The Things That We Are Made Of revisited: Mary-Chapin Carpenter’s 21st Century masterpiece

This album has been out a couple of months. It has already been reviewed here in ND although I’d say it’s a review that can best be characterised as damning with faint praise. I think it’s a record that deserves a whole lot better.

I’ve waited before committing my thoughts to print because I wanted to be sure of the subject. I didn’t want to oversell something that in the end doesn’t merit the praise showered upon it. I wasn’t going to make any claim I don’t believe in, that can’t be justified. First impressions can be misleading. We can sometimes want something to be good and therefore dive in with claims of “Return to form” or “The best since…” which turn out to be nothing of the sort.

What led me here in the first place? I found myself humming a tune and in that infuriating situation where I could hum a bit, but not remember what came next. It took me a while to realise it was off TTTWAMO, which I’d only heard a couple of times at that point (the song that had got its hooks in was Map Of My Heart). This hadn’t happened with an MCC album for a long, long time. Clearly the game had changed for the better. This was a record that could hopefully be mined for further riches.

So my impressions have evolved gradually and are not hastily formed. My opinions have been shaped and developed through my immersion in the music. I was also inspired to write this because of one of the most memorable pieces of music writing I’ve ever come across: back in the 1970s in the British weekly New Musical Express the late Ian McDonald (author of the song by song analysis of the Beatles’ oeuvre in Revolution In The Head, the very first of what is now a common genre) revisited Neil Young’s previously disregarded On The Beach. His was the first voice that said no, this is not a doom ridden dirge, this is a brilliant exposition by a musician exploring where he stands in a very uncertain world. McDonald’s view of OTB as one of Neil Young’s very best now prevails. There is no pretence that I can match the excellence of IMac’s insight and perspicacity but like McDonald with OTB, I think it is necessary for this album to be reassessed because it is a powerful and profound work that needs to be heard and appreciated as a significant work, as well as being a very lovely and moving one. It should not be submerged among the also-rans. It is not just ‘another MCC album’ but one that should be regarded at standing alongside her very best work.

Mary-Chapin released a trilogy of albums in the 1990s, Shooting Straight In The Dark, Come On, Come On and the peerless Stones In The Road that rightfully can be described as essential listening; that belong in the collections of anyone who loves country/Americana. Since then, while there have been the odd great song, most of her albums since then have lacked any real distinction. There has been a lack of contrast, of light and shade. The Calling was a very decent effort, but still fell way short of essential. From a onetime judicious mix of the uptempo with balladry, adagio became the dominant pace of the songs which combined with a limited tonal palette didn’t reward regular replay. Her muse, while not grounded was certainly not consistently soaring to its former heights.

No longer. The first thing that struck me about this Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton) produced album is, something I can only describe as it’s listenability. There’s a deftness of touch. Every song stands distinct, telling its own story, justifying its place on the record. It was also because of this that I delayed. I questioned whether this really is as good as it initially sounded; is it just a facile impression or can the album stand up to repeated listening and would it still bring about the same feelings of satisfaction, the same degree of pleasure; indeed imbue me with the same sense of wonder; move me emotionally to the same degree. Can it become an album I love? The answer to all these questions is a wholehearted, dogmatic Yes.

Interviewed recently by Bob Harris on BBC radio Mary-Chapin said that Dave Cobb had insisted on a limited number of vocal takes. There was no prolonged search for the perfect take. I think this approach paid off in the freshness of the performances. His preference is to capture the moment. The musicians have not had to perform multiple takes to achieve technical perfection while losing the “feel”.

The instrumentation contains some surprises in that Dave Cobb has introduced not just a synthesiser but also a mellotron. Don’t worry though, this isn’t anything like a Moody Blues album. But it’s not just Cobb’s production. Well produced tripe is tripe nonetheless. The raw material of the songs has to be high quality to produce a jewel. These are indeed songs of high quality. Also I do wonder if working with an orchestra on Songs From The Movie has had an impact here. Seeing her songs taken and reshaped by others. Working in a new and alien way where her control is shaped by the demands of classically trained musicians.

One thing I’ve loved about Mary-Chapin since I first heard her is her lyrical ability, her facility with words, the creation of really memorable verses or couplets (“You can change a stranger’s life by letting yours begin”. ” I heard the sound a heart must make when a memory is caving in.” “Could I have felt the brush of a soul passing on, somewhere in between here and gone?) being among my favourites. TTTWAMO abounds with them. There are many of her familiar themes: travel, maps, memory, time, loss, dreams, loneliness and being alone, love (unrequited, found and lost), home, place and more.

TTTWAMO has a symmetry for me. Whether Mary-Chapin and Dave Cobb would concur and say “That’s what we intended” or “Rubbish, you’re seeing a pattern based on your idiosyncrasies” I have no idea. But I would like to think it is intended. That is, there are three very good songs, two great songs, one more that is just very good, two more brilliant album standouts, then finishing with another three very good songs. All albums, even those classified as the greats (I’m naming no names here because I don’t want any distraction from my purpose and that discussion takes place often enough) are a mix of the superb and not quite so good. Indeed I have come across an argument (which I disagree with) that every great album has to contain a clunker. There are no clunkers here.

