I can't listen to this CD without thinking about Beavis & Butthead's teacher singing "Lesbian Seagull". It's just the sort of personal, emotional folk that makes high school metalheads (both real and fictional) cringe and groan. Several times during these seventeen songs I found myself doing the same. It's not that Barchas is a bad singer -- her voice is quite tuneful and pleasant. Nor is the music particularly poor -- it's just straightforward folk acoustic guitar strumming with occasional back-ups of strings, percussion, or winds. A bit more variety would have been nice, but Barchas is a competent six-string strummer and sometimes that's all you need. Two things make the disc hard to swallow. First, the lyrics are all basic repetitions of the same clichéd themes. In the liner notes, Barchas explains that "(t)he songs focus on the fragility of life, the complexity of life, the ephemeral aspects of time, and the need to...find meaning while we have life." Basically that's it. That one sentence says everything the entire CD has to say, in about one one-hundredth of the space. She deserves credit for attempting such grand themes, but unfortunately she doesn't come up with anything new to say about what are probably among the oldest subjects of literature and song. Lines like "Seasons of life, turning, turning, where will it go?" ("Seasons of Life") or admonishments to "make time for what feeds your soul" ("Make Time for Wildflowers") aren't exactly breaking new ground. Second, the delivery is too sweet, too coddling, too gentle. Barchas has recorded many albums for children, and it shows. Though this disc is aimed at an adult audience, she still sounds like a kindergarten teacher singing to a group of five-year olds. In fact, "Hey, World, I'm Me" could have come straight from Sesame Street -- and actually, if thought about in that way, is sort of cute as a children's song.

Some of these songs were written as long ago as 1979, but they sound like 1969. While we may admire the sincerity and the effort, most any adult born since then is unlikely to relate to the hopelessly outdated hippy pap Barchas offers here.