sarah masen
Danielle Lee Aderholdt - The Daily Mississippian
Sarah Masen makes me feel clumsy.
She makes me feel awkward, in a way, annoying. She makes me feel as if I’m
driving a truck through the china section of a department store. When I’m
around Sarah Masen or her music, I feel I should run in the other direction for
fear of stepping on her or accidentally knocking her over.
On her second Re:think label release, “Carry Us Through,” Masen isn’t likely
to receive a critical backlash. But I sense it’s coming eventually.
It will most likely come from someone out there if she continues to buck the
male-dominated system and typify girl power in all its glory: a chick with a
voice, a guitar and something important to say.
I’ve noticed, the few times I’ve been around her, that no one really walks
directly up to Sarah. People sort of hover, circling, waiting for the right
angle, the right moment in time, to ease up to her. Something about Sarah Masen
shimmers, and it makes me nervous.
I met her once, briefly, introduced by a mutual friend close to us both, and
the encounter left me feeling clumsy again. I don’t like that.
It’s not that she is some astoundingly brilliant writer or singer whom I’ve
admired for years. As an artist, she’s essentially just getting started, but
she already shows hints of the brilliance of her peers.
Names that come to mind when someone mentions Sarah Masen are Joni Mitchell,
Sarah McLachlan, Kate Bush, Sin O’Connor, Maria McKee. It is these women who
define what it means to be a great solo female artist, who have been tested by
fire and critical scrutiny and have come out the other side brighter and more
fiercely independent than before.
The whole album is more folk and country-tinged than her 1996 eponymous
debut, and that’s a very good thing. The alterna-pop of yesterday has given way
to a more mature, full-bodied personal sound of today. This album screams,
“this is me,” as if Sarah has come to a place of understanding about art and
music that can only come with time and with deciding to do things her way, no
matter what.
The opener, “Seasons Always Change,” finds Sarah hopeful for the future.
“We’re having so much fun,” she sings, “And the angels watch the mystery of
everyday you and me.”
The title track harkens back to the bluegrass and black spirituals of the
1930s and 1940s. It’s a bouncy romp through a simple faith that believes that
through all the winds of change, God will always be there for the faithful to
“carry us through.”
In “Stories In My Pockets,” Sarah is sharing a cup of coffee with a dear
friend who’s usually too far away from her. Her loneliness is apparent when she
sings, “Silent eyes are watching/We’re beginning to explore/But the lights are
growing dim/Because we are poor.” She knows this friend has to leave her, and
it hurts. The listener hurts, too.
Sarah Masen’s “Carry Us Through” is a triumph of a young career. The stories
in Sarah’s pockets are romantic and lush, and she’s obviously got many more to
tell.
—
Danielle Lee Aderholdt was a senior English major from Clarksdale when this article
was published in the Daily Mississippian on April 30th 1998
