Iris Dement
Album: Sing The Delta
Label: Flariella
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.irisdement.com/

Right from the start of her career, on her debut album Infamous Angel, Iris has been examining and questioning her religious faith in songs that have been both uplifting and thought-provoking, rousing and contemplative, and her unique vocal style has been ideal to the task of conveying the tender, heartfelt vulnerability and the soulful exuberance of her songwriting. And Iris shows she's not content to "let the mystery be", so to speak, with this latest collection of original songs (strictly, her first of that kind since 1996's The Way I Should, with only the trip-down-back porch-memory-lane album Lifeline gracing the intervening decades).

Sing The Delta has the strongest flavor of church-gospel of any of her albums to date, due to the use of piano rather than guitar to underpin the songs, rather like the proverbial rock of ages one might say.

This works just fine, even if one of the most memorable tracks - at least, on first hearing - is the one which doesn't actually use the piano: the childhood reminiscence of The Night I Learned How Not To Pray. Iris's core dictum, learnt from her parents, that "music was something to lean on", is voiced stronger than ever on this new set of inspirational yet often provocative songs, and the sheer power of her conviction rewards the responsive listener richly. Maybe the horn-infused, bluesy title track feels a touch too extended, but elsewhere the economy of expression fits the potency and immediacy of the imagery and accentuates the quality of often desperate yearning that pervades the lyrics.

The disc's most stimulating moments come when Iris utilizes, or kinda subverts, gospel song gestures in order to convey her searching questioning of accepted tenets and explanations for the imponderable aspects of life. But the heart-rending honesty of those songs where Iris laces the gospel with nostalgia (If That Ain't Love, Mama Was Always Tellin' Her Truth and the Patsy-Cline-like Makin' My Way Back Home) harks back evocatively to earlier classics like Our Town, and the disc's closer Out Of The Fire brings together all the earlier threads of thought into one heartbreakingly sincere expression of spiritual healing.

Musically too, Sing The Delta is a strong set, co-produced by Iris herself with Bo Ramsay and Richard Bennett, making best capital out of Iris's voice and piano work while providing selective, thoughtful accompaniment from a support crew that includes Byron House, Al Perkins and Brad Pemberton. In the overall feel of the sessions, there may be occasional echoes of McGarrigles or Madman/Tumbleweed-era Elton John, but Iris ain't ready yet to burn down the mission! It's so good to have Iris back on the recording scene, and on such powerful form.

David Kidman