Anaïs Mitchell: Xoa

ANAÏS MITCHELL: XOA (2014)

1) Any Way The Wind Blows; 2) Out Of Pawn; 3) Your Fonder Heart; 4) Why We Build The Wall; 5) Now You Know; 6) If It's True; 7) Namesake; 8) Young Man In America; 9) Two Kids; 10) The Pursewarden Affair; 11) His Kiss, The Riot; 12) Come September; 13) You Are Forgiven; 14) Our Lady Of The Underground; 15) Cosmic American.

This is not much of an album, really: mostly re-recorded versions of songs from all across Mit­chell's back catalog, plus exactly three new tunes, none of them promising any new directions or revelations. Anaïs herself stated that this one was strictly for the fans, and this was confirmed by the limited status of the release — although these days such things get confusing, since in the digital / streaming age the line between «limited» and «full-scale» (or whatever) release is getting increasingly blurred. Good excuse for a husband-beater snapshot, though.

The new songs consist of good poetry and dull melodies: ʽThe Pursewarden Affairʼ must have been written specifically to get potential readers interested in the works of Laurence Durell, but even though I admit to having never read a single line from The Alexandria Quartet (I am not proud of this, but am not exactly losing sleep, either), this does not stop me from tipping my hat to lines like "Percy Pursewarden, open up your door / I haven't come to break your cadence or to mix your metaphor". And ʽAny Way The Wind Blowsʼ makes a nice addition to the list of songs by that name, from Zappa to J. J. Cale, being probably the first one to depict a chaotic-apocalyp­tic vision based on that idiom. However, neither of the two has the kind of impact that Mitchell's best musical stuff does, like ʽYoung Man In Americaʼ, which cuts deep and sharp even in this stripped-down variation.

And speaking of stripped down, I have no idea what exactly these new versions of ʽOut Of Pawnʼ or ʽNamesakeʼ bring to the table, but at least it makes sense that four of these re-recordings come from Hadestown, giving Anaïs a chance to present the songs according to her personal vision rather than in the context of a collectively engineered musical project. Personally, I'm all too happy to hear ʽIf It's Trueʼ without Justin Vernon, and I think that, although the rowdy ʽOur Lady Of The Undergroundʼ was done with more balls by Ani DiFranco (because, from a purely feminist standpoint, Ani DiFranco simply has more balls than Anaïs Mitchell, for better or for worse, you decide), anyway, I am partial to this subtler, more vulnerable version. On the other hand, ʽWhy We Build The Wallʼ, with Greg Brown's «earthwall» voice, certainly worked better on the original version — although I understand the desire to reiterate how much the message of the song actually means to the songwriter in person.

In terms of rarities, there's ʽCome Septemberʼ, a track originally released on the 2008 EP Country, a collaboration between Mitchell and fellow folk-writer Rachel Ries: pleasantly moody and melancholic as usual, but nothing to make me rush out and hunt for that lost EP. And in general, Xoa produces a strange impression: it has all the makings of an «unplugged» album — mostly just Anaïs and her acoustic guitar, playing fresh and depply personal variations — but considering that Anaïs Mitchell has almost always been an «unplugged» artist, it would make more sense if she played them all as polkas, or at least as Nickelback tributes or something. And she is not even all that old now, to get proper justification for looking back over her shoulder on the confessions of her youth and replaying them as per the wisdom accumulated in those grey hairs and facial wrinkles. In other words, you have to really be a fan to thank her for this, instead of harboring the nasty suspicion that, perhaps, she simply stumbled upon writer's block... which, by the way, seems to be ongoing at the time that I am writing this: 2016-2017 saw her get all too busy with the production of Hadestown as an off-Broadway musical, and altogether we have not heard a proper new Anaïs Mitchell album since Young Man In America. Then again, there's so many people in the world who do release new music even though they are suffering from even worse attacks of writer's block that the decision to release a bunch of re-recordings might count as a noble example of artistic honesty these days.

Anaïs Mitchell: Child Ballads

ANAÏS MITCHELL: CHILD BALLADS (2013)

1) Willie Of Winsbury; 2) Willie's Lady; 3) Sir Patrick Spens; 4) Riddles Wisely Expounded; 5) Clyde Waters; 6) Geordie; 7) Tam Lin.

