LOSS. It hurts, plain and simple.
Some of us try to ignore it, some of us try to bulldoze through it, some of us sink under its weight, all of us have to find a way to live through it.
And some of us can create something positive and rich out of it, digging into the memories and that hyper-sensitive state that we find ourselves in in times of grief.
This might be something intangible, like a new way to approach life. Or tangible, like an album of songs that finds a way through the pain, cathartic for the writer and for the listeners it connects with.
Like Lisa Miller's extraordinary album Morning in the Bowl of Night (Inertia).
There might be albums as good that come out this year, but I've played it over and over and it's hard to imagine that there is going to be a better one.
Since her 1996 debut, Quiet Girl with a Credit Card, Melbourne singer-songwriter Miller has quietly but surely built a career on the strength of her sturdy, emotional songwriting for grown-ups.
Her three albums of original material and one of covers all have much to recommend them, but Morning in the Bowl of Night is a treasure, a thing of breathtaking, honest beauty that deserves just as wide an audience as Missy Higgins's new album. The album is dedicated to Lisa's late mother and her memory is everywhere through it, from the family album snaps on the cover to the deeply personal songs like Point Ormond.
It begins: "It's been six months of a life sentence and it just keeps getting harder." And then: "I wear your old shirt/Shampoo bottle in the shower/Kept your last crossword/Word of the day was overpowered."
If that doesn't rip you up, remember there will come a day when it will.
Equally emotional is Bottle Up My Tears, with its reflective piano intro, before Miller, accompanied just by her own guitar, delivers perhaps the vocal performance of her life.
But these are just part of the whole, from the tender yearning of Upside and Motherless, to the bright, uplifting Such a Find and the mysterious groove of Love Will Carry You, with some magical Beatle-sy effects courtesy of co-producer Shane O'Mara.
Best album inspired by the passing of a parent since Loudon Wainwright's The Last Man on Earth.
And five stars out of five.
Noel Mengel
Brisbane Courier-Mail, 12 May 2007