MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER : THE DIRT AND THE STARS

MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER : THE DIRT AND THE STARS

Farther Along And Further In
It's Okay To Be Sad
All Broken Hearts Break Differently
Old D-35
American Stooge
Where The Beauty Is
Nocturne
Secret Keepers
Asking For A Friend
Everybody's Got Something
Between The Dirt And The Stars

Label : Lambent Light Records

Release Date : August 7, 2020

Length : 58:25

Review (AllMusic) : One of Mary Chapin Carpenter's most impressive traits as a songwriter is her ability to avoid cheap sentimentality and instead offer true emotional complexity. The Dirt and the Stars is her second project with producer Ethan Johns, who previously helmed the sessions for 2018's Sometimes Just the Sky. These 11 songs were written in her secluded Virginia farmhouse, though she, her band, and Johns all traveled to Bath, England, and Peter Gabriel's Real World Studio to cut them live from the floor. The organic sound is warm, immediate, and inviting. Through headphones, one feels a part of the proceedings. "Farther Along and Further In," is the perfect set opener. A jangly folk-rocker, it reflects on the existential question of life as always a process of becoming. It's followed by the folk-rocker "It's Ok to Be Sad," a tender but steely paean to empathy, acceptance, and self-care, even during the most painful of experiences: "Let there be beauty instead....Let the cracks begin to spread/is the way you break open....How else could you know you're alright?" She delivers "All Broken Hearts Break Differently" in laid-back country shuffle kissed by atmospheric synth and the open chords from Duke Levine's Telecaster. The protagonist accepts the devastating force of heartbreak, noting its many faces, yet her protagonist refuses to surrender hope. Carpenter revisits that topic later, in the wonderful "Everybody's Got Something," in which she puts forth an equanimous, zen reflection on pain, with her acoustic and Levine's electric guitars entwining above a snare and tom-tom shuffle: "You're not the first, you're not the last/It could be worse, this will pass....One day you'll find you're you again." In the swaggering, bluesy, "American Stooge" she tells her version of Senator Lindsey Graham's hypocrisy: Once a forceful Trump critic, he became a strident ally. In "Nocturne" she offers real compassion: "We're all trying to live up to some oath to ourselves....No king has the power, no mortal the skill/But still you keep trying to see/What's waiting for you at the end of your days." She can sing it because she's been it. Even in "Asking for a Friend," Carpenter knows she's not above life's messiness but part and parcel of it wholesale. On the title track closer, the power of memory reveals an epiphany she had at age 17, riding in a car and listening to the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" on the radio. After Levine presents a glorious solo, she admits to knowing now that all the joy and sadness of life can be experienced in a single, illuminating moment. She knew it then but can articulate it now. By using her own empathic band for The Dirt and the Stars, Carpenter was able to erase all boundaries between singer and song; she entered their experiences nakedly, bravely, and completely, making this one of her standout albums.

Review (M Podia) : De inmiddels 62-jairge Amerikaanse singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter behoeft waarschijnlijk geen introductie. Ze maakt al een kleine drie decennia platen, scoorde vooral in de jaren '90 hits en met vijf! Grammy's achter haar naam en een imposante discografie wordt ze een meer dan gerespecteerd. Na Sometimes Just The Sky uit 2018 met bewerkingen van oud materiaal is ze terug met een album vol met nieuw materiaal, The Dirt And The Stars. Mary Chapin boekte haar grootste successen in de Countrymuziek (5 Grammy's tussen 1992 en 1995) maar door de jaren heen heeft de Amerikaanse zich doorontwikkeld van de wat meer Country achtige stijl richting Folk en het singer/songwriter genre. Het album wordt geopend met het stemmige 'Farther Along And Further In'; vanuit een akoestische setting wordt het nummer gaandeweg de vier minuten mooi uitgebouwd waarin Mary Chapin nog maar eens terug kijkt op haar leven dat geleidelijk toch is veranderd. Wat meteen opvalt is de perfecte balans tussen Mary Chapin als zangeres en de (top)muzikanten Duke Levine (Gitaar), Matt Rollings (piano/keys) en Jeremy Stacey (drums). Een nummer als 'It's Ok To Be Sad' krijgt iets meer vaart en met 'American Stooge' neemt ze ons mee naar de huichelachtige praktijken en hypocrisie in relatie tot de politiek en de regering Trump. 'Secret Keepers' is lekker radiovriendelijk en roept herinneringen op aan haar hit 'Passionate Kisses' en misschien is een nummer als 'Asking For A Friend' wel het meest exemplarisch voor de muzikale fase waarin ze zich op dit moment bevindt; begeleidt door de piano horen we haar half fluisterend, half vertellend een prachtig melancholiek lied zingen over een verbroken relatie. 'Everybody's Got Somethng' zit in dezelfde range alleen hier is het gevoel veel meer troostend en inlevend als we haar horen zingen: "I know you hurt, you hurt so bad / But a light comes shining to stitch and mend / One day you'll find you're you again / It takes some time". Inspiratie opdoen voor nieuwe muziek is voor Marie Chapin geen moeite; op haar boerderij in Virginia krijgen ideeën en melodieën vorm en niet voor de eerste keer reist ze voor de opnamen vervolgens af naar de Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, Engeland, waar de befaamde Ethan Jones voor de productie zorgt. Prachtig is de ballad 'All Broken Hearts Break Different' waarbij haar elegante stem als het ware danst op het resonerende geluid van de gitaar van Levine en ook 'Old D-35' is een klein meesterwerkje; ze blikt terug op al die momenten dat ze muziek aan het schrijven was en waarbij ze altijd haar "Martin"-gitaar gebruikte om die melodieën vorm te geven. Ook op dit nieuwe album wordt waarschijnlijk het beste bewaard voor het laatst; de ruim zeven minuten durende afsluiter 'Between The Dirt And The Stars' is met recht de titeltrack; een soft-rock track waarmee je de geur opsnuift uit de jaren '70 en waarbij Levine's gitaarsolo voor Mary Chapin een gevoel van vrijheid uit haar verleden oproept. Hier zorgt het voor kippenvel! Goede wijn behoeft geen krans. Mary Chapin Carpenter is zo'n artiest waarvan je bijna zeker weet dat een album van hoge kwaliteit is, zowel qua compositie als qua instrumentarium. The Dirt And The Stars tikt bijna een uur speeltijd aan en het is prachtig om binnen die mooie liedjes over universele thema's de absolute synergie te horen tussen de elegante, zachte stem en de muzikanten. Wederom een topplaat die zich wederom iets meer richting de Folk begeeft. Veel luisterplezier.

