Mary Gauthier
Between Daylight and Dark
(Lost Highway)
John Metzger's #15 album for 2007
First Appeared in The Music Box, September 2007, Volume 14, #9
Written by John Metzger
Tue September 18, 2007, 06:00 AM CDT
It’s highly unlikely that Mary Gauthier will ever be a household name; she spends far too much time examining the darkened shadows of her heart and soul to catch on with the masses. Nevertheless, since cleaning up her act and joining the Lost Highway family, she has become a rising star within the roots-music scene, where she has garnered glowing reviews from every corner of its wide expanses. All anyone who remains unfamiliar with her work really needs to know, however, is this simple fact: Bob Dylan hand-picked a track from Mercy Now to play on his radio program. His ringing endorsement alone ought to signal that a closer inspection of Gauthier’s work is warranted, and the stunning, career-best performance that she gives on her latest effort Between Daylight and Dark undeniably will convince even her biggest skeptics that, as an artist, she has arrived fully.
A Louisiana native, Gauthier sings with a twang-y, Southern accent, and her cracked vocals bleed with the sort of pain and anguish that immediately makes comparisons to Lucinda Williams inescapable. Like its predecessor, Between Daylight and Dark creeps along at a sluggish pace. For all of the people who populate her songs, the album is, in effect, a stark and personal account of Gauthier’s own existence, one that takes the most troubling trails through Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. Between Daylight and Dark is filled with slow ballads that are steeped in the blackness of night, and the half-spoken, half-sung fashion in which Gauthier delivers her lyrics conveys a sense of world-weariness that also connects her to John Prine and Steve Earle.
Throughout Between Daylight and Dark, Gauthier weaves together tales of murder (Snakebit), heartache (Before You Leave), and catastrophic loss (Can’t Find the Way), but where she once seemed to be mired in pessimistic resignation, she now allows the promise of hope to spring from deep within her compositions. The characters through which she lives may be battered and bruised, but no matter how hard life becomes for them, they all develop the strength to face their demons and survive. On Before You Leave — where Gauthier sings, "The darkness that shadowed you was mine/it was never yours at all/and the light behind your eyes that used to shine/gets brighter as you walk...away" — this means severing her ties to loved ones. Elsewhere, such as on the post-Katrina portrait Can’t Find the Way, it’s simply a matter of persevering, despite the odds. Ultimately, though, Gauthier realizes that she can’t escape her problems by running away from them, and on I Ain’t Leaving, she determinedly stands her ground while facing her own truths: "Broken on the inside/That’s what I used to say/And I pack my bags, raise a white flag, and drive away/I thought that’s what made me strong/But I was young, and I was wrong."
Tapping Joe Henry to produce Between Daylight and Dark proved to be a
wise move. He takes the album’s title literally by bathing each song in dusky
textures through which small rays of sunshine are allowed to filter. Although he
lends the collection an air of warm but somber intimacy, he also pierces the
mood with atmospheric touches that hover like ghosts, chasing Gauthier down the
dark alleyways that she conjures with her words. The rattling of a slide guitar
foreshadows the danger that lies within Snakebit, while on Same Road,
the percussion that lurks in the background evokes the sound of waves crashing
upon the shore. At times, it soothingly seems to provide a baptismal cleansing
of Gauthier’s wounds; at other moments, it ominously feels as if she will slip into the undertow and be lost forever beneath the sea. Elsewhere, the sound
of a pedal steel guitar sweeps through Soft Place to Land, offering
comfort as it guides her to salvation, and on Thanksgiving, the
claustrophobic scene of a prison’s confinement is leavened, at least
temporarily, by the arrival of the inmates’ families for a holiday meal. In the
end, Gauthier never really finds true, inner peace. Instead, the turmoil inside
her appears merely to reach a tentative standoff. Nevertheless, she, at least,
has come to appreciate what she has by gaining perspective on her life as well
as on her place in the world. 
Of Further Interest...
Various Artists - I'm Not There: Original Soundtrack
Between Daylight and Dark is available from Barnes & Noble.
To order, Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box