“It’s a cheap hotel, the heat pipes hiss – The bathroom’s down the hall and it smells like piss – It’s another night in another town – And I’m another blues traveler headed down. Falling out of love is a dangerous thing – with its slippery slopes and its weighted wings.”

Gauthier’s (pronounced Go-shay) scene of love addiction, her music and lyrics, pull one into a bleak landscape of a certain type of suffering where each second is excruciating and feels like an hour. This first song is probably the darkest on the cd but put there almost as if to say that there’s nowhere to go but up from here. Up and towards redemption, as quietly requested in the next song, title track, ‘Mercy Now’. It’s a wistful tune in which Gauthier suggests that every living organism could stand a break, so if there’s anything resembling a higher power, how about “some mercy now?”

Number three, ‘Wheel Inside the Wheel’, is a particular favourite – maybe because of my ‘Crescent City’ connections – it kicks into an understated funk beat with steady single-note banjo plucking, the words unfolding into a series of snapshots of New Orleans. Verses that speak of “second lines” and “Marie Laveau.”

“Mardi Gras Indians chant in the streets at sundown – Spyboy meets spyboy, big chief meets big chief uptown” – referencing that specific African-American subculture in New Orleans. She sings of “French Quarter queens in their high-heeled disguise – Sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ til Judy Garland quivers and sighs” and of “Flambeau dancers, sipping wormwood concoctions, drinking absinthe and talking trash.”

It’s a stream of exotic images and because of her Louisiana roots I suspect it’s also a sort of love song to New Orleans.

‘I Drink’, is a simple piece conjuring up a father who falls into all the alcohol clichés – fighting with mother, irritated by the kids, but goes further in recognizing the continuation of the tendencies within herself. It’s an unapologetic song that’s more about observations and the narrator’s acceptance of her own habits.

‘Just Say She’s a Rhymer’, one of the two songs on the cd not written by Gauthier, is a lovely one nonetheless. It’s a Cajun waltz rhythm stated by a classic sounding fiddle intro that seems to recall her southern Louisiana background.

With an almost Dylanesque delivery, she talks-sings through ‘Prayer without Words’, probably the most stirring song on the cd.

“Packing vagabond visions and a dream drenched hunger for a home – Swaddled in road dirt, blood-stained blankets and poems -- On a stormy suitcase Sunday I awakened to the scream of the birds – They held their high notes and offered a prayer without words.”

The lyrics on this track also seem inspired by Dylan, but it’s her own song.

“Justice rides with jaundiced eyes, jaded judges bleed the broken bench – Liberty’s a homicide, she’s been flogged to death with money’s monkey wrench – Desperado apostates set fire to every holy word we’ve heard – Silence billows from the burning book and offers prayer without words.”

The remaining tracks are excellent – ‘Empty Spaces, ‘Drop in a Bucket’ and the final, apocalyptic, ‘It ain’t the Wind, It’s the Rain’. Every lyric written by her contains some of the best writing in songs that I’ve heard in a long time and her style, although her own, echoes other equally deep artists. In her, I hear traces of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Emmy Lou Harris and Robbie Robertson, but with her earlier drug/alcohol battles and jail stint, she most calls to mind the country music patron saint of hard times, Johnny Cash. The comparison to other artists is meant as a compliment – she is an original and tells her own stories – this, in an honest poetic way, free of artifice.

The production on this cd is suits her songs perfectly and is handled by Gurf Morlix, a behind-the-scenes sort of fellow and unsung hero who has produced and played with some of country music’s heavier and more alternative players – artists like Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Warren Zevon, Emmy Lou Harris, Flaco Jimenez, Dave Alvin and a score of others, but you probably wouldn’t see him turn up on a Garth Brooks or Dixie Chicks cd.

Gauthier has had an interesting life so far --in addition to her rough times, she studied philosophy at Louisiana State University, studied cooking and opened and ran a successful restaurant in Boston, and has released three cds before this one. ‘Dixie Kitchen’(1997), ‘Drag Queens in Limousines’(1999) and ‘Filth and Fire’ (2002). To me, she is the real side of country music that traces its lineage directly back to Hank Williams and like his music, hers dwells in those lonelier spaces that few ever really enter.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. To read more of Marc’s writing on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.