Événement

Mark Erelli

Sing Out!
May 07, 2009
It is an injustice to an artist, and often a great weight on his shoulders, to declare a performer to be the heir to some great musical tradition. Mark Erelli, however, embodies many of the best qualities of the folk-populist lineage that began with Woody Guthrie, and is carried today by Bruce Springsteen and others. His songs are unwaveringly and powerfully sincere, carrying the force of his experiences and passions, and applying them to emotions that are universal to us all. His voice, a beautiful combination of wine and whiskey, is as intimately conversational as a fireside chat. And, by exploring some of the big themes of American life--family, redemption, war and love, among others--and by describing how those themes affect a single life, he makes topical songs personal.

Man of the songs on Delivered concern people who need deliverance: the weary working man facing loneliness, divorce, booze and emptiness in "Five Beer Moon," the reservist who is "Baghdad-bound" in "Volunteers," and the displaced wanderer who whispers "I know I'm not alone, bu that's the way it feels," in "Not Alone." The characters in these songs seem to be calling out for meaning and redemption--for deliverance--in circumstances that offer none. For example, "Unraveled" is about a traveler who feels "unraveled like a ball of yarn/Lord, I'm tired and I want to go home."

Other songs, however, are more full of hope. Mark, whose first child was born before this album was created, also meditates on the deliverance that ordinary life makes possible. In "Once," he sings that his new son makes him feel that his life "is just getting started" and that "everyone should know this kind of love once in a lifetime." Perhaps the best song on the album, "Hope Dies Last," begins with a litany of the everyday horrors of insincere newsmen, hypocritical politicians and false preachers, before concluding that a love "so fierce and true it hurts" will survive it all. The album ends with the prayer-like "Abraham," intoning Abraham Lincoln to "rise up" from his marble seat and guide us through these dark days.

We pray, of course, that we all will be delivered from the industice, dangers and meaninglessness that inspired these songs. The songs, however, both despairing and hopeful, have a timelessness that should endure. --Sing Out!