Talk about a labor of love. Iris DeMent’s “Workin’ on a World,” her seventh album, is a product six years in the making and comes eight years after her most recent album. The revered singer-songwriter, recipient of the Americana Music Trailblazer Award in 2017, has never shied away from speaking her mind. Yet rather than preach or bring us into a morass of collective despair, she opts for the optimistic path on this effort, 13 anthems or love songs, urging us to connect with each other, to rise above the divisiveness, to be compassionate in the face of pain and struggle. It almost seems like a giant “make good” after years of many beautiful, but melancholic efforts. Even when the subjects here are troubling, the music remains upbeat, as if to say, if nothing else can, let my music lend a helping hand.
The title track sets the tone for the album with this chorus – “I’m workin’ on a world I may never see / Joinin’ forces with the warriors of love / Who came before and will follow you and me / I get up in the mornin’ knowing I’m privileged to be / Workin’ on a world I may never see.” DeMent’s songs have long had the hymnal element of Southern gospel, and perhaps this one is someone informed from the classic “Working on a Building.” DeMent realizes that she won’t be around to witness the fruits of what today’s activists may ultimately build but she is intent on urging them forward as reflected in the rollicking piano and blaring horns track producer Richard Bennett places behind her signature vocals. Bennett is one of three producers of the album, along with Jim Rooney and Pieta Brown, the latter given credit for pushing the album forward and its title.
Similarly, “Going Down to Sing in Texas” shuffles briskly even though DeMent certainly exudes empathy to the victims of gun violence whether it be Uvalde or elsewhere, and broadens to scope by celebrating folks that speak out against tyranny and pay the unfortunate price. She summons the salient voices of social justice in “How Long” and “Warriors of Love,” Martin Luther King in the former and both John Lewis and Rachel Corrie in the latter. Like those voices, it often seems as if DeMent is that voice in the church singing to us over the church-like organ we hear in “The Sacred Now” – “see these walls/let’s bring ‘em down/it’s not a dream, it’s the sacred now.” “Mahalia” stakes out similar sentiments.
DeMent’s high timbre and Arkansas accent combine to make it unlike almost any voice we’ve heard. We know that the late John Prine loved it, but it could certainly be an acquired taste for many others. Nonetheless, its unpolished nature undeniably makes it a powerful instrument that runs the gamut from a wail to whispered intimacy. Her urgent plea “Let Be Your Jesus” with her wavering, quivering voice is almost so eerily direct, she could be speaking to us from inside a confessional. Some listeners may feel it’s a bit too much, reacting with a notion of “thanks for your concern but I’m not in that kind of dire need.”
While politics are certainly on her mind and is the catalyst for the hopeful views she espouses, she does go personal in certain songs as well, addressing loss in the piano ballad “I Won’t Tell You Why” and the overt plea for empathy in the tender “Say a Good Word.” The closer, “Waycross, Georgia” also carries a biblical character, meeting a certain person along the way who represents the end of the journey – wrapping issues of mortality, loss, and even suicide into another powerful hymn with ebullient, driving music.
The album is one powerful, deep dose of positivity, purposely overstated, with the whole bigger than any single song. Whether any of us need the tidal wave of healing power DeMent summons may be debatable but the album brings an indelible, lasting quality that few others achieve.
