Kevin Army, on the other hand, I have known well for close on twenty years. (I first met him somewhere between Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, so the time frame is roughly equivalent.) While I might, perhaps, learn things about him from his songs, a great deal of my experience in listening to them is colored by my knowing him personally. It's not exactly the opposite of the Bob Mould situation, but it's something like the inverse of the kind of relationship I was talking about. Just as I can't imagine what it would be like to hear a BM song knowing him primarily as a person,I can't quite put myself in the position of knowing Kevin only through what I can gather from the experience of listening to his songs. (If Bob Mould was my best friend, would some of the lyrics that seem cryptic to me now be less so? They might. The song would still be great, but to what degree might it be "differently great"?) I had never thought of it in quite that way before, but seeing the two songwriters in juxtaposition, I was really struck by it.

Despite having an "inside track," however, I think I'm right in saying that Kevin's songs are not in any way cryptic, and nothing is buried. They are rather remarkably, nakedly personal and direct, and they often leave the narrator/singer/character "entity" exposed in way that can be unsettling, uncomfortable, painful even. It's all simply out there. Many, if not most, of his latest crop of songs focus on the experience of being gay, and the process of self-exploration that results from coming to terms with the realization relatively late in life, as he has done. Some are affably-presented, relatively light-hearted treatments of this or that phenomenon or topic associated with gay culture, such as "Rainbow Cross". Others, like "Poster Boy for the Holocaust" or "Did Anyone Die Today?" are unnervingly direct and only sparsely encumbered with distancing devices. As my wife remarked during the set, it's like reading someone's diary. Even when they present you with it and say it's okay, you feel a little uncomfortable peeking inside.

Some of the songs are rather complex compositionally, with the occasional songwriterly bell or whistle that makes someone like me smile inwardly and say "good one." Many have quite beautiful melodies, and they are presented on stage with a good-natured, casual, even slightly goofy manner which relieves the tension. But the material is powerful and really doesn't pull any punches. I don't mean to make it sound too "heavy," because it doesn't quite come off that way. Much of it is fun, but it can be a complicated kind of fun.