music
A few hundred people were drawn to the Gravity Lounge last Friday night by The Voice.
Iris DeMent, born in the northeast corner of Arkansas, burst onto the country/folk scene in 1992 with the album Infamous Angel, 11 songs sung in a toned-down version of The Voice. Over the years—whether because of evolution or calculation, it’s hard to say—The Voice has gotten even more distinctive. Dolly Parton, who’s no slouch when it comes to singing, would probably give her right arm (get that other image out of your mind) for DeMent’s authentic sound. Lifetimes of British and Irish and Appalachian and Southern DNA seem to crackle like an old record out from its core. It’s so crowded and complex that it’s almost dissonant. It elbows its way, tingling, all the way to your spine.
When, accompanying herself on the guitar, she sang the simple line, “I had a garden but my flowers died” (from “Easy’s Getting Harder Every Day”), I could feel the nutrients retreating from the soil. It actually hurt. Each time she sang the refrain from “When My Mornin’ Comes Around,” while accompanying herself on the piano, my throat gave birth to a tear and the liquid pellet shot up to my right duct. Not since Cheap Trick brushed off the tepid applause and did an opening-act encore back in 1980 have I cried like that at a concert.
Country/folk? Personal anthems like “When My Mornin’ Comes Around” and “My Life” involve far more hymn than twang, so to speak. Nonautobiographical songs like “Easy’s Getting Harder Every Day” and “Our Town,” not only in their lyrics, but also in the way DeMent presents them, evoke the famous anecdote about jazz legend Charlie Parker: When someone asked him why he liked to choose country songs on the jukebox, he said, “Listen to the stories.”
All of it came off like a dream in the intimate Gravity space (“I like this place,” she said. “I’ve seen ’em all, you know”), but also because she often treated fans of her records to fresh versions of her songs, apparently improvising tempos not so radically new as to be unpleasing.
“I look just about average, anyway,” she said after apologizing that some rows couldn’t see her at the piano. The irony—there’s nothing less average than DeMent’s talent and spirit—produced a burst of laughter like a gasp of delight from the audience.