If you have read enough — any, in fact — of my writing, you probably know that I'm all for let's-go-living-in-the-past; and while folklore is never my primary specialty, the preservation and re-transmission of it throughout the centuries is a noble and necessary affair, as needs to be repeated from time to time despite the glaring banality of the statement. From this point of view, the col­laboration between Mitchell and fellow folk musician Jefferson Hamer, resulting in their own arrangements of seven traditional ballads from Francis James Child's collection, is based on good intentions and should earn them some accolades.

However, I am just as keen on the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" principle, and hold a deep respect for Occam's razor. As we now live in the digital era, where sounds recorded in the past can be preserved, copied, and re-transmitted without loss of quality for a literally indefinite period of time, the question arises — how many different recordings of the same material, or even of the same type of material, do we really need to preserve? My understanding is that the time for «aca­demic» coverage of folk standards has long passed — from the early days of Alan Lomax to the heyday of Greenwich Village to the folk-rock and «folk-prog» adventures of the 1970s, all of this Anglo-Saxon stuff has been done to death, and the only reason for doing it again (unless you are doing this live, in front of a spontaneity-fed audience) is if you are capable of putting your own twist on it, preferably such a twist as would make specific sense for the here and now.

And this, unfortunately, is precisely what this collaboration lacks. Mitchell and Hamer form a nice duet, playing well-paired acoustic guitars and singing in pleasant male-female harmony. But there is nothing exceptional about that acoustic playing (a few complex flourishes aside, this is all pretty much straightforward and by-the-book); nothing exceptional about Hamer's blue-eyed gentle vocal delivery; and now that we have grown used to Mitchell's «raspy child» vocal style, nothing too exceptional about her own singing as well. They do a good job, for sure — the atmos­phere is consistently tasteful and pleasant, both musicians clearly like the material and try to make it soulful — but the sad truth is, hundreds of people did it before them, and I cannot for the life of me figure out which particular freshness these guys bring to the table, or what could make these versions of the ballads preferable to, say, Joan Baez or Sandy Denny. (Naturally, neither Joan nor Sanny may have covered precisely these particular ballads — but they certainly covered plenty of those that had the same melodies).

Of course, I might just be voicing unreasonable dissent here. "They (the ballads) have seldom sounded as fresh as this", argues Nick Coleman of The Indepen­dent in his four-sentence «review» of the album, adding that "the playing is exquisite, the singing vibrant, the arrangements like jewellery". But on what celebrated folk album has the playing not been described as «exquisite» and the singing as «vibrant»? I am not looking for «vibrancy», I am looking for an individual artistic touch, and I am not finding it here. As long as Anaïs is writing her own songs, she is at least trying to reinvent folk music for the 21st century; as a supplier of covers, she shows not a shred of ability to adapt them to a new musical age. It may not be her fault, since there are few signs that we are living in a new musical age anyway; but she could have at least adapted them to her own personality, and records like this are dangerous, because they are close to showing that, who knows, perhaps she does not have any personality? No, that would be too harsh; but she clearly has no business messing around with such ancient material. Throw in the excessive length and (sometimes) excruciating slowness of the deliveries, and there you go — a thumbs down in the works.

Anaïs Mitchell: Young Man In America

ANAÏS MITCHELL: YOUNG MAN IN AMERICA (2012)

1) Wilderland; 2) Young Man In America; 3) Coming Down; 4) Dyin Day; 5) Venus; 6) He Did; 7) Annmarie; 8) Tailor; 9) Shepherd; 10) You Are Forgiven; 11) Ships.

It was clearly a tough affair for Mitchell to follow up Hadestown with anything of comparable status: on one hand, you don't really want to go down in history as a writer of folk musicals, but on the other hand, how can you just go back to an acoustic guitar after having just achieved such a major breakthrough? Keeping in mind both that dilemma and the fact that flashiness and nota­bility are never a trademark of her songwriting, Young Man In America does a fairly good job of getting her out of this situation. Without sacrificing a certain aura of grandness and importance that she'd struck out of Hadestown, she goes back to solo performance centered around contem­porary, rather than ancient, mythology and culture, and gives us a cold and bitter look at the state of affairs in this world rather than the next one, maybe from a semi-detached perspective of the ghost of Eurydice, I don't really know — the important thing is that now she has enough self-confidence to make major statements from the top of a fairly tall tower.

