Ashes And Roses<\/i><\/a> suffered from the same deficit). It\u2019s as if she\u2019s taken the spare, achingly solemn approach of \u201cCome On Come On\u201d and adopted it as her entire musical identity.<\/p>\nThe end result doesn\u2019t feel like an album at all; rather, it feels like a set of wise, literate, carefully-crafted poems that someone made a last-minute decision to set to acoustic guitar. There are other instruments on many of these songs, but they\u2019re so muted and textural in function that you barely notice them. The best part of any Carpenter album is typically the lyrics, but paradoxically, with the focus entirely on her voice, the songs begin to blur together into a single wash of grey. <\/p>\n
There are moments, of course, when her words hit hard; Carpenter is nothing if not a perceptive narrator of her own humanity. \u201cWhat else is there but the voice inside your heart?\u201d she sings in opener \u201cSomething Tamed, Something Wild\u201d\u2014the wildest song here, in the sense that it\u2019s one of only two where the tempo accelerates beyond a cool slumber. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m staring down the great big lonesome as I\u2019m listening for the dwindling of time,\u201d she sings later on in \u201cSomething Tamed,\u201d capturing an idea she expands on in \u201cThe Middle Ages,\u201d the focal point of this album\u2019s lyrical concerns. \u201cNow you see what you would have changed \/ If only you\u2019d known,\u201d she sings, \u201cWhere you\u2019d be and to be here is very strange \/ Waking up alone \/ In the middle ages.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of the album offers variations on this theme: the travails of solitude at middle age. In \u201cWhat It Means To Travel,\u201d she says \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a stranger \/ And I don\u2019t want to be alone \/ But sometimes I just want to be somewhere else \/ Untethered and unknown \/ When I am far from home.\u201d The titles tell the story: \u201cMap Of My Heart,\u201d \u201cDeep Deep Down Heart,\u201d \u201cThe Blue Distance,\u201d \u201cNote On A Windshield.\u201d These are songs of isolation and self-examination, introspection taken to the extreme. <\/p>\n
The closing title track suggest few answers even as it offers a kind of stark beauty in lines like these: \u201cLike the silence of my shadow when the twilight world is calling \/ The loneliness that knows me by the cadence of my walking \/ And the scar upon my elbow and the sound of my own breathing \/ My reflection in a window and the way I\u2019m always leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cOh Rosetta,\u201d Carpenter actually articulates the very thing this album\u2019s grey sameness of sound suggests: that she\u2019s lost all connection with the musical aspect of her art. \u201cIf I listen and I cannot hear the music \/ If I swim against the current and lose sight of the shore \/ If the world is offered goodness and doesn\u2019t use it \/ Oh Rosetta, what\u2019s it for?\u201d<\/p>\n
As much as the confident musicality of her earlier work is missed, what\u2019s missed the most is the grinning playfulness of songs like \u201cI Feel Lucky.\u201d There is no more variety of mood here than there is of sound\u2014no joy or swagger, no sense of humor, not so much as a hint of a smile; it\u2019s all sighs and frowns and furrowed brows, somber, melancholy reflections and confessions of regret. <\/p>\n
Mary Chapin Carpenter seems more interested these days in being a poet than a musician, and her poetry is lovely, if increasingly dark, but the musical framework she places it in here leaves few clues as to why she\u2019s still recording albums. The music feels like an obligatory afterthought, so placid, nondescript, and thoroughly hook-free as to fade from memory the moment each track finishes. The next logical step would be to eliminate the music altogether and simply publish a book of poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5880],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-44621","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mary-chapin-carpenter","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44621"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}