1996 saw Love & Rockets’ Sweet FA (03/19/96). It turned out they would not hesitate to lecture either, but she’d been expecting as much. There was not much to point to with this; more a pervading feeling and tone, but it possessed “Judgment Day” (-what happened to the room of mirrors?) “Good God what’s the reason, for this killing game, I only want everything, help me get that again, hey, hey, hey, before my judgement day”. “Shelf Life” described how things had flipped over easy: “The Devil’s in his heaven and your hell’s sublime”, “what is your shelf life?” “Words of a Fool”: “let the demons in, let your lover fly away, do you understand, these are the words of a fool” and “Clean”: “you were down, now you’re higher than NASA, once you’re up, why come down at all?” There was also “Sister Blue”, as in, “Sister Blue stay away from me, there’s so many now that I can’t see” (I see I’m not in agreement as per the lyric) in “Sweet Lover Hangover”. But what stood out was “Pearl” because it was the truth, and a broken man was at the root of it (she came off as pretty synonymous with “Sister Blue”). There was also "Natacha".
“Sweet lover of mine, you know a million tears are gonna fall”
If you wanted a visual slam they were they were there for the slamming, like shots or shots to the head. Have a gander and get your freak on. What a combo (”Honky’s Ladder” released 02/20/96). Sex combined and juxtaposed with salvation (but it’s probably a front, just as the sexuality is an inversion) with a female spiritual anointed/focus, and female crucifixion. Incidentally the back cover of the album this appeared on had a woman who looked just like her, including being garbed in the all black with the habitual headscarf, holding a light in the darkness.
For May of that year The Wallflowers released “One Headlight”, which could not have described the circumstance much better than surviving with one light out; though naturally the song was far broader; it began with the fall out of “her” death to a “broken heart disease”. “We can make it home on one headlight” -In actual fact she’d bush-whacked off of Sad Mountain at night, opting not to use the flashlight she had, and made it home to Tommy’s Holiday Camp on the motorcycle with no headlight at all. (There would be a final feedback riposte in the Fall.)
New Adventures in Hi-fi by R.E.M. was released in the Fall (09/10/96), it seemed to hint at many currencies but there was nothing she felt she could grasp. It remained an open question: maybe, perhaps? But she was caught by the “Undertow” (the process of submergence in the universal unconscious sea), noticed he was into stars and letters, and “Bittersweet Me”. She was completely struck by “Be Mine”.