Alright Now

Album review

Since he launched his own label, North Road Records, David Mallett has been sure to keep albums in the pipeline regularly. But of his last two, Midnight on the Water (2006) was a live album, and The Fable True (2007) was a spoken word effort in which he recited passages from Henry David Thoreau's The Maine Woods. So Alright Now is his first album of all-new studio recordings in six years, that is, since 2003's Artist in Me. This is actually the longest the 58-year-old singer/songwriter has gone between new collections since his debut LP, David Mallett, in 1978. He may have taken the time to reassess, or his worldview may have evolved somewhat. Or maybe it's the world that's changed. In any case, this is an unusually lively and hopeful collection of songs for a songwriter and performer who has often been far gloomier. Not that he's become starry eyed, you understand. In "Don't Ask Me Now," he returns to a metaphor from his most popular composition, "Garden Song," noting that weeds sometimes grow right next to roses. But, as he puts it in another of several songs that merge opposites, "North Meets South," "Our believin's bigger than our doubt." Such guarded optimism is a long time coming for an artist who gazes stoically from the black-and-white photograph on the album cover, his hair and beard now all white, his forehead lined, his eyes deep-set, wearing a work-shirt and cradling his guitar. Mallett was never young in his songwriting sensibility, but now he may have grown into the old sage he always wanted to be, and that enables him to be less depressed and more rueful. After all, he's old enough now that, when he writes a love song ("Beautiful") it's about a father's love of his daughter (or is it a granddaughter?). The somewhat happier tone of his lyrics is supported by an unusually lively set of musical arrangements that rely far more on electric guitar than is typical for a David Mallett album. The musical shift is heralded upfront with the lead-off song, the sardonic "Ten Men," a gutbucket blues-rock shuffle that sounds like it escaped from one of Bob Dylan's later albums. Thereafter, the guitars twang and chime, notably on "Innocent Time," making this one of Mallett's most musically ambitious albums. It's always especially rewarding when an artist with such a clear eye for the dark side of things chooses to head for the light.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo