Imagine for a moment, if you will, an old house in the deep south. And imagine sitting on the porch of that house one quiet evening looking out upon a bayou, maybe, or a lake, or perhaps a field. Imagine watching the humidity rise up like steam off the water or the fog drifting in and out of the tall grass like a spirit. Look beyond the field to where the birds are rising in clusters out of the thickets next to the weeping willows. Walk to the edge of the porch and lean on the railing and inhale. Close your eyes and take it all in. Wait a moment. Wait as long as you need.

Now imagine watching the sun set in the distance. Imagine the fireflies dancing with the mosquitoes. Hear that? The sound of a thousand cicadas all around, calling one to the other. Perhaps you drink a cool glass of lemonade or sweet tea or a cool lager; perhaps you would pack your pipe with your freshest North Carolina tobacco; or perhaps you would simply sit and stare and let the place speak and be and do. A cool breeze just rushed through the trees and set your ice-cubes a-rattlin.’

But now imagine that you would begin to sing a song, at first softly like a whisper, like a response to the world about. Something old and native to the place. Something about the people who have always lived here and go on living here. Something earthy, something to go along with the wind.

But now you begin to sing louder. It begins to rise up from somewhere deep inside you, like a memory does. You might sing a story of your grandparents,a song to your lover, from the point-of-view of the place itself. You decide. Sing it out. As loudly or as softly as you’d like. Now you are done. Take a sip. Sit down. It’s the cicada’s turn again.

These are the kind of songs that South Carolina based singer-songwriter Mark Mathis sings and these are the kind of soulful, living moments that his music evokes. His most recent album, “We Both Was Young,” is a rich tapestry of folk ballads and lyrical musings that addresses the longings and murmurs that rise up inside oneself when one comes in contact with the world about. In other words, these songs that are about more than the individual.

While some have compared Mathis to Pedro the Lion, Iron and Wine, and even Tom Petty (and rightly so to an extent) I see Mathis as more like Joe Henry and Mary Gauthier (and even Over the Rhine, Sam Phillips, and Tom Waits). While his voice does, at times, sound like David Bazan’s, his music and poetic lyrics are more reminiscent of the folk-noir stylings of Henry and co. However, to limit him even thusly would be doing his talent a great dis-service. “We Once Was Young” does not fit into any easy category.

In many ways these eleven songs serve as a collective ode to another time, a more ancient time. These songs are rich with musical characteristics borne in New Orleans and Memphis streets, on farms in southern towns, in the Appalachian mountains. This album is jazzy, bluesy, blue-grassy, folksy and country all at once (true country - the Hank Williams, Johnny Cash kind of country). There are harmonicas and banjos and the rest. There are songs about crops and fires; songs about family politics (including family-in law poltics)and southern politics (including racism); songs about falling in love and some about staying in love.

But Mathis knows these are not easy issues to comprehend and thankfully he doesn’t pretend that they are. He realizes that life is full of both joy and sadness, successes and failures, life and death. Each song beautifully delves into the deepest parts of what it means to be alive: all the mysteries and paradoxes and transcendence.

Some of the songs, like “A Sharecropper Takes A Colored Wife” and “Prenup” (which are banjo driven, blue-grass style folk songs), are about the possibilities of the love between two people to transcend the failures of prejudices and the past. While other songs, like “Your Eyes,” are lovely romantic ballads to the singer’s beloved that celebrate the power of the beloved to change the lover.

What makes the album truly powerful, though, is it’s dedication to the hopeful image of the redeemed and“new man.” Indeed, Mathis recognizes the great power of redemption both in individuals’ lives as well as in relationships and communities. But to fully believe in redemption one must also recognize that we all are failures from time to time. In “Oh King” the singer tells of his own “filth” and fallen-ness. But the song shifts gears and the voice shifts and we hear the merciful words of Christ on the cross begging his Father to be merciful to the ones who nailed him there. In “New Day” the songwriter is thankful that despite bitterness he has deep inside he has an opportunity to start over and let all that go.

I think, though, that Mathis is getting at something deep and mystical in this album. That redemption of which he speaks? That new start? He seems to be asserting - beautifully and poetically, I must repeat - that as Wendell Berry once wrote, “whatever happens/ those who have learned/ to love one another/ have made their way/ to the lasting world/ and will not leave/ whatever happens.”

Mathis references numerous times a beloved departing from a lover and the lover’s world becoming much more dark: in the other words, when the beloved is gone the lover’s world is full of less life. By the cynical listener this can be taken as romantic mumbo-jumbo, I suppose; the stuff of pop songs and high school. But there is something more here. Something more transcendent. A sense that through the mystery of relationship - both between people, and between people and the world, and between God and all of the above - redemption and peace are possible. As in the seasons of nature there is renewal, so in the nature of relationship there is newness.

So, friends, join Mark Mathis on the front porch for a drink and listen for a while. And when it hits you, sing a little bit. The cicadas won’t mind.

David Kern enjoys southern gothic literature, folk music, and green tea. Mythical figures intrigue him and he has an unnatural affection for cinema. He blogs about film and music at www.besidethequeue.wordpress.com

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Album Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.