Mellencamp Reflects On Our Country

Life, Death, Love and Freedom
John Mellencamp
(Hear Music)

Just 18 months after his previous album, John Mellencamp is back. And there’s not a car commercial in sight. Not unless Chevrolet plans to roll out a Recession SUV or an Intolerance sub-compact for the 2009 model year, that is.

Mellencamp’s 2007 disc, “Freedom’s Road,” featured the catchy (and now ubiquitous, thanks to Chevy) “Our Country.” Mellencamp’s latest, “Life, Death, Love and Freedom,” doesn’t contain anything nearly as jingle-worthy, but that might well be to his benefit. He’s always had a lot to say, but sometimes Mellencamp’s message got lost in big choruses and hummable melodies. The end result: songs such as “Pink Houses” blaring from the PA at campaign stops by the type of politicians Mellencamp was criticizing in the first place.

“Life, Death, Love and Freedom” is unlikely to leave anyone confused. Mellencamp and producer T Bone Burnett have crafted a 14-song set of richly textured country blues and folk. The lyrics, which express feelings about aging, alienation, death and current affairs, don’t get lost in the mix. Mellencamp, who also has been known to work in oils, doesn’t always paint a pretty picture:

An all white jury hides the executioner’s face
See how we are me and you
Everyone here needs to know their place
Let’s keep this blackbird hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

Co-opt that, John McCain.

As “Jena” illustrates, the cocky rocker who proclaimed himself the “Little Bastard” early in his career still is more than willing to court controversy by speaking his mind. Mellencamp always has seemed confident in his ability to speak for the common people, too, even if he’s telling us things we might not want to hear. I mean, is anyone outside of hip-hop even writing songs about Louisiana’s controversial, racially charged Jena 6 case?

Mellencamp’s topical songs, such as “Jena” and “Troubled Land,” don’t necessarily reflect on any current presidential candidate. They do, though, hold up a mirror to the times. On “Life, Death, Love and Freedom,” his gradual transformation from scrappy heartland rocker to elder statesman with a six-string is complete, leaving Mellencamp cast as Woody Guthrie with better production.

Sonically, “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” starts stripped nearly to the bone. Mellencamp, joined by Andy York on second acoustic guitar and Troy Kinnett on melodica, wearily weaves through “Longest Days,” a meditation on the fleeting nature of life.” The 57-year-old Mellencamp spends a good part of this disc coming to grips with mortality and loneliness. Sometimes he speaks with resignation and sometimes he sings with defiance, both approaches delivered within a sparse, bluesy style. As the famous song says, dark was the night, and cold was the ground. Neither has changed.

Mellencamp’s self-produced 2003 covers disc, “Trouble No More,” also was rooted in the blues, but the sounds were much brighter and more straightforward. “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” is murkier, a reasonable reflection of America’s unsettled state. Burnett burnishes Mellencamp’s songs with finely woven layers of fuzzy guitars, clean guitars, brushed drums and subtly shimmering organ, while other instruments occasionally enter the mix. He’s become the go-to producer for tasteful roots music since his production of the “O Brother, Where Art Thou” soundtrack dominated the Grammy Awards in 2002. (Though Burnett wasn’t too shabby before that.) The sound of “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” will do nothing to quell the demand. Burnett and the other backing musicians lay back, cooking with a steady bubble rather than a roiling boil.

The first single from “Life, Death, Love and Freedom,” “My Sweet Love,” is an upbeat love song with harmony vocals from Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild that almost seems out of place among the moodier fare. The gritty update on Buddy Holly is infectious, though, and could bring Mellencamp back to the forefront despite the absence of radio as he knew it in his prime hit-making years. The production of the song, especially the pounding of the tom-toms, sounds similar to “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)” from “Raising Sand,” the full-length Alison Krauss/Robert Plant collaboration produced by Burnett last year. If “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” is as successful as the Krauss/Plant disc was, Mellencamp’s messages will be heard by a large audience – Chevy commercials or not.

Despite hefty doses of pessimism, or at least bleak realism, Mellencamp tries to close “Life, Death, Love and Freedom” on an optimistic note. “For the Children” comes from a man who has discovered too few answers for his years, leaving him to simply say, “All I can do here is my best / And be thankful for what we’ve got.” In the closing track, the singer hopes the up-and-coming generations can find a way to sing “A Brand New Song.”

In the end, Mellencamp can’t say it any plainer than that.