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Richard Shindell's song writing calibre was established when his own "The Ballad of Mary Magdalen" sat with no joins showing alongside writers like Michael Stipe, Ron Sexsmith, Julie Miller, Greg Brown and Robert Earl Keen on the Cry Cry Cry covers album. Indeed the last track, "Magdalen" stood out and was the only original song, as Shindell was one third Cry Cry Cry, Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplansky being the other wondrous voices on what was one of the success stories of 1998. Indeed that album has pushed Shindell and his new album into the spotlight and the light reveals that "Mary Magdalen" was no fluke. This guy can write. As a collection it packed with a cloakroom of hooks to hang review paragraphs upon. There's that baritone boom-of-conviction voice, there's his multitalented mate and producer Larry Campbell who plays dobro, pedal steel, fiddle, citern and mandolin as well as an array of guitars. There's the harmony vocals of the aforementioned Cryers. There's the Buddy and Julie Miller cover "My Love Will Follow You" as well as a previously unrecorded Dar Williams song "Calling the Moon." However it's Shindell's own songs that glisten in the light. Blindingly brilliant. This man is no introspective confessional writer. He is all stories and situations. A new born baby ("Spring") and memories of an old house (Wisteria) are universal experiences and you are thinking I could have written that and then you find out you can't. Mostly however you can see why Shindell and Dar Williams are mates. Quirk and surprise. There's the man waiting for the storm, with his family safe up north, his possessions on the lawn and doors and windows open! ("Waiting for the Storm." There's the traffic jam epic, filled with greed and selfishness, hedonism and road rage. Indeed every twenty-first century social ailment raises their ugly head. All because a nun on her way to bring peace, love and healing to those in the state penitentiary gets a flat tire and the nation proves that we are much more Levite and priest than Samaritan ("Transit"). And God is sometimes there and sometimes very evidently not there as in "You Stay Here" when a refugee tells his wife to stay as he heads out in search of bread and coal and work and guns and God of whom he says, "I'll go look for God/Not so hard/cause I know where he's not/ I will bring him back with me/Make him listen-make him see." It's a perfect companion for Welsh singer Martyn Joseph's "The Good In Me Is Dead" and gives a hint to Shindell's previous life as a seminary student. He calls himself as a "Misanthropic ex-seminarian lapsed-Buddhist Agnostic for Jesus" and there are prayers and confessions and hope and healing. There is transcendence in the midst of the every day struggles of life. It is an album for constant enjoyment and study and depth charges. Steve Stockman 3/17/2000
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