Obsexed

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Dig Down Deep	3:23	Play
2		School Of Thought	2:53	Play
3		Eve's Dropping	3:01	Play
4		Nice Shoes, Wanna Fuck?	0:58	Play
5		Complicated	2:34	Play
6		Empty Canvas	2:52	Play
7		Obsexed	3:45	Play
8		A Muse, Or Just Amusing?	4:46	Play

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Description

Where do you go after the romance ends?

Maybe you get out of the house. You visit poetry recitals and gallery openings. You stare into the mirror with dread and hope over what each night might bring.

Or, if you're Cary Aria, you do all that ... and then you hit the studio and set your life to music.

Cary Aria is just like the rest of us, only different. On the one hand, he's a regular guy. He holds down a day job in Minneapolis. On the other, he's a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who's not quite famous -- but that's just a matter of time.

No other artist out there, no matter how many shows they've sold out or gold records they've piled into their closets, writes with Aria's fearless candor. His songs betray secrets most of us bury away in diaries. Not only that: By sharing moments of despair and elation, often laced with humor and always set to irresistible mixes of hook 'n' groove, Aria connects to listeners in ways beyond the reach of writers who lack his trust, talent, and guts.

It started with Ruins, his first CD, which recounted the rise and fall of his relationship with Alison, a kind of Everywoman who also happens to be a real person -- real enough to guest on the project, replaying her role in the story.

That leads, a couple of years later, to Obsexed, Aria's follow-up. Things have changed: He is, for one thing, performing all over the Midwest now, playing to new fans who helped propel Ruins to its debut at No. 7 on college radio charts, as measured by CMJ. He's getting his first national tour together, with gigs booked up and down both coasts and plenty of points between. His sound has tightened, toughened, and grown.

He's also on that road we know too well -- the one that leads from the wreckage of love into the wilderness of dating. His adventures along the way are ironic and disappointing, titillating and fulfilling, all of which leave the traveler wiser than he was when he started out. Fortunately, Aria has a knack for communicating through song, from the bone-crushing riff that kicks off the opening track, "Dig Down Deep," to his unique blend of slamming beat, experimental vocals, and subtle metaphor on "Empty Canvas."

Through each track there runs the thread of truth. The women he describes -- the painter who tries to "paint over all those images you left hanging on my memory," the poetess whose "body ... body of work" he yearns to touch -- are not made up. The questions he writes into his work -- the existential "When is a rose not a rose?," the damn-the-torpedoes demand in the title of his "Nice Shoes' track, the bottom-line query about rejection in "Eve's Dropping" -- stem from actual events, whether over drinks with a stranger or at home alone.

Obsexed is, in other words, one of the most honest and ambitious release by any artist since ... well, since Ruins. And, by the way, it rocks like crazy.

"I have to write this way," Aria insists. "I can't censor myself. It's better for me to get it all out there. That's one reason why it was easier for me to do the whole album alone -- just the engineer and me. I never thought about bringing any other musicians in; I wanted to play all the parts myself."

Setting aside the words, Obsexed is a musical tour de force. In just three days Aria laid down every part himself, weaving them together to create an impression of one killer live band. Strains of punk, power pop, garage -- even jazz, which pops up absurdly in the middle of the furious "Complicated."

"My approach here was the opposite of Ruins, which took a couple of years," he explains. "I recorded this one very quickly because I wanted to keep a loose, indie rock feel. Really, I was trying to challenge myself; whenever I feel like I'm settling in too much, I shake things up. That was definitely happening throughout Obsexed."

For the lyrics side, Aria drew inspiration in particular from the work of Ani DiFranco -- but mostly from the people he'd encountered in his barhopping odyssey. "I write to get things off my chest," he says. "It's therapy. I can't help it; I can write only about what goes on in my life."

In the past that's meant doing songs about growing up around Minneapolis, breaking into music as a solo artist and as a member of several bands, including National Dynamite, who opened shows for Soul Asylum, Jars of Clay, and other headliners. Then it meant taking it to another level when he and his girlfriend took off for San Diego and, for a while, to Greece.

The unraveling began at that point, as documented on Ruins. Phase Two unfolds on Obsexed -- which, despite its chronicle of frustrations and doubts and annoyances, glows with a kind of cautious optimism. "I have a positive attitude," Aria insists. "This comes partly from the fact that I'm a multi-instrumentalist, which means that as a musician I can do whatever I set my mind to do. The idea behind Obsexed is that there's no limit to what you can do if you open your mind to all the possibilities. I'm a single man, having fun and learning from my experiences, trying to better myself. A lot of these songs deal with the freshness of being out there and meeting new folks after coming out of a major relationship."

If you've been there, you can relate to Obsexed. And no matter how things worked out for you, it's impossible not to root for Cary Aria. Alison was Everywoman; Cary is Everyman, except he's got the gift to work wonders with the stuff of real life. Everyone is Obsexed -- they just didn't know it, until now.