Review (Pitchfork) : More than three decades into her career as one of country music's most reliable and empathetic songwriters, Mary Chapin Carpenter can set an identifiable mood with just the sound of her guitar. She favors open tunings on acoustic instruments; chord progressions that never quite resolve but let in enough light to feel at ease. In her lyrics, and even just her song titles, she gestures toward words of comfort and self-affirmation: We're all right. I have a need for solitude. It's OK to be sad. The magic of her music is how every texture at her disposal-from her gentle fingerpicking to her smooth and precise singing voice-can communicate these messages just as clearly. Chapin's 15th studio album, The Dirt and the Stars, is devoted to this elusive gift, how a quiet sound can summon a world of associations. In fact, there's an entire song about it. It's called "Old D-35," and Chapin dedicates it to John Jennings, the guitarist and producer who worked with Chapin on her 1987 debut Hometown Girl through her commercial breakthroughs in the '90s. Singing to her old friend, who died from cancer in 2015, Chapin finds a sense of peace in the music he left behind: "As long as there are songs that sound like rain on an old terne roof," she sings, letting her accompanists finish the thought with a fragile, descending piano line. With such a careful and attentive sound, it is doubly impressive that Chapin and her band recorded the album entirely live in the studio. It is one of the most intimate records in her catalog, and the entire band seems locked into the introspective intensity that marks her best songwriting. In the opening "Farther Along and Further In," they join slowly with pedal steel and mandolin and a lapping drumbeat. When they lock into a groove near the end of the song, Chapin lets out a sudden, whispered exclamation. It is less the sound of a bandleader losing herself to the music than the lightbulb flash of a good idea arriving late at night, when no one else is awake. The lyrics are populated with these kinds of hushed revelations. "There's no day that's useless," Chapin notes in "It's OK to Be Sad." As if putting her own advice to use, she spends these songs singing about hard wisdom and dark spirals, looking for patterns in the ways people fall apart: "All broken hearts breaks differently," she reminds us. There are two explicitly political songs: "American Stooge," a tragicomic character study, and "Secret Keepers," a heartland rocker about women forced to keep their stories of abuse to themselves. Set to one of the album's most upbeat arrangements, the dissonance is intentional, the sound of private thoughts surfacing among people who understand. Chapin has a gift for finding universal wisdom in these deeply personal struggles, and these songs strive for clarity in the face of darkness. In the closing "Between the Dirt and the Stars," one of her most vivid and beautiful songs to date, Chapin allows herself refuge in scenic memories from a teenage road trip. "If we're lucky, ghosts and prayers are company, not enemies," she sings. Her band sprawls into a lengthy instrumental coda with a climactic guitar solo by Duke Levine, suggesting a kind of spiritual catharsis. But Chapin's thoughts keep turning to an old song playing on the car radio, somewhere deep in her psyche. "Everything we'll ever know," she sings, "is in the choruses." And so she keeps listening, learning, driving on.