Greetings, gentle readers! The
long weekend has finally come and it is most welcome indeed. I am feeling a
little worn out and a few days off is just the thing I need. Let’s start it off
with a music review!
Disc 994 is…The Calling
Artist: Mary
Chapin Carpenter
Year of Release: 2007
What’s up with the Cover? Mary Chapin Carpenter, looking
contemplative. For some reason this pose reminds of a knight standing at ease, his
sword resting easy. Carpenter’s sword is a guitar, of course.
How I Came To Know It: I told the story back at Disc 946 of how I first was introduced to Carpenter, so you can read that tragic
tale of unrequited love there. “The Calling” it was a trio of later albums I
bought while exploring her more recent work.
How It Stacks Up: Of my eight Mary Chapin Carpenter albums, “The
Calling” falls last. However there is no shame in that; Carpenter has 14 studio
albums, so “The Calling” is ahead of six others I decided not to buy at all.
Ratings: 2 stars
I’m
generally a glass half full kind of guy. I say this so that you’ll know I feel
conflicted when I say that “The Calling” is just a bit too upbeat and positive.
There isn’t enough of that in the world, but here all the love, understanding
and grace comes off a bit boring.
“The
Calling” feels a little bit like that advice you get from that sweet old lady
on your block when you’re a kid. The one with all the trite sayings like “things
will all work out if you let them” and “everything happens for a reason,”
usually delivered as she bent over you with her hands primly on the tops of her
knees. That lady is nice enough, but even as a kid I knew that shit was some
bad advice.
Songs
like “Twilight” are supposed to be
pastorals about the beauty of certain times of the day, but for me it felt like
that aforementioned lady talking blandly about the weather (the favourite topic
of people like that, when not giving unhelpful advice).
It doesn’t
help that “The Calling” takes a lot of what makes Carpenter’s music so
wonderful - lilting, subtle melodies that
grow gently into wistful stories about overcoming adversity – and strip out the
hard edges that make those stories compelling.
The
production, lush with guitar and piano is muted and soft, like the songs themselves
seeming unwilling to offend. They aren’t afraid, they’re just content to
deliver their messages in a nice easy flow. I wanted the waters to have a
little more chop, to remind me I was on a journey. There are still songs about
heartache and loss. “Closer and Closer
Apart” is about an approaching breakup and “It Must Have Happened” hints at tough times in the narrator’s past.
However, they didn’t pluck my heartstrings like they should have.
Despite
this, Carpenter’s low, rich vocal performance is beautiful, and I found that I
enjoyed hearing her sing even when the songs weren’t inspiring me. And I like that
an artist can feel inspired about the human spirit overcoming and looking to
the horizon with a healthy and hopeful attitude. I just wanted the obstacles to
be better defined, so I’d enjoy Carpenter maneuvering her way around them more.
So I’ll
be selling this record, right? Wrong. Because there are a couple song that when
I heard it I knew I had to have it.
“On With the Song” takes all that
positive energy and focuses it like a knife on all the haters and prejudiced
jerks that wrap themselves in the flag and smugly think they are the better for
it. Carpenter calls out all those country music artists that take that jingoism
and make commercially successful songs that feed those prejudices:
“This isn’t for the ones who
blindly follow
Jingoistic bumper stickers
telling you
To love it or leave it, and you’d
better love Jesus
And get out of the way of the
red, white and blue.”
Take
that, Toby Keith. This song reminded me of John Prine singing “Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven
anymore” but lest you think Carpenter is singling out America or Christians,
she’s not. As anyone knows, America and Christianity are both full of wonderful,
caring people. Carpenter’s target is intolerance.
She also
acknowledges that haters are gonna hate and maybe even profit it from it, but
that she won’t sit quietly while it happens. She ends the song with:
“This isn’t for you and you know
who you are
So do what you want ‘cuz I know
that you can
But I’ve got to be true to myself
and to you
So on with the song, I don’t give
a damn.”
By the
end of the record, Carpenter starts to give a more compelling voice to her optimism.
On “Why Shouldn’t We” she invokes the
names of God, Buddha and Allah as inspiration that the world can be better
place. As she notes:
“We believe in things
We’re told that we cannot change
Why shouldn’t we
We had heroes once, and we will
again
Why shouldn’t we.”
“Why Shouldn’t We” is full of inspirational
piano licks that made my heart swell with hope that humanity is going to be alright
after all. By the end of this record, Carpenter’s optimism wore me down and gave
me a little appreciation for all that schmaltz at the beginning. Or put another
way, that friendly lady down the street when you were a kid probably had her
fair share of heartache too. But she put that aside so she could deliver a
little comfort to some neighbourhood kids. And why shouldn’t she?
So while
this album misses the mark a lot, it did enough to convince me to keep it. My
cup doesn’t runneth over, but it’s half full.
Best
tracks: The
Calling, On With the Song, Why Shouldn’t We
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