Featured Essay: Urban Hymns

by Lis Anna-Langston

A few years ago, a friend was moving and needed to free up funds and space. A little red record player he never used was up for sale. Looking back on that moment I don’t know what made me offer to buy it. On the surface I think I knew he needed cash and it’s easier to support a goal this way rather than offer a loan. Also, I think my soul was guiding me toward a choice I couldn’t see with logic. What I was going to do with a record player I had no idea. I imagined it would become a glorified paperweight given how much music I never listened to.

I quickly purchased a GemTune GS01 Hi-Fi tube amplifier because why not. What I knew about listening to music fit in a bucket. It made sense at the time to purchase something so esoteric that the tubes were manufactured in Russia.

Urban Hymns was released in 1997, but decades passed before I discovered it. I was working as a Director/Producer on several films around the turn of the century. A few were picked up for screenings and awards at film festivals. During a film festival in Virginia, I attended a black-tie dinner. It wasn’t really my thing. I felt obligated because the organizers were a super group of people who treated all of the filmmakers with respect. Still, try as I might, stuffed shirts in an uptight setting weren’t for me and so halfway through dinner I slipped out and went to the bar. I wasn’t the only one. Several conversations cropped up with filmmakers who were like me. One of them was with a filmmaker from West Virginia named Steve. We started talking and he found out I was from Memphis. He asked me what the best album ever recorded was. Isaac Hayes’ Black Moses was my top pick, followed by Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. Steve’s top pick was Urban Hymns. Only vague recollections of “Bittersweet Symphony” came to mind, so I promised to listen. I fully admit, I didn’t know anything about the Verve. Years passed before I ever got around to it.

So, I had a little red record player with my strange amplifier glowing in the dim light of my living room. One of the first albums I purchased was The Verve. Listening to Urban Hymns one night I found myself so caught up in the lyrics that I forgot it was an album. No small task. Outside of a few artists like Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Isaac Hayes, and MC Solaar I am almost always aware that I am separated from the music. That perfect sound people have come to love is to me a signal that it isn’t live. It isn’t real to me. But in that moment of oneness I realized the perfect imperfection of the sound was part of the enjoyment. It wasn’t that I preferred silence to music, it was that I had been listening to music the wrong way since I’d left my original roots and gone forth in the world. The crisp sound of a CD never appealed to me, never called to me though I acknowledge it called to many. It never occurred to me that I needed a simple means to explore the landscape of an artistic medium so iconic. In a world where we are judged by our sound systems mine is wonderfully sparse. The instant gratification of downloads isn’t for me. The fret I build up waiting for an album to arrive in pristine condition is part of my process.

I grew up in Memphis and I’m good at finding the music, the meaning, the real notes that form a deeper harmony within the tapestry of my life because the experience is so woven into the fiber of my being that I cannot separate the music from my life. I used to walk my dog past Sun Studios every day. It was not something I took for granted. It’s a tiny place on Union Avenue and I’d always peek through the glass door. All the Delta Blues artists crossed that threshold. I mean, seriously, Johnny Cash was in there.

When you’re standing ten feet away from B. B. King singing it changes you. Maybe not in obvious ways I perceived in the moment, but it definitely created a lasting impression. Any day of the week I could hear music on corners in Memphis. Real music with mics too loud and amps too scratchy.

Visceral energy is music to me. There is no substitution. That energy comes to define entire moments in our lives with a variety of meanings. Urban Hymns has come to define the last few years for me because I was a late bloomer finding that iconic album. From the sweeping orchestral sound of “Bittersweet Symphony" to the lyrics, “Yes there is love if you want it, don’t sound like no sonnet, my Lord,” speaks to where I am. Eloping with my high school crush two decades later brought me to love late and “Sonnet” frames it perfectly.

The 90’s are ironically one of my favorite decades and the one hardest to navigate at the time. Headstrong and determined to get through a series of obstacles I tackled at least part of the decade with verve and part with relentless momentum. It was exhausting and yet the decade I pine for the most. Video Stores, 90210 watch parties I dodged, letters arriving in the mail, meeting up in person at the New French Bar, that easy stroll through airports, winning a free camera and a hundred rolls of film. I never knew where anyone was or what they were thinking and “I know I’ll see your face again,” so wonderfully frames that time. It was a time when I bumped into people at a café and five hours later we were so well caffeinated we knew we couldn’t stop there. “The Drugs Don’t Work” cycles into a groovy track of “Catching the Butterfly”. In terms of sheer originality and creativity there’s a part of me that would argue this is one of the best albums ever made. Like, ever.

As my GemTune bulbs began to glow I was well into the neon wilderness of not only the song but the entirety of the experience. The album really took on the momentum of an urban hymn, a semi religious experience that encapsulated the decade that had long passed with the wonder of discovering a piece of the past that felt almost like the future. Like one where I could see myself leaning into the dynamic “Space and Time.” Into the haunting chorus of “Weeping Willow”. I am reminded that this is an album I would have played on repeat in the late 90’s. But just like hooking up with my high school crush two decades later if I’d gone out with him then it would have taken on a different meaning. Same with Hymns.

“Can’t you hear this beauty in life?” This one question defines this entire album and elevates it to a hymn. As an ordained Buddhist I am always on the lookout for the experience that transcends experience. “This Time” is the most experimental and compelling track and rounds out questioning the beauty of light with reflection. Catchy and fluid it is the one song that drew me so deep I forgot about music and albums and only heard the sounds of a band so far away finally catching up to me.

“Come On” addresses him calling God from a payphone. It is a particularly spiritual exploration and one that rounds out what I’d come to think of as an ascension process. “Let the spirit inside you/Don’t wait to be found”. That sums it up well. Like all iconic moments this one didn’t wait to be found. Instead, it arrived right on time with a little red record player and a hymn sweeping across the urban landscape of my life.  

Hailed as “an author with a genuine flair for originality” by Midwest Book Review and “a loveable, engaging, original voice…” by Publishers Weekly, Lis Anna-Langston is the author of five novels, winner of 18 book awards, three-time Pushcart nominee, published extensively in literary journals and a Magna Cum Laude graduate. You can find her in the wilds of South Carolina listening to vinyl and plucking stories out of thin air. 

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