John Mellencamp was misplaced because the twenty first century started, collaborating in curious duets and apparent sentiment. It was as if he’d run out of hats to put on, after rising as a pop singer, shifting to heartland rock then deeper into rootsy Americana and at last tracing again into muscular rock. Then Mellencamp introduced 2003’s Bother No Extra, an album of blues and folks covers, and that appeared to place a interval on the paperwork for his inventive chapter.
However a humorous factor occurred on the best way by these songs by Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie and Memphis Minnie: John Mellencamp discovered his voice. Not his outdated voice; his subsequent characters have been working dead-end jobs contained in the Tastee Freeze, as an alternative of constructing out round again. He started to confront the problems that plague us, the errors that hang-out us and the individuals we let down alongside the best way. The music matched this extra critical flip, strum for strum. It was darker, slower, by turns extra harmful and eerily lonesome. His subsequent six albums, starting with 2007’s blunt and intriguing Freedom’s Highway, have been usually revelatory. Mellencamp’s voice, like his songs, was older, scarred – however these imperfections solely gave all of it extra gravity.
Then he returned with 2022’s Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, an embittered post-quarantine report that usually traded the righteous indignation and insightful fear from these earlier LPs for a dreary form of pessimism. It was exhausting to know if this was merely a grievous response to an period surrounded by disruption and demise, or the following flip in a profession marked by so many. Was John Mellencamp turning into a grumpy outdated man? Both manner, the report bombed, turning into his first in 15 years to overlook the High 20 when it stalled at a paltry No. 196.
The fairly ominously named follow-up Orpheus Descending would not precisely bode effectively. Then there’s the subject material, which ranges from America’s complicated relationship with weapons (“Hey God”) and the struggling of the unhoused (“The Eyes of Portland”) to our rising nationwide division (“Amen”) and the self-explanatory “The So-Known as Free.” But shards of daylight minimize by the clouds, in a reminder of the willpower and hope that bolstered one of the best of his turn-of-the-2010s materials. “Orpheus Descending” guarantees that “there’s at all times a fuckin’ manner,” whereas “Lightning and Luck” is constructed on a basis of perseverance, regardless of all of it. The narrator in “One Extra Trick” could also be dealing with a noose, however he is going out with an impish gleam in his eye.
Even when “Excellent World” laments romantic missteps, it is with out a hint of self-pity. The music right here additionally typically kicks up a heel, thanks in no small strategy to the presence of ace fiddle participant Lisa Germano. Lastly, on the album-closing “Spine,” Mellencamp guarantees, “I will attempt to do higher with what time I’ve left.” It is Orpheus Descending‘s cause for being.
Rock’s 100 Most Underrated Albums
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