(BMG)After her Broadway success with Hadestown, the indie folk artist returns with a set of lowkey but polished melodic gems, boasting sharp lyrics and striking emotional gear-changes
As the 2000s turned into the 2010s, Anaïs Mitchell seemed an easy artist to peg. Her career was plodding along in unassuming style, somewhere in the region where country and folk meet alt-rock. She had well-reviewed albums released on her own label, sessions for the Bob Harris show on Radio 2 and NPR’s Tiny Desk, support slots with Bon Iver. That was before she developed a Greek mythology-themed song from her 2007 album The Brightness into a small-scale musical called Hadestown, which turned into an album featuring Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco – a sort of Pitchfork-friendly equivalent of the all-star concept albums that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice used to drum up interest in Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. That begat an off-Broadway production, which in turn begat a Broadway production, which won eight Tony awards.
Its unexpected success leaves Mitchell in a curious position. A feted Broadway writer, she is apparently planning another musical, but her eponymous seventh solo album – her first of original material in 10 years – sees her picking up where she left off as a singer-songwriter. Or more-or-less: the success of Hadestown means there’s substantially more media interest than before, and her cottage industry label Wilderland has been junked for a deal with BMG. But that notwithstanding, Anaïs Mitchell is an album for which the adjective “unassuming” might have been invented.