Sony
2004
Between Here And Gone
About This Album
Early in her career, songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter was marketed as a country artist, but strangely, it took ten albums before she would record in Nashville. On her first recording of new material since Time* Sex* Love* in 2001, Carpenter surrounds herself with old friends and new faces. Carpenter co-produced the set with Matt Rollings and John Jennings, two musicians who have regularly appeared on her recordings over the years. Newcomers include fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Viktor Krauss, guitarist Dean Parks, Rob Ickes on Dobro, and vocalists Mac McAnally and Garrison Starr. Carpenter's musical palette is much wider than ever before; it is a record full of textures and shapes rather than musical frameworks for lyrics. While the songs are still the most important construct, the manner in which they emerge is far more expansive. And even though there is more steel guitar and fiddle here than on any of her previous recordings, and the record was done in Nash Vegas, it's about as far from a country record -- in the modern sense of that word -- as can be. Carpenter's cosmopolitanism is certainly a sound for its time.

The concerns experienced by the protagonists of her songs are those of everyday life at the dawn of a new century in the aftermath of September 11.
Track List (try tracks 1,7 and 10)

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