Michelle Shocked – Deep Natural

In 1993, on the very day Michelle Shocked went to record the follow-up to Arkansas Traveler, her record label imprisoned her artistically. She says they refused to issue a check for recording expenses, told her they wouldn’t promote her catalog, and restricted her from recording on her own.

Shocked had planned to make a gospel album; perhaps Mercury had tired of her straying so far from the folk-punk sound that made Short, Sharp, Shocked (produced by Pete Anderson) a hit in 1988. Arkansas Traveler generated good reviews but sold poorly, despite having such stellar guests as Alison Krauss, Doc Watson, Uncle Tupelo, the Red Clay Ramblers, Norman Blake, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. The record touched on so many different genres that it sounded more like a soundtrack to a movie about American roots music than the work of a single artist.

Almost a decade later, Mercury hit multi-platinum sales with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a multi-artist journey through American roots music. And Michelle Shocked? She finally has her first new studio album in seven years, in essence her long-lost gospel album, albeit the kind of hybrid you’d expect from a genre-busting artist. Deep Natural (and its companion disc, Dub Natural, both set for an April 3 release) is also the first album for Shocked’s own label, Mighty Sound, an imprint she says will have a roster of other acts as well.

Both album and label represent a remarkable comeback for someone who seemed to have disappeared from popular music. By the late ’90s, all of Shocked’s albums were out of print, and she spent more time in the courtroom suing her former label (citing the Thirteenth Amendment, which makes slavery unconstitutional) than in the studio. She ultimately settled those legal contests and secured rights to her earlier albums and her song copyrights. Between legal briefs, she relentlessly toured, wrote new songs, and found her taste growing even more eclectic.

Shocked calls this latest direction “new dub and gospel birdsong,” and that description is as good as any because Deep Natural defies convention at every turn. It rocks, it rolls, it wails, it pleads, it shouts, and, at times, it even preaches with the fire of Rev. Al Green on Easter Sunday. Though no one is going to mistake Deep Natural for a traditional gospel album (Jesus isn’t mentioned by name, though there is plenty of “the Lord”), even the straight-ahead love ballads touch on the themes of rebirth, faith and forgiveness.

It is on the handful of ballads where Shocked shines brightest, mixing her disparate influences but not letting them distract from her unique vocal stamp. Her voice has grown richer with age, and at times she sounds like Diana Krall; other moments she’s reminiscent of Krauss, as on the album’s high point, “That’s So Amazing”, a rewriting — in a jazz, torch-song style — of “Amazing Grace”. She slows the tempo to a simmer and adds horns, but uses a gospel choir for the chorus.

It’s a mutt of a song that sounds impossible on paper but succeeds magnificently in moving the heart and the spirit. It’s also playful and sexy, attributes rarely found in religious music, but as appropriately spiritual as secular. It helps that Shocked’s take on gospel is less the contemporary sound of Kirk Franklin, and more the traditional soul of Edwin Hawkins (“Oh Happy Day”).

A few songs actually sound like the younger Michelle Shocked. “If Not Here” might have fit into her 1980s folk repertoire — it’s just her and her guitar — except that instead of anger and rebellion, the song is about resurrection and faith. “I Know What You Need” is more a lullaby than a fully realized hymn, but Shocked’s singing and the simple arrangement are beautiful nonetheless. “Why Do I Get The Feeling” is a relationship drama that would be at home on a Kelly Willis album, contrasting the heartbreak of being misunderstood with a warm flirtation as frisky as Lucinda Williams’ “Right In Time”.

Shocked also recalls Lucinda in how she mixes folkie ballads with rocked-up blues numbers, but it is here that her ambition fails her. Every ballad on Deep Natural is followed by an uptempo blues or rock number, and though Shocked is a decent blues belter, she doesn’t excel at the form. “Little Billie”, for example, seems like a recycled riff rather than a border-busting hybrid. “Can’t Take My Joy” is the worst case of genre-mixing gone awry — it’s reggae, gospel, rock, blues, and dub all at the same time, but master of none.

The befuddling sequencing doesn’t help things; the contrasting tempos can make listening to Deep Natural feel like you’re hitting the wrong button on your radio tuner. Shocked co-produced with her longtime collaborator and Hothouse Flowers member Fiachna O’Braonain; she might have benefited from more outside advice. On the album, they’re accompanied by Shocked’s band, the Perverse All-Stars, made up of Rich Armstrong on percussion and horns, bassist Jamie Brewer, and drummer Peter Buck (no, not the R.E.M. guy).

The same musicians play on Dub Natural, a “bonus” album that comes packaged with Deep Natural. It is an entire alternate CD of dub songs, with all those great vocals left off. If anyone ever needed evidence that Shocked takes things too far, this is it, and it brings to mind the old adage that the truly self-absorbed artist can never admit to having a bad idea.

Yet despite the occasional overreaching, and maybe because of it, Deep Natural is a remarkable return to form for a gifted songwriter. Shocked is nothing if not determined, and a few detours are probably inevitable when an artist is trying to do as much with one album as she is here. Without that kind of cross-breeding, we’d never get “Psalm”, the next-to-last cut on Deep Natural and the only Michelle Shocked song I can imagine being played in a First AME church. It starts off with a riff straight out of Creedence, then introduces a powerhouse chorus — “He turned the rock into living water” — that thunders in like the voice of God.

Only then, after the chorus has kicked the song off, does Shocked drop out all the instruments and use her voice and guitar to tell a Biblical story of faith and redemption — the themes that haunt all of Deep Natural. By the end of the song, when the gospel chorus comes booming back in, even those in the back pews will be standing, shouting, and clapping their hands right in time.