The very first track is far from consoling: a minimalistic, dirge-like performance of gloomy, stuttering acoustic chords, scraping, muted strings, and howling vocal harmonies — in this case, perfectly suited to the lyrics about howling winds, howling wolves, and lost children singing ooh-ooh in the wilderlands. That, my friends, is the state of things: maybe, living in America in 2012, you have failed to notice that "your cities are a wilderland", but Anaïs Mitchell is here to remind you, and if the first time does not succeed, then the title track will pick up precisely from where ʽWilder­landʼ leaves off, informing you that the correct definition for a "young man in America" is "hungry, hungry, running every which way". It is a pretty good track, too, with moments of climactic emotional outbursts (every time Mitchell drives the chorus home) and moments of static, draggy gloom, epitomized by the narcoleptic brass solos at the end (I think, once again, that she inherited this somnambulant jazz pattern from Ani DiFranco, but she can be much better at it than Ani DiFranco — though not always). Thus, eight minutes into the album the sun will have no business shining into your room, and the three years of Barack Obama's presidency so far will seem petty and insignificant compared to the apocalyptic dog-eat-dog picture painted by the all-seeing wife of Orpheus.

This is Mitchell's Dust Bowl Ballads here, an album far more musically and lyrically advanced than Woody Guthrie's — but also, perhaps, taking this misery thing a bit too far; after all, the depression of 2008 was nowhere near comparable in horror to the Great Depression, and for all the ongoing troubles of the human society in the USA as of 2012, I have a touch of difficulty feeling convinced by Mitchell's attempt to squeeze all that moroseness out of herself. Fortunately, the remainder of the album is either more subtle or less expressly tied to the current times — or to America, for that matter (ʽDyin' Dayʼ, I think, with its clever twist on the sacrifice of Isaac, once again refers to the situation in Palestine). But on the other hand, the remainder of the album is also not nearly as vivid — sooner or later, Mitchell is bound to get bogged down a bit in pure atmosphere, and as far as I'm concerned, it already happens on the third track, ʽComing Downʼ, which is just a sleep-inducing adult contemporary throwaway piece (soft piano, soft acoustic guitars, soft vocals, wake me up when it's over).

Still, the lyrics are consistently good, and every now and then, the album still gathers enough potential to awaken the listener — as it does on the upbeat folk-pop ditty ʽVenusʼ, or on the gorgeous «traditional» folk ballad ʽShepherdʼ (although, re-reading its lyrics, I still can't quite understand the moral of the story — is it deploring the poor state of mother-and-child care condi­tions in rural vicinities?). And she also manages to top it off in fine fashion with ʽShipsʼ, a slow, purely romantic ballad about a girl seeing her lover off to sea, replete with a post-rock crescendo that finally puts all that brass to good use.

On the whole, the record definitely deserves a thumbs up for the effort, but it is patchy, and if you only know Mitchell through Hadestown, it can be quite a letdown because it does not even come close to the inventiveness of the lady's masterpiece. The worst thing, really, is that it fails where Hadestown succeeded: putting ancient mythology in a modern setting, apparently, was a far more believable deed than putting a modern setting in not-so-ancient culture. If you are happy about your life, Young Man In America might irritate you rather than depress you; if you are already unhappy about your life, I just do not see it as an adequate soundtrack to that unhappiness. The best way to enjoy it, I think, is to take it completely out of context.

Anaïs Mitchell: Hadestown

ANAÏS MITCHELL: HADESTOWN (2010)

1) Wedding Song; 2) Epic (Part 1): 3) Way Down Hadestown; 4) Songbird (intro); 5) Hey, Little Songbird; 6) Gone, I'm Gone; 7) When The Chips Are Down; 8) Wait For Me; 9) Why We Build The Wall; 10) Our Lady Of The Underground; 11) Flowers; 12) Nothing Changes; 13) If It's True; 14) Papers (Hades Finds Out); 15) How Long; 16) Epic (Part 2); 17) Lover's Desire; 18) His Kiss, The Riot; 19) Doubt Comes In; 20) I Raise My Cup To Him.

