​Mavis Staples (from the album Sad and Beautiful World

​Mavis Staples (from the album Sad and Beautiful World

​Mavis Staples (from the album Sad and Beautiful World available on Anti- Records) (by Danny McCloskey)
 
What can be said about an American treasure like Mavis Staples? The year was 1960 when music from Mavis Staples was first introduced to the public. As part of the legendary band, The Staples Singers, Mavis, her siblings (sisters Cleotha and Yvonne, brother Pervis), and father Roscoe ‘Pops’ Staples first rose under the power of the Gospel music where they developed a signature style. A lot was going on the in 1960’s, and The Staples Singers felt their own gospel was better represented as a supportive guide for the growing activism that championed a diverse community whose voices existed in a vacuum of silence as well as railing against a war that saw many low-income young men and women dying for an unpopular cause. Random solo efforts appeared, beginning with the 1969 release of the self-titled Mavis Staples. In 2010, Mavis Staples began actively releasing solo albums, more than a few produced by Wilco frontman and Roots music champion, Jeff Tweedy. So, with her new release, Sad and Beautiful World, Mavis Staples has no need to reinvent a style that has been working successfully for decades. What makes the release stand out is the commitment she brings to each song, or, as album producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Nathaniel Rateliff) states, ‘I remember being utterly floored by the conviction and power she had in her voice’.
 
Conviction and power are the ingredients that make every album release from Mavis Staples sound fresh, as evidenced on Sad and Beautiful World as she collects tracks from the great American songbook spanning the past seventy years, a count that is nearly as long as her own career, and partners the tracks with originals in the song cycle. The title track is a slow march that stands tall as it balances the good and bad, the yin and yang, of the planet Earth. The song, written by Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse), joins Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” as the song proceeds with the similar funereal steps as it stands up with the pride of commitment to a cause. Alison Russell, along with co-writer Andrew Hozier-Byrne, lend their shout-out to the battered brilliance of the “Human Mind” while Mavis Staples borrows a cut from fellow 60’s political Rock’n’Soul compatriot Curtis Mayfield with “We Got to Have Peace’. Sad And Beautiful World slowly unravels the hopes of Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed” and shuffles to the island rhythms of Kevin Morby’s “Beautiful Strangers”.
 
Producer Brad Cook reverse-engineered the recording, creating a basic drum and piano backing for the voice of Mavis Staples. Once her vocals were recorded, the musical pieces became the framework for the mighty presence of her voice. Fellow fan musicians add to the tracks on San and Beautiful World as Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Jeff Tweedy, Derek Trucks, MJ Lenderman, and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), among others, lend their voices. Fear, and the bright light of promise, dance from the past and into the future when Mavis Staples enters the album on a rushed rhythm of Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan’s “Chicago”. Keyboards begin the slow walk over Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ opinions on “Hard Times” while Mavis Staples shows the exit to the album on the advice of “Everybody Needs Love”, a tune written by Muscles Shoals Rhythm Section alumni, Eddie Hinton. (by Danny McCloskey)
 
Listen and buy the music of Mavis Staples from AMAZON
 
Please go to the Mavis Staples website for more purchase and artist information