Twenty years ago Mary Chapin Carpenter used to sing about loving and losing, but also about lusting. Even her ballads went at a bullish lick. The essence of what she had to say was distilled in “He Thinks He'll Keep Her”, which captured the emotions of a 35-year-old woman at the moment she realises her marriage is a dead duck. Here was a Nashville grandee who, rather than standing by her man, stood up for herself. Her feminist folk preeminence has helped Carpenter to sales of 12 million albums.
Ruined romance is still on the agenda in Ashes and Roses, but this time Carpenter is nowhere near the driving seat. In “Transcendental Union” which opens the 13-song set, she files through an airport in profound solitude. Things don’t look up as song after song finds her in a post-nuclear wasteland of singledom after a break-up, attempting to sift through the rubble for some sense of self. In “What to Keep and What to Throw Away” and “Chasing What’s Already Gone”, all she sees is evidence of abandonment: a hook where a jacket once hung, an old scribbled note. You get the picture. The question is, does the yearning for a lost past and a more hopeful future bring the best out of Carpenter?
Melodically, not so much. Although quietness also suits the timbre of Carpenter’s deep alto voice, several tunes succumb to the lure of the dying fall, which may match the mood but keeps variety at arm’s length. Tempo wise, she’s obviously not feeling upbeat. Lyrically it is a more intriguing concoction. Real pain has encouraged Carpenter, like an Inuit describing snow, to find 13 ways of mapping loneliness. “Fading Away” and “Jericho”, which play out the album, are the collection's most touching, brittle contemplations of grief. These are songs to feel down to.
Listen to 'Jericho'
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