It has not escaped Beth Nielsen Chapman’s notice that the world is collapsing around our ears. Her 15th studio album acknowledges this sad fact while refusing to give in to depression or despair. She says: “It’s about navigating chaos. How, even despite everything being crazy, on some level one can trust that things are in divine order and that we will be OK. There’s a lot of groove and joy and fun on this album, along with a couple of deep dive ballads.” Welcome to Crazytown!
With a mixture of bluesy blowouts, lively pop numbers and tender ballads, this is her ‘I’m still standing’ record. If you are in any doubt, just listen to The Universe , a rousing blues-rock tune that provides a highly effective vehicle for the kick-ass backing band put together by producer Ray Kennedy.
In the opening song (All Around The World) Chapman reassures us that “It can only get better.” but, from the sentiments of Everywhere We Go, it’s also clear that one has to be prepared to embrace her assertion that love conquers all; on this she sings: “life is hard, life’s unfair, and it’s all uphill, but I don’t care, as long as I know you’ll be there.”
Ultimately, I suspect it is her faith in an afterlife is what sees her through the darkest nights of the soul. This is most explicit in the closing song - Walk You To Heaven - where she maintains that “We’ll all meet again.”
The best songs are those that address the process of coming to terms with the passage of time. Now 40 years into her career, her philosophy is to focus primarily on the here and now. In the tender piano ballad With Time she continues to see beauty and magic in the world while Pocket of My Past is a survivor’s anthem anticipating better times to come. Her optimistic existentialism is unambiguously expressed in the defiant Dancin’ With The Past where she repeats the line “I don’t ever look back.”
Hey Girl (We Can Deal With It) a modern blues number affirming that sisters can still do it for themselves while Put A Woman In Charge is her declaration for female leadership which has previously been recorded by Keb Mo and Rosanne Cash. The latter is a laudable proposal in theory although I doubt that the “sisters of mercy” leaders she has in mind included the likes of Liz Truss in the UK and Giorgia Meloni in Italy!
In a more reflective vein, The Edge is dedicated to her first husband who died of cancer in 1994 which falls well short of her classic ‘Sand And Water’, a song which remains one of the most moving ballads ever written about the grief of losing a loved one.
Overall, this diverse set of new tunes confirms Chapman as one of the finest country-pop performers on the planet right now.
