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If you're tired of
rock's ever present machismo, then here's an album that presents a
much welcomed breath of fresh air. Mireille Mathlener offers breezy
country-rock, drawing you to some late night Tequila-soaked smokey
honky-tonk bar or perhaps some lonely dust-bowl stop-over from a
Kerouac road novel. Far from the burgeoning stockpile of jaded
country though, Mireille Mathlener offers a modern and melodic take
on Americana, as seen from a European perspective. I say 'European'
because Mireille originally hails from The Netherlands, and is now
based here in Bristol.
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Reflective lyrics
draw on wry observations from the book of life-experience.
Contemplative tales of loss, disillusion and importantly, survival,
map out Mireille's scathing critiques of past encounters, presumably
autobiographical. Reassuringly though, her heart-opening narratives
come without the off-putting bitterness and wallowing self-pity that
so often leads solo singer-songwriters down the weary path of woeful
self-indulgence. Mireille's songs, whilst borne from sadness,
cunningly fill the listener with a genuine sense of optimism and
hope. 'So much for Superman' is the perfect title for an album that
does exactly what it says on the tin - revealing a personal voyage
of emotional rescue and self-healing, an embodiment of womanly
empowerment, liberating itself from the clutches of life's (mostly
male) let downs.
Musically, this
album has strength in well-structured chord arrangements, which
through the bare-bones studio production, is allowed to come over
with ease. Indeed, instrumentally, the album is focussed entirely
around a single acoustic guitar backed with a light, unobtrusive
accompaniment hinged low in the mix. Each song is augmented by a
different instrument in turn - from the weeping e-bow on the
downbeat 'Night Sets In', the bluegrass style violin on the
boot-stomping 'Pleasantville' to the mouth-watering string
arrangement on 'So Much For Being Neighbourly'. To round things off,
Mireille, leaves you with a climax offering food for thought. The
closing track 'Stealing Horses' wraps up the lyrical sentiments very
nicely, filling the listener with a sense of release and
soul-healing, all set to a guitar-hook-to-die-for slice of
simplistic songwriting majesty.
Reference points
to Aimee Mann and Chrissie Hynde have already been forthcoming, but
I suspect Mireille Mathlener has the dark sides of Patti Smith and
PJ Harvey in her record collection too. The humble Bristol skyline
might not provide enough rocky mountain panoramas or open buffalo
plains to make this album the soundtrack to that aforementioned
Kerouac nomadic road novel, but this album might at least make the
perfect playlist for the morning after the night before. |
