The Tim Hanseroth-penned “What Can I Say” on Brandi Carlile’s self-titled album speaks a fine prayer.
Carlile delivers up a Lilith Fair folk pop-rock with just enough rootsy acoustic guitar to recall Lucinda Williams. The Twins, Tim Hanseroth (guitar, backup vocals) and Phil Hanseroth (bass, backup vocals), blend their voices with Carlile on Tim’s “What Can I Say” as it waltzes along in a melancholic reverie like Turin Brakes.
The stanzas seems like a prayer of the Psalms, speaking from a despairing corner. The chorus cries out saying, “Oh, Lord, what can I say,/I’m so sad since you went away,” just as many of the Psalms reflect our limited understanding where it seems that God goes away from us. While He never truly departs, it often can seem as if God is nowhere to be found as our troubles pile up around us. “Time time tickin’ on me/Alone is the last place I wanted to be/Lord, what can I say.”
Perhaps meant as a song about the breakup of a relationship, nevertheless, Tim Hanseroth’s lyric work from that same lonely spot where we find ourselves afraid that God is “missing inside.” The song ends with the questions, “How many rules can I break/How many lies can I make/How many roads must I turn/To find me a place where the bridge hasn’t burned.”
There is, of course, one road that goes through, because Jesus Christ lays down Himself as the bridge across the gulf created by our sin. We break the rules; we lie the lies; we travel every road, but that never burns the bridge that Jesus laid to bring us back to God.
Thanks to Brandi Carlile and Columbia Records for the review CD.
