There are a lot of threes in rock and roll. There are lots of groovy three-piece bands, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. There are lots of wonderful triple albums, including the original Woodstock soundtrack, Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me, and Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. More recently, some artists such as Rosie Flores have begun streaming weekly three-song sets. Flores’s show is called “3s a Charm” and can be heard every Wednesday evening at 6:30 CDT.

The Bird and the Bee’s Inara George has gotten into the act recently. She’s released what she calls “a bundle of new songs” titled The Youth of Angst that consists of three separate tracks: “Sex in Cars”, “Brother”, and “1973”. George said of these songs, “I wanted to write from the perspective of my younger self, but also with the idea that I could never actually have that perspective again.” That’s a bit of a contradiction, but George finds the present situation a tough place from which to view the world with fresh imagination. She looks back as a way of seeing forward, albeit with a sense of worry.

After all, the trilogy is called The Youth of Angst and captures the anxiety of someone who knows where her life is headed and maybe doesn’t want to go there. For example, she penned “1973” for a friend who lost a child, and the song honors the dead son, his mother, and the relationship between George and her friend. There are coy references to taking acid and Ecstasy, shared secrets, and “things that can never be known” while a string section plays formally in the background. There is a sense of calm in the center of sorrow.