Mary Gauthier
'Trouble & Love'
Rating:
On her previous albums, Mary Gauthier's signature as
a songwriter has been brutal honesty balanced by a rough-hewn tenderness.
Nowhere is that more true than on "Trouble & Love," a song cycle that
journeys through devastating heartbreak and its attendant states: grief, anger,
accountability, acceptance, and what lies beyond. She assembled her road band
and an all-star cast of singers, co-writers, and players, including Beth Nielsen
Chapman, the McCrary Sisters, Viktor Krauss, Darrell Scott, and Ashley
Cleveland. Recording live in the round in Ricky Skaggs' Nashville studio, there
was little pre-rehearsal and no headphones were used. To paraphrase Gauthier,
she didn't want the album to sound real, but be real. "When a Woman Goes Cold,"
co-written with Gretchen Peters, is the opener. In the language of slow electric
folk blues, she sings: "You're no longer her concern/Scorched earth cannot
burn...." From inside this emotional wreckage, Gauthier begins a transformative
journey. "False from True," co-written with Chapman, is a folk song: "You woke
up inside a cage/I woke up consumed with rage/A million miles from our first
kiss/How does love turn into this?...There are two of you and one don't feel/I
don't know which one is real...." She discovers that both are. The lilting
piano, arco bassline, and fingerpicked guitar illustrate bewilderment and
vulnerability. "Oh Soul," a duet with Scott, employs country gospel for Gauthier
to confess accountability -- not to a god, but herself -- at the site of Robert
Johnson's grave. On the sparse Americana of "Worthy," she sings: "Worthy,
worthy, what a thing to claim/Worthy, worthy, ashes into flame..." and
accountability becomes awareness; feelings are valid, blame is pointless. "How
You Learn to Live Alone" is framed by Duane Eddy's reverb-laden, slow country
picking and a Hammond B-3. The lyrics reveal a tentative state in which Gauthier
applied her method for learning solitude after the net of longed-for and now
illusory belonging has been cut away: "You release resistance/Give in to the
wind/Until the rain comes pourin' in/You sit in the rubble/Until it feels like
home/That's how you learn to live alone." Eddy's guitar caresses her vocal as
she admits total surrender -- not despair. Closer "Another Train" is about
moving on, carrying her new scars as part of life's deepening as it constantly
arrives and departs, its meaning ever present and mysterious. She expresses
self-forgiveness and, more importantly, she accepts it. The story is far from
over when the record ends. The "happy ending" is elusive; these songs take place
inside a continuum of immediacy -- there isn't a new love to celebrate. But
Gauthier's discovery is that she can not only survive this raw experience, but
embrace it, becoming stronger and more compassionate than ever before. This is
its own reward. "Trouble & Love" is unlike any other "heartbreak and
healing" album; its hard-won, experiential, Buddhist-like wisdom borders on the
profound. --
Thom Jurek, All Music GuideMore on Mary
Gauthier