Mary Gauthier, "Between Daylight and Dark" (Lost Highway): The title of Mary Gauthier's fifth album, "Between Daylight and Dark,"
implies that the Louisiana-born songwriter will explore the tension between heading into the light and sinking into darkness. But this time out she focuses her concise, poetic lyrics on the midnight hours of desperate souls.
The opening "Snakebit" sets the tone; the song's subject holds a suicide gun in her hand while acknowledging, "Everything worth holding slips through my fingers." Elsewhere, she portrays transient people fighting their impulses to run from love and trouble ("I Ain't Leavin'," "Before You Leave") as well as examining those who return to the same prison year after year to visit loved ones during the holidays ("Thanksgiving").
Working for the first time with producer Joe Henry, who substitutes dusky atmosphere in place of the blue grooves of her past work, Gauthier keeps the arrangements more uniformly somber than on her previous albums. The flickers of grace and joy found on her previous album, "Mercy Now," as well as its moments of energy and fierceness, are missed on "Between Daylight and Dark."
Nevertheless, Gauthier confirms that she's among the best singer-songwriters of her generation, especially when it comes to illustrating ramblers, derelicts and anyone who struggles with demons in the night.
CHECK OUT THIS TRACK: On "Same Road," Gauthier candidly confronts a lover, saying she's been through the fire before but she's not planning on returning. Set to a slow, achingly beautiful melody, Gauthier sings, "I'll fight to keep you with me, but I won't let you take me back down."
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(more) - 09 19 2007 8:53AM