Divided House - Political Thriller Novel by George Washington | Perfect for Book Clubs, Political Enthusiasts & History Lovers

Review Mark Edwards's work as My Dad Is Dead has often been mired in his own personal failings: his songs were confessional to a fault, not much different from the scores of heart-on-sleeve singer/songwriters who followed in his wake. 2002's Engine Of Commerce, the first completely solo record in Edwards's 20-year career, aimed his painfully clear introspection at current events. On A Divided House, he trades his band's namesake depression for a more positive personal outlook. He is once again joined by longtime collaborators Scott Pickering and Chris Burgess (who form the rhythm section for Cleveland's Prisonshake), Scott Lasch and Tim Gilbride, and with their help he has crafted a record that's at once introspective and extroverted -- a midpoint between broken-voiced crooning and chest-thumping theatrics. As late 1980s critics' darlings with a pair of releases on Homestead (1988's Let's Skip The Details and 1989's The Taller You Are, The Shorter You Get), My Dad Is Dead laid the groundwork for both the obliquely personal style of bands like Pavement and Built To Spill and the open-book lyrics favored by songwriters like Elliott Smith and Conor Oberst. Opener Unmade is a superior take on both sides: the brooding, guitar-driven tune features Edwards's trademark whiskey-stained vocals, with lyrics like Have I ever mentioned just how much that I need you? / Do you even feel like it's enough that I need you? demons are successfully vanquished in The Ladder, a jaunty, bouncy tune with a driving beat that clearly documents the mutual reliance lovers build in a successful relationship: You are the ladder to reach my potential / I am going nowhere without you / In this world we're all so defenseless / I only feel strong when I'm with you Both;My Safe Place and Oasis recognize a strong relationship or home as a place to take refuge: Our home is an oasis in love. A Divided House isn't always so glaringly personal: it closes with a trio of songs that focus Edwards's sharp commentary on larger issues. Down Is Up's critique of recent American foreign policy frames the debate as open- versus closed-minded: We're drunk on animosity pretending that we know that we are okay / See the world in black and white for simple minds are always in the right mind. Likewise, Consequences channeling of short-sighted decision-makers results in the responsibility-dodgers' wish for a consequence-free world. The closing title track is a scorching indictment of what Edwards sees as a continuing downward spiral during the dictatorial Bush administration: We didn't hire you to mess up our society / We don't care about appearances of piety / Your religious is the practice of deception / Worship manipulation of perception. Over the course of A Divided House, My Dad Is Dead prove their ability and willingness to tackle difficult topics. Anyone can sing about heartbreak, but how many songwriters are successful at outlining the trials, tribulations and joys of relationships that don't end in disaster? The underground is full of angry, politicized men singing hateful screeds against the government, but how many are as nuanced and subtle -- not to mention downright artful -- as Edwards's work? Life is precious to me now / More than it's ever been he sings unashamedly on The Well and it's difficult not to believe him. --Splendid E-ZineA house divided against itself cannot stand, Abraham Lincoln famously declared in 1858, and My Dad Is Dead's new album shows how relevant the comment remains today. After twenty years spent in the margins of indie rock and with a dwindling fanbase that frontman (and only permanent member) Mark Edwards estimates on his blog as a few hundred; it's remarkable that My Dad Is Dead is still alive. But A Divided House makes one appreciate the band's perseverance, taking its central conceit and slowly developing it from the personal to the political. The house at the start of the album is a literal one, serving as the site of personal divisions. This house is a sanctuary/An oasis in an angry world; Edwards sings on Oasis after exploring the ambivalence of a relationship seemingly based mostly on mutual need for refuge from that angry world on early tracks like The Ladder My Safe Place and Novocain. But around the two-thirds point, the album's house begins to sit in for the nation. ;If the song is patriotic/ it drowns out all the bleeding; Edwards sings through gritted teeth on ;Down Is Up showing how willing the occupants of his house are to avoid the harsh realities of their world. By the closing title track, personal tribulations have given way entirely to politics, and Lincoln's slave state/free state division has morphed into our current red/blue dichotomy, as Edwards delivers a blistering condemnation of sanctimonious conservatives who use Orwellian tactics to further divide an already embittered American house. Between vitriolic verses he offers an effectively plaintive chorus of can't we stop acting like kids fighting all the time? A Divided House ends things on a powerful note, but if the album has one significant flaw, it's length. The opening tracks each deliver memorable hooks, but after a while things begin to sound somewhat the same. Partly this reflects the limitations of My Dad Is Dead's genre, which Lou Barlow once aptly described as a new generation of electric white boy blues coming at the forefront of such hyper-literate indie rock bands as Nothing Painted Blue and New Radiant Storm King, My Dad Is Dead helped forge the sound of the early-1990s college band: trebly guitars whose solos warble more than they scorch, mid-fi recording, and flat vocals often too busy enunciating polysyllabic lyrics to focus on melody (it takes only two tracks for Edwards to drop a lyrical reference to synaesthesia). The sound has its charm, but it also has its limitations. On A Divided House, My Dad Is Dead makes the most of those limitations to create an album that sounds like 1992 all over again-and which suggests that, given the state of things (the album's artwork includes shots of Cleveland's inner-city urban decay to remind us what divided houses end up looking like), 1992 might not be a bad place at all. -Whit Strub --Hybrid Magazine