Review Summary: Anais Mitchell's latest misses its mark
Underground folk artist Anais Mitchell’s most recent album, with the help of an arsenal of instrumentalists, pushes the boundaries of the folk music genre almost to their breaking point. The Brightness weaves an intricate web of poetic self-expression that catches listeners at their center and holds them unaware before creeping up and devouring them. The album, released Feb. 13, is Mitchell’s debut on New York-based Righteous Babe Records, folk-rock icon Ani DiFranco’s label.
The Brightness can probably best be summed up in a few lines from second track, “Of a Friday Night:” “Maybe I came too early/maybe I came too late/I’m waiting in the shadows of the scaffolds/of the old cafes where you told me to wait/and I’ve got this lingering feeling/ it’s like I’ve slipped between/fingers of the old century/I know you know what I mean”
The songs have no choruses, no verses and no bridges, only a flow of stream-of-consciousness thoughts that mesh and meld together to create a beautiful and elaborate, yet sad at times, canvas of Mitchell’s outside-looking-in take on life. Travels to the Middle East, Europe and Latin America to study languages and world politics have obviously had an effect on the singer/songwriter. Mitchell’s story-songs take the listener to places from ancient Bethlehem on “Song of the Magi,” to Virginia on “Shenandoah,” to her own bed in “Changer,” and even to hell and back in “Hades and Persephone.” Some of her songs tell stories of where she’s been mentally and physically as in “Namesake” and “Santa Fe Dream,” while others are from different people’s perspectives like “Hobo’s Lullaby.” One track, “Hades and Persephone,” is a script-like exchange between a hell-bound husband and wife. It’s fitting because Mitchell plans to stage a folk opera based on the myth of Hades and Eurydice, according to her biography in the album’s press kit.
The Vermont-born songstress said when she was young, she had dreams of a career in journalism, but luckily for fans, she opted for a full-time music career instead. “I used to tell people I wanted to be a journalist,” she said in the press kit for the album. “There is a lonely egotism and self-composure to journalists. “Not unlike artists, they’re always traveling, always writing, loving their loneliness, feeling somehow that they have their finger on the pulse — worshipping the truth and trying to render it legible.”
On her most recent album, Mitchell writes about what she knows and she does it well, in a divinely lyrical manner. How she sings, though, is a completely different matter.The 25-year-old’s voice sounds like that of a girl half Mitchell’s age and offsets the poetic lyrics that suggest knowledge and understanding far beyond her years. The often overly high-pitched vocals distract from simple-yet-superb instrumentals and downplay lyrics and music that are otherwise worldly and wise. Not to mention, at times they can be almost grating and borderline annoying. The instrumentals and back-up vocals of the album are overly subdued, which in a way detracts from the overall aesthetic value of the album. Also, the tone of Mitchell’s voice rarely changes, creating the effect of many songs sounding very similar.
However, this is the kind of album listeners will want to put on while feeling lonely and introspective, or while reading a book, sipping on a cup of tea or coffee and looking out at a rainy or cloud-ridden sky.
