You can read reports about Sara Beck, or Pink Nasty, having her lyrical mind in the gutter. She did come up with her stage name, so that's a great jumping off point, all dirty and sexual. Depending on where you come in, Beck is more of a classic-born, country and western songwriter from Nashville, the kind of writer who languishes in the bush leagues and the shit-payin', hole-in-the-wall dives - the bowling alleys of Bad Blake's life - continuing to write of the sorrows she's taken on and seeing how they've progressed into more and more sorrowful territory. To be fair to our disagreement, to defend our argument, we haven't spent much time with her first two albums, but the new, self-titled album with that heart in a pair of hands on the cover, is just simply a tearjerker of sorts. There's no suggestion that she's got ribald tendencies, but simply a knack for hitting all of the raw nerves, not to mention pegging her stories onto characters that have been deceived or have been knocked around a bit. They're not trying to be clever with their words, just honest and forthright, giving it over straight and steaming.
Her characters are quick to point out the discrepancies in stories of the escape artist and the left or neglected. They are dealing with the fragments of things that they thought meant love and there are times when - on "Split The Diff" - there's some payback carried out by love's victim. There are also all kinds of instances where the reluctantly grown up thing is done and the losses are just cut - you get some of the losses, they get some of the losses - and there's a parting. It's not what anyone had set out to have happen, but then again, failure in these sorts of things comes mighty often. Beck sings on the Julian Casablancas cover, "4 Chords of the Apocalypse," "I'll take you shopping/I'll take you dancing too/I'll take you out/All the things you want to do/I'll give you diamonds and I'll give you space/So be with anyone you want/It's alright with me/Our time is over/Don't you know that if a time warp was open/I'd stay right in my place/The war is over." It's a song that may as well be hers, sliding in right next to all of her other stories of slammed fingers, stubbed toes, headaches, heartbreaks and wondering what anyone got out of all of that madness.