Those who know Elizabeth Cook from her whimsical, off-the-wall banter with David Letterman, her “Apron Strings” satellite radio show, or her Grand Ole Opry performances are in for a jolt here. On her previous recording, 2012’s Gospel Plow EP, she sang of heaven.
On Exodus of Venus (out June 17 on Agent Love Music), she’s a whole lot closer to hell, the music disturbed and disturbing, reflecting an extended stretch that has found her dealing with divorce (from former musical collaborator Tim Carroll), mourning, rehab, and a diagnosis as bipolar. It’s easily the darkest album of Cook’s career and the most devastatingly powerful music she has ever made.
Producer-guitarist Derek Green steeps the sounds in shades of blues, while the ace rhythm section of bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Matt Chamberlain lays a foundation of groove that owes more to Memphis and Muscle Shoals than to Cook’s Nashville base.
“I’ve been dyin’, dyin’ in dirt/Waitin’ for the day when it don’t hurt,” she wails in “Dyin’,” a feeling echoed in “Slow Pain,” which would be one of those ‘morning after” songs if that blurry previous night hadn’t ended past dawn. Yet there’s wry humor amid the ruefulness of “Methadone Blues,” and a soundscape straight from the Church of U2, a state of something like grace, on the closing “Tabitha Tuders Mama,” about a Nashville girl who disappeared. “Please pray for Tabitha Tuders’ Mama, even if you don’t pray at all,” she sings.
As Townes once sang of Lefty, save a few for Elizabeth too. And maybe a prayer the rest of us — the broken, the lost and found.
