The album opens with "After Dark," which has a gentle vibe, aided by Brian Wilkie's work on pedal steel (Brian had also played on Bring On The Rain). Chris creates a vivid picture with the song's opening lines: "After dark and your lights are low/The TV's on, something you know/The wind, an old familiar song/The grass is waving, nights go on and on." And then he tells us, "I dreamed this place up in my sleep." There is a lonesome feel to the music and the vocal performance, a sense of solitary reflection. "I cried the day I had to leave/I'll cry the day when you are all I need." This song has a striking final line, "I'm holding out for God I don't know what." It's an excellent opening track, setting the mood and place. The area that, as the album's title says, most of us fly over on our way from one coast to another. And even if we don't live in that area, many of us still have the sense of life moving past us without any consideration of our concerns. "What have I been doing here?/What have I done wrong?" he asks at the beginning of "You Were Young." And just as we're relating our own lives and situations to those lines, he then sings, "Seems like if you have to ask, you've known it all along." That is sometimes a difficult lesson, but, yes, those answers are within us, if only we have the courage to face them. It is a song of some longing, as well as of memory. "I miss you like perfume in the wind and rainy night/Seems like every darkened corner's helpless in the light." I love this song. I highly recommend checking it out.
"Like A Bird, Like A Sound" is a beautifully sad song. This album is one for reflection on our own lives, these songs speaking to us on an incredibly intimate level. This is certainly a time for looking inward, and seeing what can be done there, for looking outward only brings anxiety and loathing. "I'll see you around/I'll be around/Like a bird, like a sound/Like the dirt on the ground." The pedal steel helps create the atmosphere. And I think most folks will relate to these lines: "Try to sleep the whole night through/What are you and I gonna do?" That's followed by "Firefly," a really pretty song. "I need someone to make me cry before I fall off the end of the bed/I need someone to dry my eyes before they lose sight again/Lose sight of you/Like a firefly." Everything is so brief, like the flicker of a firefly. We see it for a moment before darkness takes over once again. "You need someone to pick you up from the end of town, the end of the world/You need someone to find you out, to wonder where you were." This is an album you want to listen to alone, when you can give it your focus, when you can let it give you access to your own memories and longings, when your emotions can run, unimpeded and unabashed.
The drums give "Break Even" a more cheerful, inviting vibe. "A genius at killing time/Waiting for the time of your life." Those lines also speak to all of us who are understanding the brevity of this entire thing and maybe reflecting on time that was wasted, and, worse, the time we know we will still waste, as well as the sense that we may never succeed. "All the little things you lose/To break even." This track features some nice work on pedal steel, and a good bass line. That's followed by "More Perfect." Of course the word "perfect" is an absolute adjective, so there are no degrees of "perfect," just as there are no degrees of "unique" (the founding fathers weren't as bright as people think, as there is no such thing as a "more perfect union"). This is another beautiful and tender song. "Cry like you mean it, our lives are in our hands/You don't know what to think or what to understand/Build me up from ashes and burn me to the ground/Return to everything you'd ever want around/I'm coming back, I'm coming back, I'm coming back/More perfect again." This one also features some wonderful stuff on pedal steel, as well as a really good guitar line, one that soon feels familiar, like an old friend. "Wrap your arms around me/And tell me what you think/Hold me around my shoulders/And I won't need a thing."
"Flyover," the album's title track, is another of the disc's highlights. "You're screaming like a car alarm/Wake me up and grab my arm/Is it over yet?" This is a touching and completely effective song, with a tender vocal performance. "Come to me when you don't know why/What doesn't kill you makes you cry/Or leaves you be." It's like a great, intimate scene in a much wider expanse. That's followed by "Nondescript." David Prusina plays drums on this one. "It seems I'm the last one to leave/Am I doing it wrong?" Soon he sings, "You're doing it fine, you're gonna be all right/Maybe that's just something you have to tell yourself/You're doing it fine, you're gonna be all right/Everything you did, you did by yourself/So you'll never know if you're doing it right." The way he sings those lines, we feel some encouragement, some support. It's a dubious declaration, yet we hold onto those words, those lines, because of the way they are delivered. We're gonna be all right. We tell ourselves that, don't we? The song ends with the line, "And we'll never know if we're doing this right." And he seems to be telling us that that is okay; after all, no one knows. The album concludes with "Anywhere," another beautiful number. "I would love it not to care/I'd go anywhere/With you." Oh yes.
CD Track List
- After Dark
- You Were Young
- Like A Bird, Like A Sound
- Firefly
- Break Even
- More Perfect
- Flyover
- Nondescript
- Anywhere
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