Reviews
Artist:Mary Gauthier
Album:Between Daylight And Dark
Label:Mercury
Tracks:12
Website:http://www.marygauthier.com/
Mary Gauthier has had an interesting life; she was an adopted child, a troubled teen, grappled with substance abuse and spent time in prison, was then a philosophy student, and later a restaurant owner. Now she writes and sings songs and has completely turned her life around. In fact she describes her own life as 'Jack Kerouac in reverse.' Which I find a fascinating analogy. Between Daylight and Dark is, amazingly, Mary Gauthier's (her name is pronounced 'Go-Shay') fifth album and the follow up to her 2005 breakthrough Mercy Now, which garnered high praise across the media - from music magazines to NPR radio with everything else in between. She was also named 2005 NEW/EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR by the Americana Music Association.
Between Daylight And Dark was cut live and produced by the legendary Joe Henry. The album features guest appearances by Van Dyke Parks (piano on "Can't Find The Way") and Loudon Wainwright (backing vocals on "Soft Place To Land" and "I Ain't Leaving"). The beauty of the fact that it was cut live, lies in the fact that it is immediately apparent that we hear is what happened in the moment of recording; nothing was added and nothing taken away. This adds a real honesty and depth to the music, which to my mind, is often lost when Cds become over-produced.
Mary Gauthier has often reminded me of another great songwriter and storyteller, Gretchen Peters, in that the greatest story songs, though often tragic, can be redemptive and healing to the listeners as they lose themselves within the narrative of the song. Whilst the listener may not directly relate to the sometimes = bizarre and regularly extreme situations in which the characters in Between Daylight and Dark exist, they can find a common ground amongst perhaps less extreme but equally common circumstances in their own life or the lives of those around them.. Everyone at some point in their lives encounters difficult situations and it is an unfortunate fact that some people experience far more than their fair share of heartache. Gauthier once said 'I like to write about epiphanies, that real human moment when you hit a fork in the road and you choose which way to go and everything is different.' There are several moments such as this on the album and the listener can easily be gently guided by the songs' messages, to their own epiphany, in whatever context it may occur.
Out of the sadness ensconced within the twelve tracks, hope begins to emerge for the listener, drop by drop, track by track, until it becomes clear that hope is the integral message of this recording. For example, Last of the Hobo Kings tells the story of the life of a man who was part of the train hopping sub-culture which no longer exists. Gauthier seems to suggest that the end of the Hobo era points to a greater loss of spirit and adventure in the USA. She hints that the wisdom that the hobo gained in his travels as he "knew how his nation was doing by the size of a sidewalk cigarette butt, which I find to be a truly fascinating point of reference, which actually compelled me to look up references to the lives of hobos in that era and led me to discover the famous hobo, Utah Philips. It took a couple of listens to get into this song but I think it is utlimately as insightful as it is compelling. Thanksgiving tells us a moving yet uplifting story of a grandmother taking her grandchild to see her father in prison for Thanksgiving. Again, we have all continued to love someone who at some point in our lives has disappointed and hurt us in some way. In I Ain't Leavin, the character who is the focus of the song decides to stay and fight for a relationship instead of repeating her usual pattern of running away from it when things got tough. If we haven't been there ourselves, we all know people who have had that moment after years of running, when they decide a relationship is worth fighting for; Broken on the inside is what I used to say. Then I'd pack my bags raise a white flag and drive away. I thought that's what made me strong, but I was young and I was wrong sums up that moment so eloquently in my opinion. She wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the album; the most striking co-write on the album being the less than pleasantly titled, Snakebit, written with the very talented Hayes Carll. It is a dark, but very intriguing, and wonderfully written track. There's the heart wrenching desperation of the love ballads "Please" and "Before You Leave" and her stirring lyrical portrait of the displacement and raw emotions which ensued of her fellow New Orleanians in Can't Find the Way, clearly a love song to her town in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This song is haunting in its ability to make you see the real effect on people of the aftermath and clearly came from a deep place for Gauthier.
Mary Gauthier has said that the best advice her mother ever gave her was 'Conceive it, believe it, achieve it.' I think that is great advice for us all to live by in following our dreams and with this latest release I most definitely think that Gauthier has taken on board her mother's advice, to achieve something truly wonderful which more than deserves to be heard by the masses and take her one step further in her musical journey.
Helen Mitchell