When the thousands of modern artists are replaced by tens of thousands of the artists of tomorrow, and when cultural memory becomes but a feeble phantom next to digital memory, Hadestown, I hope and believe, will still be the album that Anaïs Mitchell is going to be remembered by. Not because it is necessarily the best thing she did, but simply because this is where she showed the bravery to step out of a certain predictable comfort zone — trying to make an arrogant mark on the world that was all her own.

Hadestown is a «folk opera» that builds upon the premise found in ʽHades & Persephoneʼ, a song from The Brightness where Mitchell came up with an imaginary dialog between the two characters, and sang both of their parts. Apparently, the track was an excerpt from the already existing first draft of the entire cycle, but this now is the final draft, a complete musical version of the Orpheus myth, this time inviting plenty of guest stars to take up all the parts. The musical arrangements would be the most complex in her career so far, yet the music itself would strictly follow «pre-rock» patterns: some folk, some country, some blues, some vaudeville, and almost nothing that could have it labeled as either a «rock opera» or a «musical». I would not dare say that she was the first to come up with such an idea — though nobody else springs to mind at the moment — but what with the chosen theme, and the peculiar guest assembly, and the stylistic diversity, and elements of her own personality, Hadestown is definitely a 2010 record like no other 2010 record, and 2010 has seen plenty of records.

But bad news first: as brilliant as the idea might sound on paper, I would not say that it has been perfectly realized in the studio. The biggest flaw are the guest vocalists, who mostly just suck at their roles. Mitchell herself plays the role of Eurydice, which inevitably means that she does not get to sing a lot (what with being either dead or undead, but wordless most of the time). Else­where, what we get is:

(a) Bon Iver's Justin Vernon as Orpheus — I have no doubt that the guy thought himself capable of getting into such a natural (for him) character, but he has as much personality as a bowl of farina, and if I were Hades and he came knocking at my door, I'd feed him to Cerberus with a relieved sense of 10,000-year satisfaction;

(b) Ani DiFranco as Persephone — look, I respect Ani DiFranco and I understand that, her being the boss of Mitchell's record label and all, Anaïs felt obliged to get her a spot and all, but her raunchy-flapper delivery on ʽOur Lady Of The Undergroundʼ is cringeworthy; and she murders (in the bad sense of the word) the old ʽHades & Persephoneʼ, here retitled ʽHow Longʼ — just put on the original version and compare Mitchell's desperate "how long, how long, how long?" with Ani's muffled and confused verse conclusions. She simply does not fit this concept, period;

(c) Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem as Hermes — his moment of glory is on the opening verse of the rowdy drinking song ʽWay Down Hadestownʼ, but, unfortunately, he only manages to come off as a very second-rate Tom Waits. What, was the budget too low to get the real thing? I'm sure Tom wouldn't particularly object to taking part in this, particularly since this kind of pro­ject is right up Kathleen Brennan's alley;

(d) Greg Brown, an Iowan folkie, as Hades — his croaky bass voice is the only one that I have no problems with, but since the idea here is to complain about all of them, I will play up the racial card and ask the naturally pending question: how come they did not invite some grizzled old black bluesman to sing this part? Okay, so John Lee Hooker was already dead by then, but surely there must have been others available. This part is just screaming from some African-American presence — no offence to Greg, who is actually one of the coolest guys on the invitee list.