The record begins with the sprightly Something Tamed, Something Wild. It’s a song about memories (a shoebox full of letters) and is partially reminiscent of Almost Home off the Party Girl album. Relics bring back memories. The key here is looking forward:

“I care less about arriving 

Than just being in the path

Of some light carved out of nothing

The way it feels when the Universe has smiled”

That is such a positive message. The song affirms that recalling these memories doesn’t mean that life now has to be about regrets, that we are bound by the past but the sentiment echoes the idea that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, while suggesting the journey is in its own way fulfilling, not just a transitional process.

Given the song title, there is an idea of duality, of contradiction. But as she sings that what matters now is not what she thought before, the idea occurs that it is the past that has been tamed, what is ahead is unknown and is wild.

Next up is The Middle Ages, which (unsurprisingly) considers growing old; life as a journey. But this is not a tale of woe or regret. It’s coming to the realisation that what we may have desired when we were younger is inconsequential because “love and kindness are all that matter now“. Middle age is not to be dreaded, it is to be embraced and you make the best of the years to come on the basis of what you’ve learned from years gone by.

What Does It Mean To Travel in part shares ideas voiced in Transcendental Reunion (from Ashes And Roses) in that it explores the idea of travelling but being alone. I think the execution here is far better. Finding or losing identity, even wanting to be someone else, in the anonymity of the tiresome process of travel, which for a touring musician must lead to an immense sense of dislocation.

The fourth song Livingston initially confused me a little. A lamentation and valediction over a friend’s death I thought it must be about John Jennings (to whom the album is dedicated). I was wondering why someone whom I’d understood to be born and bred in Washington D.C. would have upped sticks and moved out beyond Wyoming. It was only later upon reading the lyrics that I spotted the dedication to Ben Bullington. I’d never heard of Ben until last year when Darrell Scott released Ten Songs Of Ben Bullington. He was a practicing doctor in Montana who was also a singer songwriter. When he received a diagnosis of terminal cancer he dedicated his final year to music. Mary-Chapin had become a friend and worked with him on his last album.

Livingston is a gorgeous and heart-breaking elegy. The melody is particularly lovely. She undertook a long distance drive to Montana to see Ben. It includes lines that resonated with me and I’m sure must do so with many others who have looked a dying loved one in the eye. Lines that likely mean little to many under 30 but whose poignancy will strike you with greater force the older you are. I find it hard to hear these words now without finding something in my eye:

“I came to say goodbye and to hug you

But I wasn’t brave enough to say that

So I said See You Soon and I Love You”

Map Of My Heart follows and is the second monumental song on the album. As already alluded to above, it’s got a great tune packed with hooks that you can’t ignore or dislodge. The pace is raised and it is the rockiest  song on the album. Suffused with imagery of life as a journey, the map is drawn from our experiences. I love the way she goes slightly off pitch as she sings “I thought I’d lost my mind” stretching the syllable in the word mind. It could jar, but it’s done with the right degree of restraint to make me smile when I hear  it. I really like the double tracked vocal on this song.

Given the suggestion that this is a dark album I’d ask how can a lyric that says she felt her heart expand –

“With more love that I thought could exist in the world

The hollows were gone, the emptiness filled”

– be regarded as anything other than an affirmation of life and love? It is this all-consuming emotion that lights our way through life. The final verse asks questions about how we love. The answers will be predicated on each listener’s experience.

Sixth song of the album is Oh Rosetta, where Mary-Chapin seeks guidance from the departed Sister Rosetta Tharpe, (my knowledge of her is pretty much limited to the chapter in Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles when he writes of the 1960s package tour of the UK she participated in, along with Muddy Waters and others). For a Brit it includes small geography and history lessons. There’s a reference to walking through New York and coming to the corner of 57th and Seventh Avenue. A very specific reference which I checked and found it’s the location of Carnegie Hall, which I also discovered was where she participated in famous recording “From Spirituals To Swing” in 1938.

My ignorance of Sister Rosetta aside the key question for Sister Rosetta is –

“If the world is offered love but doesn’t use it

Oh Rosetta, what’s it for?”

The song touches on how does a musician connect with the world “If I try to please the many instead of just the very few” does that mean compromise.

My favourite song on the album may be Deep Deep Down Heart. It’s a song with another killer melody. It’s about how experience and memory have to allow you to move forward and not drag you back. I’ve not addressed Mary-Chapin’s singing but the emotions she reaches and touches here are profound. It isn’t about technical virtuosity, but capturing the emotion expressed in her lyrics, which her rich contralto voice does so wonderfully well. This is such a strong feature throughout this collection of songs.

Deep Deep Down Heart opens with a series of questions asking what can we trust and believe in. A repeating, picked guitar figure plays over piano and organ backing create an eerie atmosphere of foreboding.

The imagery of travel, of moving, of impermanence pervades. Again the key is let go of the past:

“ I keep pushing back the past
So that the future can unfold.

