For as long as I can remember – back when I was not yet a teenager, listening to Joan Baez first as a way to learn guitar – voices and lyrics have been the elements that have drawn me in. It’s the timbre, the grain of the voice. A voice that is always unique, instantly recognisable. That owes nothing to techno-wizardry. A voice that is at least as good live as it is on audio.
Unliked Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter doesn’t possess a conventionally great voice, but she certainly possesses a very beautiful one. The tone colour is warm and intimate; confessional even. She’s pitch-perfect, utterly expressive of whatever she’s singing about. The lyrics are always carefully wrought, replete with poignant observation, and they often touch a nerve, seeming to tap into whatever’s on your mind. Repeated listening reveals new layers of meaning. There’s an exquisite melancholy to many of her songs which deal in the currency of real emotions to which we can all relate. When I listen to Mary Chapin Carpenter, I think of Leonard Cohen’s observation about “the confusion of seriousness with depression”.
Personal History, released in early summer, is her first solo album since 2020, when Songs from Home, her weekly chats and performances from the kitchen of her Virginia farmhouse were – for me and thousands of others – a point of real connection during the long lockdown, a period on which she reflects here in the affecting “What Did You Miss?” In an era when so much is confected and disposable, Mary Chapin Carpenter is a rare treasure. She’s often profound, philosophical, and thought-provoking. But she can also be light-hearted, upbeat, and whimsical. But whatever she writes, you know it’s authentic, written from deep in the heart.
There’s an exquisite melancholy to songs that deal in the currency of real emotions to which we can all relate. Listen to “Girl and Her Dog”, a song about the choices we make, or that are made for us, sometimes breaking our hearts but making us stronger. Bittersweet but without a hint of self-pity, she writes about the wisdom the years bring us and hopefully the peace and contentment. Philosophical, encouraging us to “take the measure of our days”, to find the lighthouse in the storm, “Say It Anyway”, examines life’s many cliches and the truth contained in each. “Some days we’re all imposters but pretend we’re not… All the world’s a stage except if you’re a woman of a certain age”.
Amen, Mary, and thank you.
Three More Essential Albums from 2025
Reg Meuross – Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story
Bruce Springsteen – Tracks II: The Lost Albums
Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens – American Railroad
Musical Experience of the Year
Judy Collins & Friends: 85 Years of Music & Protest, Town Hall, NYC
Bernstein Remix! City Winery, NYC. Part of The Village Trip Festival
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