All these miscastings are bothersome, yet they do not take away from the sheer delight of the story. Individually, each piece is not exactly a revelation, but as they come together and you begin associating the various musical styles with parts of the Orphean myth, we suddenly have a completely new way of looking at the classical Greek tradition — through the prism of 20th century folk culture (rather than rock culture or avantgarde). Thus, ʽWay Down Hadestownʼ becomes the wobbly path of drunken sailors, with gang choruses, banjos, and accordeons; Hades himself, as pictured in ʽHey, Little Songbirdʼ, is associated with a down-on-his-luck salt-of-the-earth person, stuck in some Louisiana shithole or other; The Fates, played by The Haden Triplets, apparently spin their web from some rundown casino in a shady part of town (ʽWhen The Chips Are Downʼ, spicing things up with its lively Cuban rhythms); ʽWhy We Build The Wallʼ, a song whose relevance has seemingly increased in the Trump era, is a clever attempt at inserting a bit of contemporary political significance — and by now, I suppose, we have all guessed that «Hades­town» and «The Underground» are the United States of America, and Orpheus is a poor Latin immigrant trying to sneak in after his US-born wife... oh, well, that is probably carrying the alle­gory too far. Anyway, the idea of Hades and Cerberus chanting "we build the wall to keep us free" in unison is quite a fresh take on the Greek views on life after death.

The music that accompanies the ideas, as I already said, is not exceptional, but is suitably ambi­tious. Sparse arrangements are rare: more frequently, we have use of strings over acoustic guitars and/or pianos, giving the whole thing a «chamber folk» feel; there are also more experimental bits of music-making, usually in the form of instrumental links (ʽPapersʼ, for instance, is a bass-driven jazzy interlude with dissonant brass and strings and even a brief drum solo; ʽLover's De­sireʼ is one half neo-country and one half French street music), but I suppose that, like most operas, this one, too, is going to be remembered not so much by the stand-alone quality of its instrumental melodies as by how much they reinforce and complete the vocal parts. In this re­spect, the musical score is a total success, and, frankly, none of her previous records suggested that she could pull off something this big.

In all honesty, the work deserves not just a thumbs up, but a far more detailed critical description (which is more than I can say about plenty of other equally pretentious, but not equally self-adequate conceptual pieces); for now, I will simply conclude by saying that, as someone with an old passion for Greek mytho­logy and a big love for creative tinkering with traditional folks of American music, I thoroughly endorse Hadestown — at least as a stimulating symbolist piece, even if nothing here makes me shed bitter tears for the fate of Orpheus. (I mean, getting Justin Vernon, of all people, to make me feel for Orpheus? He's got about as many chances at this as Happy Frog).

Anaïs Mitchell: The Brightness

ANAÏS MITCHELL: THE BRIGHTNESS (2007)

1) Your Fonder Heart; 2) Of A Friday Night; 3) Namesake; 4) Shenandoah; 5) Changer; 6) Song Of The Magi; 7) Santa Fe Dream; 8) Hobo's Lullaby; 9) Old Fashioned Hat; 10) Hades & Persephone; 11) Out Of Pawn.

Perhaps Hymns For The Exiled did not qualify as a neo-folk masterpiece, but its open outrage at the contemporary state of affairs in the artist's home country did attract the attention of Ani Di­Franco, one of the toughest human right warriors alive in the female domain, and this not only got Mitchell on Ani's Righteous Babe Records, but also helped her get some much-needed promotion: from this point on, critical reviews of her albums gradually become more numerous, and since her kind of art is particularly attractive to critics (unusual voice + intelligent lyrics + acoustic guitars = near-instant win), this means that somewhere in between 2004 and 2007, and particularly with the release of her first album on RBR, Anaïs Mitchell became a local celebrity.

Nevertheless, The Brightness is still a very low-key affair. Acoustic guitar, piano, and some violas and cellos from time to time is all you hear; and furthermore, ironically, The Brightness is much, much less politically charged than its predecessor. Much of it is about Mitchell herself, and some of it is just a series of musical-lyrical vignettes that may be interpreted any way you like. If we are to describe her current sound in «synthetic» terms, it would probably be a combination of Woody Guthrie / early Dylan (in terms of her melodic content; see especially ʽHobo's Lullabyʼ, or that last song which begins with a direct quotation from Bob's ʽSong To Woodyʼ), Leonard Cohen (in terms of her attempting to convey some moral or some mystery by means of some unexpected lyrical parable), and, well, the usual Bush/Amos/Newsom conglomerate — in terms of her being a woman who sings in a strange voice, the «innocent girl soul stuck in an experi­enced woman body».

Not that it hadn't been that way before, but it seems as if The Brightness is her first album on which the style has matured, consolidated, and even fossilized. She is not straining too hard to make a social statement, but neither does she look like a person desperately searching for some­thing. Most of the songs either give advice ("come out, come on, come outside" — the first line of the opening song) or make observations, and a few songs lightly wax nostalgic over the good old days (ʽOf A Friday Nightʼ). There is very little to get irritated about, and even less to get ex­cited about; the question is one of possibly acknowledging and enjoying the record's small and subtle charms, or ignoring and rejecting them altogether.

I will mention a few examples whose subtlety I personally found quite pleasant. ʽOf A Friday Nightʼ (I can very easily picture this one as sung by Joni Mitchell and placed somewhere at the beginning of Blue or her other pre-jazz period records) harbors a cool poetic idea and expresses it with gusto — the climactic end of the song is basically a hopeless plea for the nameless "old poet" to come back so that the protagonist could take on the shapes of all his former objects of description and inspiration ("I'll be a good time gambler, I'll be a restless wife..."); if we take this analysis very very far, we might end up stating that ʽOf A Friday Nightʼ is nothing less than a curtain call on Old World Artistry (but we will not take it that far).

Another definite highlight is ʽHades & Persephoneʼ (apparently, Mitchell thought so herself, or else she wouldn't base her entire next record around it): she uses the Orpheus myth here as a pre­text for having the two protagonists of the song discuss the meaning of life (one of the conclu­sions they reach is that "the earth is a bird on a spit in the sky"; be warned that this is about as deep as Mitchell's philosophy goes, but then, she is really an artist, not a philosopher, so perhaps it'll do), and there is something nasty, urgent, and disturbing in each of her "how long, how long, how long?"'s that Hades and Persephone trade between each other.

Human right activists will gladly welcome ʽSong Of The Magiʼ, which begins innocently enough as a sad folk retelling of the Bethlehem story, but then, as a morose cello joins the acoustic guitar, suddenly makes a transition to the current state of Israel ("a child is born in Bethlehem... born in a cattle pen... born on the killing floor... waiting for the war... your home is a checkpoint now", etc. etc.). The smooth linkage of Christmas joys with Near Eastern agony is an idea that might work well on paper; unfortunately, sound-wise the song is way too toothless to make much of an im­pression, and I wouldn't probably even have mentioned it if I did not look closely at the printed lyrics at one point.

And that is the continuing trouble: most of these songs are still more interesting for their words than for their melodies. From that point of view, the smooth alliance between Mitchell and Ani DiFranco, one of the world's most ardent warriors but also most mediocre songwriters, is troub­ling: something like ʽNamesakeʼ, with its addition of lite jazz brass, sounds almost exactly like Ani's band at one of their less inspired sessions (and most of her band's sessions sound pretty uninspired to me). Also troubling are such discoveries as the main acoustic melody of ʽSanta Fe Dreamʼ, doubled by the vocals, essentially being a slight variation on Pink Floyd's ʽWish You Were Hereʼ — which is probably why the song made me pay attention, yet never really lived up to that opening flourish of "if it should happen...".

I guess, in the end, the main shortcoming of The Brightness, which it admittedly shares with hundreds of other decent-but-mediocre albums, is that it sounds too intellectualized to elicit some sharp emotional response, but not enough intellectualized to reveal any startling surprises or make you reconsider some of life's truths and lies. But if you set your expectations to nil, then The Brightness will just be a cool old statement of happiness and sorrow from the bright young girl next door. Like, at the end she will give her humble regards to post-Katrina New Orleans, which is just... nice. Even if she has to borrow a bit from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to do it, for no apparent reason. Then again, maybe it is precisely the things that she does for no apparent reason that make this record more tolerable and appreciable than it could be otherwise.

Anaïs Mitchell: Hymns For The Exiled

ANAÏS MITCHELL: HYMNS FOR THE EXILED (2004)

1) Before The Eyes Of Storytelling Girls; 2) 1984; 3) Cosmic American; 4) The Belly And The Beast; 5) Orion; 6) Mockingbird; 7) I Wear Your Dress; 8) Quecreek Flood; 9) A Hymn For The Exiled; 10) Two Kids; 11) One Good Thing.

By the very first line of this album ("I could tell you stories like the government tells lies" — kind of an OUCH! here, right?), you can tell that things are going to get even more serious than they were on the day that Rome fell. Although, form-wise, not a lot has happened, and what we hear is still mostly just the voice and the acoustic guitar, Mitchell has begun to move closer to a true «song» format instead of that of a musically accompanied poetic rant; and her lyrical themes have now expanded far beyond the «brainy young girl in a man's, man's, man's world» subject, even if that subject itself can never lose its relevancy. In terms of arrangements, she occasionally throws on an extra violin or viola line (courtesy of Caleb Elder), or adds a second guitar or bass (courtesy of her producer Michael Chorney), but there is still a distinct «alone in the bedroom» feel to most of the songs, although only one of them, the album closing pessimistic lament ʽOne Good Thingʼ, has been truly produced lo-fi bedroom style, as one final homage to her indie brothers and sisters, or, perhaps, to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

The album was released on the small American label of Waterbug Records which, according to the blurb on its website, positions itself as "an innovative, ear-to-the-ground artists' cooperative label specializing in great songwriters and traditional folk musicians who do original research"; except for Mitchell, I confess to never having heard of even one other artist from that label, but then, they couldn't very well advertise themselves as a label "specializing in mediocre song­writers and traditional folk musicians who pretend to do original research", right? Anyway, I would not truly call Mitchell a "great songwriter" (and she is most definitely not a traditional folk musician, either), based exclusively on Hymns For The Exiled. But at least by that time she was seriously trying to become a good songwriter, and she almost succeeded at that.

Almost, because only a superhero can write acoustic folk-based songs in the 21st century that would not sound, at best, like pleasant variations on well-trodden paths. Even if I cannot name them precisely, I am pretty sure that I have heard all of her chord sequences before — from Joni Mitchell to Clannad to, oh, I dunno, Loreena McKennitt, it's all been done, there's absolutely nothing to discuss. And although she was influenced enough by Leonard Cohen to namedrop him expressly on the previous record, she cannot, or does not wish to follow Cohen's sly routine of dropping a melodic earworm in each of his choruses, so that the lyrical wisdom of his verses gets dragged into your head on the alluring wings of the refrain. Still worse, she does not quite have the voice to impart that wisdom — the Joanna Newsom-lite pitch is good enough to show her as an actual human (rather than Newsom's pixie-brat act), but not good enough to woo me into awed submission, no matter how sharp the words are.

And the words are getting sharper as the lady gets political: ʽ1984ʼ is self-evident, and a good chunk of the other songs mentions the Iraq War directly or hints at it without much concealment (for instance, there is a bit of Arabic poetry, with fairly bad pronunciation but plenty of exube­rance, recited in the middle of ʽTwo Kidsʼ). But, truth be told, this is far from the worst batch of anti-war poetry ever written — ʽBefore The Eyes Of Storytelling Girlsʼ, drawing on Mitchell's own experience of living in the Middle East, is a skilled indictment of ignorance and deception that goes beyond the usual clichés, and I only wish the song made more of an impression on me through means other than just words. "Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1984" is a good find, too. Oh, and the Iraq War is not the only thing on her mind — we also care about the ecology and the workers' rights (ʽQuecreek Floodʼ, about a mining incident in 2002), about our own artistic freedom (ʽMockingbirdʼ), and about nameless dead drummers (ʽOrionʼ — I do not know about any actual drummers from Austin found dead in their apartments, and neither do you, probably, but here's to all the dead drummers out there; also, since she does namedrop both Gram Parsons and Buddy Holly, this is a sort of an "only the good die young" statement here, really).

It's all nice, and moderately touching, but I will not join in the choir of excited reviews: this is an intelligent artistic statement, but not a magical one. It is a good thing that Anaïs kept on develo­ping, because settling into this formula — a perfectly easy thing to do, especially when you get lightly patted on the shoulder by critics — would simply result in a series of progressively more bland neo-folk records with Important Progressive Messages. It gets better, though.

Anaïs Mitchell: The Song They Sang... When Rome Fell

ANAÏS MITCHELL: THE SONG THEY SANG... WHEN ROME FELL (2002)

1) The Calling; 2) Parking Lot Nudie Bar; 3) Make It Up; 4) Hymn For The Exiled; 5) Work Makes Free; 6) Deliberately; 7) The Routine; 8) Orleanna; 9) The Song They Sang When Rome Fell; 10) Hold This.

