Mary Gauthier The Foundling

Mary Gauthier's (pron. Go-shay) 2010 release The Foundling starts out with the titular song, slow-waltz style; and has more in common with European cafe culture with its soft accordion and Italian folk arrangements, than what you think of as Americana singer-songwriter music.

This does not keep it from being any less visceral or poignant as this concept album is a rumination on being orphaned and searching some 40 years later for a birth mother. Sometimes coming off like a humorless John Prine (which is not a bad thing at all), by the time you get to Mama Here, Mama Gone you'll get the gist of this achingly beautiful singer-songwriter's muse.

Mary Gauthier is a rare singer-songwriter whose original and personal confessions become a nice contrast to this genre's usual observation stories. Not that the greats don't have personal and confessional songs but they don't always make whole albums about it without sounding maudlin. Goodbye starts out with the lyric 'I was born a bastard child in Louisiana.' Now that is honest.

It would be easy to compare Mary Gauthier to her fellow Louisiana contemporary Lucinda Williams, but I have to quit doing that. Primarily because they are really quite different and certainly matured differently as singer-songwriters. You are much more likely to hear New Orleans music gumbos or European folk idioms with Mary Gauthier than with Lucinda, who has chosen to pursue the more electric pursuits of rock & roll or roots rock for all its worth in order to mainstream herself in a genre she helped popularize some time ago with the brilliant Car Wheels on a Gravel Road album. And there is nothing wrong with that. Dylan is now doing the same thing and has made some of the best rock albums of this folk career here lately.

Mary though lets that musical melting pot of Louisiana really influence this album. Soft Cajun violins, New Orleans brass band and acoustic guitar permeate. It really makes the album haunting and so holds up her participating in her songs rather than writing about observations. She talks about herself in a deeply personal level without sounding like she is talking to her therapist (as is the common habit of so many of her male counterparts...Ellis Paul & John Gorka come to mind).

To make her abandonment legitimatized and forgiven she introduces a nice rock & roll style drum beat against an acoustic backdrop for the heartbreaking Blood is Blood.

'I got a heart that's ripped

I got a heart that's torn

I got a hole in me like I was never born'

The chorus is 'blood is blood and blood don't wash away'

Within the record she finally finds her birth mother and I won't give away the whole story in this excellent songscape that plays like a black and white indie movie that might not have an ending you expected, but you will appreciate it and will not be left without hope.