On Mark Erelli's latest album, Hope & Other Casualties (March 2006 on Signature Sounds Recordings), he raises the bar with an unapologetic and timeless collection of deeply personal and affecting songs. Effortlessly balancing songs of love and protest, resignation and redemption, Hope is a brave and searingly honest tour de force which cements Erelli’s reputation as one of today’s best young singer/songwriters.
Erelli proudly wears his heart on his sleeve, weaving tales of honest and true passion. But unlike the flotilla of “emo” currently controlling the airwaves, Erelli is not afraid to turn his eyes outward, and Hope is a committed artistic response to the questions and worries familiar to all of us today. Hope began with "The Only Way," a passionate declaration of life in post-9/11 America, written soon after the event. A long incubation followed, during which Erelli recorded two albums, toured internationally, and settled in Portland Maine. He taught himself to play steel guitar and mandolin, and experimented with western swing stylings on 2004’s Hillbilly Pilgrim, and roots music on The Memorial Hall Recordings in 2002.
All that while, Hope simmered.
Recorded slowly during a year of rough-spun basement sessions with producer Lorne Entress (Erelli played eleven instruments, Entress seven) Hope has Erelli's fingerprints all over it. It is an urgently personal album by a musician who finds that he can't put away the news when he turns off the television. His own problems coexist against the backdrop of global dilemmas. The album mixes meditations on Iraq and poverty ("Seeds of Peace," "Here & Now") with painfully poignant ballads about our debt to future generations (“Passing Through”).
Hope & Other Casualties is not a straight-laced political testament. Erelli wraps his message in soulful singing and catchy hooks, with an upbeat, rootsy pulse that make you want to listen. There is no resisting the slinky, Marvin Gaye-style croon about driving home through bad weather to spend time with his girl ("Snowed In," the first single). Covering Ron Sexsmith's radically accepting "God Loves Everyone," he sounds like Ryan Adams on a Sunday morning.
In troubled times, we hunger for meaning. "I don't have any answers," he says. "We are all grappling with these issues, and this is my personal struggle to keep my head up in times like these." As he sings passionately in "The Only Way” — “I'm too young to be so cynical, too old to be naïve.”
Maybe it's not cool to be earnest, and hope might not be hip. But as we all walk through our own lives, ignoring a subway bombing or a hurricane or a war until the next newscast, sunk deep in our jobs and relationships—beyond all the celebrity bling, reality TV, and other commercial distractions—Mark Erelli speaks to us in our solitary, scared, shared selves.
