Ana's Mitchell joins Ani DiFranco and Andrew Bird on Righteous Babe Records with her label debut. Unfortunately, she does not quite follow in her acoustic guitar-toting predecessors' footsteps. "The Brightness" is a disappointment, especially coming from a record label with such prestigious releases. It is an album littered with bad poetry, unimaginative imagery and tedious guitar.
The first song, "Your Fonder Heart," holds some promise, with a prettily plucked guitar introduction. Mitchell's voice follows and grates against the guitar. She sings, "I want to see you half-lit in the half-light/ laughing with the whites of your dark eyes/ shining/ darkly," which exemplifies the triteness of the imagery evident in "The Brightness."
The chiaroscuro imagery requires little to no interpretation; this "you" in the song obviously has hurt the singer at some point, but she keeps going back to her lover. The title of the song implies that she knows another side of her lover that not many others do.
The first song develops another motif evident in the album: drama. "Your Fonder Heart" features two interludes with overdramatic "ooh"-ing that is almost painful for the listener. Furthermore, her voice has a certain quality analogous to a film actor that is obviously acting, failing to bring the character to life at all. It sounds strained, and lacks sincerity.
With the second song, "Of a Friday Night," Mitchell proves that she can play more than guitar on a piano ballad. However, the piano lines are simple and uninspired. She uses traditional folk lines like "and the big horns blowed and the pianos played/ and the music rose to the old man's ears," where the old man represents some politician and the music represents the desires of common people.
She creates the usual vague, nostalgic message by saying "I guess those were the olden days/ I guess those were the golden years," hearkening back to a simpler time. At the end of the song, she even sings the same verse twice, depicting the pervasive repetition and bland lyrics. Her voice, reaching the top of the crescendo at the end of the ballad, echoes the first song in that she increases the intensity, but leaves out the sincerity necessary for an artist to truly connect with the listener.
In the third and fourth songs on the album, she diversifies her sound by adding an organ and banjo, respectively. Just like the piano in the second song, these instruments are boring and seem a bit out of place, as if she just threw them in for a change.
The rest of the album seems to be the same story repeated seven times. The same pretty guitar lines over and over again, riddled with biblical references ("Song of the Magi") and Greek Mythology ("Hades and Persephone").
The eighth track on the album is a cover of Woody Guthrie's "Hobo's Lullaby." Initially, upon picking up the album and reading the track list on the back, many might be excited to hear a rendition of Guthrie's folk classic. Warning: Disappointment is soon to follow.
After hearing the first song on the album, by the eighth it is easy to predict what sort of terrible rendition it might be. She completely butchers "Hobo's Lullaby." One can almost hear Woody turning in his grave as one of his better songs is turned into a self-promoting exhibition of Mitchell's deep roots in folk music. The song is frankly out of place. It only attempts to prove that Mitchell has a right to create music because she is familiar with the history of the genre before it became extremely popular.
Overall, "The Brightness" elucidates the bleak future of folk music, where anyone who can finger pick and put a pen to paper is given a record contract. It is hard for an artist to release a solid album in a lyric-based genre when her poetry leaves something to be desired. Her voice might be bearable if she could write some different, imaginative poetry. This album, with its old, stale lyrics, has no other future than a dusty old top shelf.