I guess the best of my mistakes

Show me all that I don’t know”

She touches on heartbreak and her vulnerability. There is doubt:

“Who will hold my hand so I am not afraid?”

The song ends with another series of questions, the last of which is

“…how love holds you up
And then to chooses to break
Your deep, deep down heart” 

This is the only bleak moment on the album, but it’s not immediately apparent because of the loveliness of the song overall and especially the singing.

The fear of heartbreak is banished on the simplest sounding song on the album, being just Mary-Chapin, her guitar, bass and strings, in Hand On My Back, though emotionally it is anything but simple. Over a finger-picked figure she sings again of memory, characterising them as “rattling chains”.

“But tell me what happens when dreams don’t come true
How you overcome some things until they overtake you
Why you never got chosen, why you never felt claimed
By some passion or person that is never explained”

An allusion to Jacob Marley’s ghost perhaps; but unlike the departed Marley wearing chains forged in his life there is still a chance in life to slough off these chains.

For Mary-Chapin the redemption is through love. She’s been flying like and arrow but is now down to earth.

The Blue Distance is a song of separation from a loved one. It’s a separation where the pain is lessened because of the bonds of love, of knowing the other:

“And I know you know and that’s all I need
When the light of day looks like night to me
When you’re far away and I’m all alone
I can’t explain, I know you know”

There’s a lovely vocal touch as a tremulous quality quality in the second part of the line “sometimes I’m lost and I don’t know why”

Note On A Windshield has a lovely tune (the echo effects on the guitar and piano is a subtle but ever so effective production touch) and is beautifully sung, with a tentative tone in the early part matching the idea but it is the song I’ve found hardest to get to grips with. The idea of writing a note to a stranger, who looks a little familiar, and leaving your name and number under the wiper blade while it’s raining just strikes me as bizarre. A real or imaginary scenario? It’s one that to me, should a response follow, has a greater likelihood of bad consequences than good. I find it hard as a listener to know how to respond to it. It’s really about taking chances when they present themselves (but so far removed in mood from that song from many years ago) and also transience, expressed in the first line of the chorus “There’s nothing holding us down” and toward the end of the song “The rain washed words away”

So we end with the title track, The Things That We Are Made Of.

It is a song title that begs the question, “Tell me, what are we made of?”.

Mary-Chapin’s answer is that it’s our life experiences and our memories of them and how we use those experiences and memories. But we don’t dwell in the past, we move forward. This brings us back to The Middle Ages” which opened with “Looking back is not the same as looking forward… All that’s visible is what’s left behind“. But it also harks back to the ideas of Something Tamed, Something Wild. That idea of travelling hopefully, of being on a journey. It’s a satisfying circularity. The end meets the beginning. Omega and intertwine.

It’s a song that slowly and subtly builds. Initially it is just strummed guitar and vocal, then piano comes in. The other instruments join in, mellotron, bass drums, another guitar in the background. A magical construction.

She sings softly, wistfully, beautifully.

“And I remember feeling I’m alive and in need of no saviours 

If the past is another country I’m at the border with my papers”

Which suggests a determination to break with the past, to leave that baggage behind. We have a single shot at life. She sings of having wished for another life and how she would happily have changed it.

“Then all at once I see your face and the summer night and the open door

Dimmer now but not erased and I know what these are for”

And it is this, an affirmation of love that ultimately determines what we are made of. A shared love. A connection with others, with humanity and with existence. John Donne’s words “No man is an island entire of itself” never rang so true but while never explicitly referenced, is an idea that underpins this whole recording.

So there it is. A renewed, recharged MCC. Singing about life; singing about the things that matter to us now. Singing of where we are headed. Not recharged in the sense of being energised to compose and record a song like Down At The Twist & Shout which was a big, fun song on Shooting Straight… It was of its time but something of its ilk here would strike a false and jarring note. We listeners, Mary-Chapin Carpenter’s audience have grown with her. Our concerns, worries, joys and sorrows are the same. No-one is spelling that out better than she does. Certainly no-one as tunefully and within popular music few are articulating it as profoundly. She is recharged in that she has accounted for the past, learned life’s lessons, and the lessons we learn are usually the hard ones, ready to go forward, emerging with understanding that creates its own freedoms. Ready to embrace what is ahead and all its uncertainty. I don’t hear bleakness, I hear hope and moreover, love renewed.

It’s only since writing this that I’ve begun to wonder if the cover art is intended as a metaphor, complementing the songs within. Bringing a spark of light to briefly illuminate a small spot in the all enveloping darkness. Against that he may just be the art director’s vision, which coincidentally happens to be entirely appropriate.

The Things That We Are Made Of gets my vote as album of the year so far.

I’m really looking forward to hearing these songs live. UK dates take place in July. I’ll be there at The Barbican in London. Hopefully road-rested through live performance the songs will come across even more strongly.

Will this album still be my favourite come December only other album releases will tell, but it will definitely be a contender and a very hard one to beat. Have a listen (again perhaps?) and perhaps it will become one of yours. Also consider that this is an album not just for 2016, but is a one to be replayed again and again in years to come. Your investment will be richly rewarded.