Welcome back to the CD Odyssey. I got out for a run today before the rain came, which helped me get an extra listen in on this next record. Running is one of those “don’t do anything else while listening” tasks that is allowed under Rule #4.
Yeah, I realize it says “walking around” but running is basically walking around at an accelerated pace.
Disc 1765 is…The Balladeer
Artist: Lori McKenna
Year of Release: 2020
What’s up with the Cover? This album came out in 2020, so no surprise the live action shot has no one else in it – Lori is probably maintaining a minimum six-foot distance in observation of COVID protocols.
How I Came To Know It: I was already an avowed Lori McKenna fan, so just bought this record when it came out, as we fans do.
How It Stacks Up: I have six Lori McKenna albums. I want to have eight, but those missing two are devilishly hard to find. Anyway, of the six I do have, I put “The Balladeer” at #4. It isn’t bad, it’s just that there are four better.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
Lori McKenna is not going to blow the doors off with her vocals, and as songwriting goes this is very much dead centre in the down-home old school country variety. Don’t expect to be artistically challenged but do expect to find yourself settling into a contemplative and peaceful headspace.
A Lori McKenna song is like the rustle of browning maple leaves blowing past on an early fall breeze. It feels easy and relaxed, with the rustling restlessness memory of days gone by. She’s an old soul that is always in a state of remembering being young, and it creates a narrative that marries the two experiences.
On “The Balladeer” McKenna explores well-worn themes of faith, family and wistful reverie. My instinct was to be bored with the subject matter as overused and obvious. How many songs can you have about intergenerational love (grandfathers/grandsons, moms and daughters, sisters, etc.)? Turns out you can have quite a few if those songs are each individually good enough to hold your attention. I won’t deny that I would love McKenna to explore a bit more creative space, and write songs with more edge, but I also can’t deny that the simple themes she chooses are done with artful care and quiet beauty.
On this record, McKenna often explores character by comparison, and how similar experiences can yield very different people On “Marie” she writes from the perspective of two sisters, raised in exactly the same experience, and the subtle turn of how they are both the same and different. How as siblings you can walk in the same shoes through childhood and end up both the same and different. Or as McKenna reflects:
“She looks more like our mother
She's prettier and softer
And she always helps me find my way
I've been lost a time or two
She knows bigger words than I do
But we both got the same size shoes
And no one's ever walked in mine, but me and Marie”
This “same but different” theme is further explored from a darker place on “Two Birds” where she tells the story of two women who meet one fateful night to find out they are both in a relationship with the same man. The women are different in temperament:
“One was a red dress, a wild one from out West
Didn't waste a minute with her heart
The other was a bluebird, careful with her sweet words
Unless she let you hold her in the dark”
But united in their betrayal. It would be a great song if that’s all McKenna explores, but she goes even further to capture the strange pathology of the man
“He wasn't cruel, he wasn't mean
But he had a way of breaking things
His aim was truer than an arrow from a bow”
So easy to just make the man a cad, but he is depicted here not so much cruel as careless. Like a child with a stone throwing it idly, felling two birds with one stone. It is a great image that reveals late, and adds depth to the story you’re not expecting.
This is McKenna at her best, seeing humanity in even the most broken of her characters. You’ll find tragedy aplenty on “The Balladeer” but you’ll be hard pressed to find true evil. In McKenna’s world even people making the worst choices are just damaged and hurt, and looking for connection.
This record felt like a collection of hugs from your mom or maybe your favourite aunt. Sometimes the hug is the kind you might get at a wedding, and sometimes at a funeral, but all of them feel kind and reassuring.
Best tracks: The Balladeer, Marie, The Dream, Uphill, Two Birds
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