Caroline Herring – Lantana

It’s a measure of Caroline Herring’s empathy for her subject, not to mention her skill with pen and guitar, that she can hand us the key to the heart of Susan Smith and let us decide for ourselves if Smith deserves condemnation, understanding, or perhaps both. Smith (how could we forget?) is the South Carolina mother who drowned her two young sons in 1994, apparently for the sake of a relationship. “Paper Gown”, from Herring’s third album Lantana, is about that crime. By casting the story as a traditional murder ballad complete with ominous banjo, Herring also reminds us that horrors like Smith’s act seem an inevitable part of humanity’s makeup.

Such insightful, evocative writing is the common denominator of Lantana, a compelling acoustic album rooted in the complexities of women’s lives, especially women of the south. In her obscene actions, Smith is the exception among Herring’s subjects. Others are like the wife in “Heartbreak Tonight”, her identity beginning to “disappear” under the press of tedium and a loveless marriage. Still others, like the spunky character in “Song For Fay”, may not know where they’re going, but they’re off and running and, by God, “Don’t you try and stop me.”

Herring, a vibrato-heavy alto, wrote all but two of the tracks here. Perhaps the best is “Fair And Tender Ladies”, a referentially titled toast to bygone women “all muscular and luminous” whose “skirt was not to hide behind.”