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Label: Lost Highway
Sound/Style: Spare and emotionally naked alternative country-folk
By Steve Morley
On her breakthrough album Mercy Now, singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier offered sharply-drawn vignettes of the shadowy side of life. Having grappled with substance abuse and served time in prison, she had an inside line on society’s outer fringes, which she put to artistic use. While Gauthier’s weary drawl and ragged sound aren’t geared to mainstream tastes, her work is fresh and authentic, flowing with poetic imagery, however downcast the mood. Her follow-up, Between Daylight and Dark, features an assortment of perspectives on displacement and loneliness, both the chosen and circumstantial varieties. Her broad, almost cyclical view of the subject creates an intriguing contradiction best summed up in the track “Soft Place to Land": “Look at me on the high wire/ As I attempt to balance safety with desire.”
Her balancing act teeters precariously through songs that describe the search for safety and desire in both positive and questionable ways. On “Please,” her expressed longing for relationship is the ironic result of her world travels, which she admits are a defense against the possibility of rejection. “I Ain’t Leaving” is her mature response to the previous track’s conundrum, as she resolves not to run away from challenges, no matter how enticingly her wanderlust may beckon.
“Thanksgiving,” a somber look at the pain of loving those who have disappointed you, chillingly details the indignities endured by family members visiting loved ones at a penitentiary.
On “Last of the Hobo Kings,” a tribute to the train-hopping transient Maury Graham, Gauthier romantically cites his death as the end of an era, but also honors him and his kind by contending that a social outcast can walk with dignity. Gauthier also makes an interesting distinction between bums and hobos. She claims the latter are pioneers whose travels gave them insights on the state of the country, and suggests that itinerants like Maury were less isolated from their country than people are in today’s America. (“He knew how his nation was doing/ By the length of a sidewalk cigarette butt/ Born with an aching wanderlust/ Embedded in his gut/ Hounded, beaten, laughed at, broke/ Chased out of every town/ With his walking stick scepter/ And his shredded coffee can crown/ The last of the hobo kings.”)
“Can’t Find the Way” stands in stark contrast to the nomadic lifestyles detailed in “Hobo Kings” and songs about Gauthier’s own odysseys, recounting the grueling voyage of Louisiana flood evacuees (and, by extension, the nature of life’s uncertainty). Here, she confirms the importance of home and community by describing the pain of their loss, as well as the excruciating limbo of not knowing what the immediate future holds. (“With nothing but our dreams/ And memories of who we’ve been/ Scattered forth like seeds/ At the mercy of the wind/ Another day, another night/ Another night, another day/ We want to go home/ We can’t find the way.”
The disc’s unifying title cut is a meditation that uses the twilight hours to symbolize life’s awkward and unsettling gray areas, the discomfort of which is effectively allayed by the song’s gentle, therapeutic sway. (“As the streetlights are starting to flicker to life/ They glow for a minute, then they get bright/ Fireflies light up, circle and spark/ There’s nothing really that you can do/ Put your hands in your pockets and try to get through/ The distance between the daylight and the dark.”)
Throughout the album, Gauthier unearths deep emotions by stripping away their outer coatings, the way one would peel away layers of lacquer on an old wooden floor. While some may prefer their music with more protective gloss, it’s the unvarnished grain of the original that Gauthier seeks—and finds—on Between Daylight and Dark.
Audio Clips
"Between Daylight and the Dark"
"Can't Find the Way"
"Last of the Hobo Kings"
"Snakebite"
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