Although there is no record label or formal distribution process associated with Anaïs Mitchell's first song cycle, and although one of its tracks later turned into the title track for a properly dis­tributed album, The Song They Sang still counts as her first LP in all known discographies. It was recorded, allegedly, in a single afternoon somewhere in Austin, Texas, but I suppose a pro­fessional studio was still involved, because the sound quality is impeccable — Mitchell's acoustic guitar and voice are captured with all the overtones intact and no whistles, car motors, or barking dogs outside the bedroom window. More importantly, despite the sparse production, it does not have the feel of a raw collection of demos — it is a fairly mature artistic statement for a 21-year old that she'd have no reason to feel ashamed of even ten years later, when Hadestown put her on the map properly.

Not that the 21-year old is writing songs that would make anybody stop dead in their tracks and wonder if it truly runs in the family... because she must be Joni's daughter, right? (Spoiler: if she really were, she'd probably get famous far earlier than Hadestown). At this point, at least, her songs are more like tasteful guitar accompaniments for her poetry, although she certainly knows far more than three chords, drawing inspiration from folk, country, and light jazz wherever pos­sible. She is not even completely above the old art of the verse/chorus structure; however, this is still lightly sung poetry, and has to be taken as such, or else you will simply get frustrated looking for hooks that aren't even supposed to be there.

Most of that poetry is about relationships, and, fortunately, not so much about break-ups (the usual favorite topic for singer-songwriters of both sexes) as about subtler aspects: one of the key tracks (at least, in terms of lyrics) is ʽThe Routineʼ, where she complains about the inevitable wearing-down of romantic life: "And I’m praying to the ceiling up above your head / Not to let our love turn into this routine". Much of the album gives the same feeling — either complaining about the boring aspects of life, or trying to find its meaning in little things and small actions, like "dance to Leonard Cohen in the kitchen" (not such a bad idea). An occasional statement of per­sonal creed can also be found, such as "But what if when we’re born / They lock the gate and toss the key / Behind the sign that says / Work Makes Free / And all I can say / Is that I pray that is not me" (if you are 21 and you hate work, especially «for The Man», you will certainly empathize here); and towards the end of the album, she begins to briefly peek outside her own psyche, with a not half-bad verbal portrait of the prisoner of the house of the rising sun (ʽOrleannaʼ) and at least one big socio-political statement (the title track that seems to profess the coming apocalypse for American civilization, possibly written in the wake of 9/11 or something).

Arguably, her most attractive quality at this point is her voice, which she is not afraid of demon­strating naked and strong at the beginning of the opening track ("I am calling you out", sung in the manner of a gospel belter, though with considerably less strength than your average gospel belter). She has a decent range, resorting to falsetto when necessary, but she never goes for any artificial affectations of the Kate Bush / Tori Amos / Joanna Newsom varieties, which naturally makes it less distinct, but also less prone to becoming annoying over time; nor does she try to generate any excessive tenderness, melancholy, anger, or guru-like psychological depth (the latter quality being such a nasty turn-off for so many indie artists who like to rent out their stuff to so many indie movie soundtracks). Thus, even when she delivers a conclusive chorus that goes "The hardest is happening right this minute / When we're trying to just be where we are and / Be here together", she does not sing it with the air of delivering some monumental truth or discovery, she just tells it like it is, and that is kind of... seductive.

Still, to be fair, there is not that much going on at this point. As a quickly tossed-off collection of well-recited expressionist poetry, The Song They Sang is not bad; as an introduction to Anaïs Mitchell, the intellectual-sentimental human being, it's pretty good; as an album of memorable musical moments, it is practically non-existent, so I cannot honestly recommend it to anybody who is used to rating singer-songwriters based on something above pure charisma and verbal skills. That said, I cannot thumb-down it, either, because none of these songs stir up any actively negative reactions — and that is already a big plus for a record such as this, where the ego of the performer is breathing directly down your neck, and more often than not, has a pretty foul and suffocating stench around it. Mitchell's ego is on a nice diet in comparison.