Friendly Folk-Pop

By Beth Winegarner

If you've heard of Mare Winningham, chances are it's because you've seen her in movies such as "Wyatt Earp" or "Georgia" (with Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Although she's made other records, Lonesomers is her first on a label that isn't doomed. After seeing her in "Georgia" (in which she sang and played guitar), Razor & Tie -- home also of Dar Williams and the Nields -- picked her up. Similar to albums by these labelmates, Lonesomers is a lightly sketched, deeply felt collection. Winningham's work is lyrical, playful and sad -- a friendly mixture of folk and pop with an occasional country flourish.

The album opens with "Miles," a song that draws the usual parallels between road trips and relationships. "It's a longer way we're taking home/There's a cloudless day, then there's a storm/But I never say that we are lost." Then there's a down-home rendition of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time" with a barroom diva's throaty wail and plenty of boogie-woogie piano. In "Are You Smiling?" she pays tribute to Joni Mitchell with chiming acoustic guitar and a story about two lovers travelling together by motorcycle across California.

But Winningham does best with ballads. In "Silver Bullets" she sings about the age-old struggle between love of adventure and attachment to domestic comfort. "The sun descends in streams of gold in the Valley of the Moon/My ass is in the same seat from the autumn until the beginning of June/Except when silver bullets fly and spirit me away." "Quietly Tonight" marries Winningham's pretty voice with acoustic and electric guitars. The slide-work and religious allusions in this song would make it at home on country stations. On "Lonesomers" people get together to be alone. "I'm dying for the solitude/Can I take the test?/I better learn to be alone/If I'm ever going to learn to rest."

Then there's "Wake Up," a bouncy tune that deals with the temptation to hide one's mistakes and to sleep through the bad parts of life. At other times Winningham's peppy side can be downright annoying, as on "World That I Love," which sounds like something from the "Partridge Family."

Overall, though, this album has the sound of a backyard jam or a kitchen-table-recording -- familiar in a mostly good way, imperfect, and yet companionable.

This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise