst of plangent passages, but they’re there and they’re lovely.
So yeah, I like Half Gringa, and I’m right there behind everyone else who’s said the same. But for the love of God—why has no one yet mentioned this woman’s prowess as a lyricist? It’s certainly the most stunning aspect of her second album, “Force to Reckon,” which over the course of nine tracks explores a downbeat emotional landscape, including regret, apologies, misunderstanding and grief. It’s a cathartic ride.
But the sustained brilliance of the lyrics is just flat-out exhilarating. Olive was a poetry major at the University of Chicago so she’s got both the instinct and the institutional finesse to produce reams of verse that are almost literally dazzling—she’s strewing diamonds in every line.
She delivers couplet after couplet of startling imagery; like this, from “Binary Star”: “The bar’s warm and I’m easy to converse with and denial runs its long hands / Through my fine hair with a final, fatal smile.” But she’ll often weave in some internal rhymes and resonances that can just knock you right out of your chair—like this one, from the same tune: “My heart grew heavy and sweetIy linger, singing, longing / Singer strong and steady, stinger at the ready.” Followed soon by “Apologies, I didn’t plan this rigid orbit / Vicious gorgeous, I am reeling.”
When she’s at full strength, the combination of emotional connection, ingenious imagery and uncanny internal rhymes work together to create a kind of lyrical slam-dunk—as in this passage from “Transitive Property.”
Nuanced and demanding
I thought I’d reached some understanding of loss
Torn and tread in these departures
Still I dream of gilded archers
Loner ardor—spirits I brew myself
There’s a peculiar frisson to writing a music review that’s primarily about words; but ever since Cole Porter wrote “Flying so high with some guy in the sky / Is my idea of nothing to do,” there’s been a tradition of songwriters reaching as exalted a plane with their lyrics as with their melodies. Having been at this music-critic game for quite a few years, I’ve come to recognize immediately the almost-electric feeling of discovery when from out of nowhere, someone emerges who launches herself right into Joni Mitchell-Leonard Cohen territory. As Olive does, once again, in “Afraid of Horses”:
I’ve been bad at listening
My plans were talking too loud
Finally finished a blueprint
After years of throwing them out
But so as not to stint the sonic for the lyric, let me add a shout-out to Half Gringa’s outstanding bandmates, who include Nathan Bojko on drums, Sam Cantor on guitar, Andres Fonseca on bass and Lucy Little on violin (with some winning solos from Lucy), as well as to guest players Ivan Pyzow on trumpet and Gia Margaret on piano. (Margaret provides some hair-raisingly lovely harmonies on a few of the tunes.)
In the final run this album remains chiefly a poetic triumph, so I’ll give the last word to the songwriter herself—this being my favorite passage on the album. It’s from the title tune.
Maybe this will leave another scar
Maybe time passes differently where you are
When I sleep I dream of only things I could know
No prophecy, just fields of faded paper snow
The horizon line feels tilted sometimes
But I’ve never learned without a curve”.
A terrific album from 2020, Half Gringa’s Force to Reckon is really terrific! A complete band performance led by the remarkable Izzy Olive, I have been spinning this album a bit. One that flew under the radar a bit, do go and spend time with Half Gringa’s Force to Reckon. It is a wonderful album that…
EVERYONE should hear.