CD Review

A tribute to wounded New Orleans, Shawn Mullins’ latest finds him back in a familiar mode—spinning yarns with a guitar and his comforting soot-and-gravel voice. He reprises a role he played for most of his music playing career; that of onlooker, the conduit of divine ennui.

Mullins’ last record, Beneath the Velvet Sun, seemed to pitch him into an overproduced no man’s land. With a couple of exceptions, the songs seemed almost sterile: blending in with the white noise of those trying desperately for airplay. The success of “Lullaby” from the album Soul’s Core seemed to make Mullins a flavor of the moment, and it was almost as if Velvet Sun were an experiment to test how he could be marketed. The songs just didn’t sound as much like him.

Long an independent musician, it appears that Mullins is back to those sovereign, me-and-my-guitar roots--albeit on a new major label (Vanguard Records). The songs on this disc are mostly those of the troubadour he’s always been; the storyteller holding court in the Big Easy and spouting tales of loose women and wandering personalities. He keeps things catchy—the songs all flow well into each other and alight on heartbreak and peregrination with songbird ease. In particular, the track “Beautiful Wreck” is a likable pop tune with a honky-tonk backdrop- an anthem of a socially dispossessed muse and doting drunk in a smoky bar. Lyrics like “There’s a tavern on the corner called the Milky Way/and you look so at home there it makes me afraid” paint just the right picture in your mind; you can practically smell the stale beer and quiet desperation.

The album was named for the New Orleans studio where it was recorded, and with the collective wound of Katrina still fresh, serves as both salve and tribute to city’s slow rebirth. The same seems to be true of Mullins himself—he’s enjoying a revival of sorts: new record on a new label, born again into the music he was made to make.

For more info see: shawnmullins.com