Graham Reid | | 2 min read
New Religion
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with full credits, lyrics and is "pressed on D2 Ultra Premium vinyl for superior audio quality". We'll confirm that.
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At 67 Mary Chapin Carpenter has long since moved beyond categories like folk and country to exist in place where only the great, genre-defying songwriters abide.
The album title here could not be more apt for a subtle but shining collection of songs which probe intelligently (the opener What Did You Miss looks metaphorically at the isolation and fears Covid brought), thoughts on friends who have passed (Paint + Turpentine an extraordinarily beautiful and personal tribute to the late Guy Clark) and The Night We Never Met just simply is a lovely song – a contemporary standard -- about missing opportunity and love: “Ancient history or mystery, I wish you had kissed me on the night that we never met.”
On Girl and her Dog she reflects on her life, starting with those expectations adults put on the young: “Everyone asks when you're growing up, who do you want to be? . . . I couldn't see myself as some future other”.
It also addresses a failed marriage and getting older. But concludes with grace and gratitude: “If the rain holds off we'll be in luck, but we're lucky anyway.”
This is music with sentiments understood best by adults who can feel the life in these refined lyrics and will let themselves by taken in by the warm arrangements for the small but superb band.
You'll look long and hard to find lyrics as movingly simple and insightful as these on New Religion: “All of the hard stuff, it toughened us up. Ever the artists, punks and rebels. We wore defeats like they were medals, back when we thought that time and love and hope were equal . . .”
It is a gorgeously understated song about someone – David Bowie could be a logical candidate – who has gone before: “You were star dust, now you're cosmic.”
Later on Coda she reminds us “we're all just cosmic dust from outer space and we'll be gone without a trace but in between we may divine, in the fullness of time . . .” And you should hear the next line for yourself.
There are deep but casually delivered insightful observations throughout this exceptional album (“learning to trust the wait for blessings in disguise” on Hello My Name Is) and a theme throughout is believe in yourself, live your own life and “don't forget, rock'n'roll, poetry and symphonies, the infinite number of infinities and the beauty in just about everything” in The Saving Things.
This is not just a beautiful album but one which lightly carries the weight of experience and burdens of disappointments in a long and well-lived life.
“We tilt towards the light,” she sings on Hello My Name Is, “like such natural optimists. But we also love the night and all it's shallow gifts. Maybe the hardest part of all the letting is the stock of all we'll never know . . . . . . time to check your bag where no baggage claim is . . .”
Hello My Name Is
Don't you wish you'd thought of such eloquent lines like that about dying?
Mary Chapin Carpenter did. Effortlessly.
Any reputable album of the year list will include this.
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You can hear this album at Spotify. It is available on vinyl and CD at Southbound Records here
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