Anaïs Mitchell: Reflections On The Self, Past and Future
Anaïs Mitchell has been writing like a cannonball for the better part of the last two decades. One only needs to listen to 2012’s Young Man in America — where she described herself “hungry as a prairie dog” as she left the womb — to understand her tenacity and determination. Fueled by political activism, she has churned out project after project pronouncing herself to the world, determined to make her mark. For Gods’ sake, she even wrote a full blown folk opera about economic inequality using the Greek fable of Orpheus and Eurydice, making the Hadestown concept album turned concept musical turned Broadway phenomenon into one of the decade’s most impressive artistic feats.
But on Mitchell’s latest record, the cannons have ceased. Initiated by the pandemic, Mitchell and her young family moved out of Brooklyn in 2020 and into her grandparents’ old farm back in Vermont, sending her focus straight into the cyclical abyss of identity and reflection. By returning to her childhood oasis where the birds still chirp and church bells ring, Mitchell was able to stop writing songs about characters and start writing about herself.
It’s as if she finally reached her mountaintop — or rather, the summit before the next climb — and decided to pause. Here on this record, for just a moment, Mitchell reflects on herself, the mountain she has climbed, and which mountain to climb next. Aptly self-titled, Anaïs Mitchell is a collection of songs meditating on her own past and future, coming from her current state of humble contentment and peace.
The record opens with the simple and profound “Brooklyn Bridge.” Josh Kaufman (fellow Bonny Light Horsie and producer of Anaïs Mitchell) creates an ethereal soundscape of reverberating strings, twinkling synths, JT Bates’ subtle kick drums, and Mike Lewis’ breathless saxophone, then joined by Mitchell’s easy and cyclical piano playing. Vivid and soaring, Mitchell sings, “Over Brooklyn Bridge” before she quietly and blissfully speaks, “in a taxi…” It’s as if the listener is sitting right next to her, suspended over the East River on a night like any other.
Mitchell is caught in a state of in-between, desiring both her eternal dream of being “once in a lifetime” and her mortal dream of being “the one you ride beside.” Mitchell cycles the phrases of the song as if in a beautiful stasis, echoing the dichotic and unresolved desires to the end of the song before launching herself and the listener into the rest of the album.
Ghosts of her past flow through the album. Mitchell is transported to visions of her childhood after discovering memorabilia in her grandparents’ home in “Revenant.” In the wake of her dear friend’s death, she eulogizes their past together with the fire of her youth in “On Your Way (Felix Song).” She recalls young love and wild youth from the old woods on “Backroads.” She even sees herself as her own mother in “Little Big Girl.” Mitchell shares these specters with us to create evocative and complex pictures of herself, re-examining who she was and how those memories have shaped her life.
Mitchell also has a longing for life to be “real,” as opposed to the distant and virtual lives that we often experience today. She uses the song “Real World” to express this desire, which unfolds into one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking tracks on the album. Heartbreaking because her sense of “real” seems deeply ingrained in nostalgia (I wanna lie in the real grass / watch the real clouds rolling past the pastures / The everlasting feels of a real world), as if the way things were inherently can never be the way things are. But it’s also quite beautiful, because everything she longs for throughout the song is absolutely real and possible, which she seems to have found for herself once again.
The album climaxes on “Now You Know” and “The Words,” two songs grasping to make sense out of what she wants in life. On “Now You Know,” she unravels a provocative string of thoughts that bridge the sadness for lost youth that coexists with her desire to start a family (And when we make love / I think about children / And I think about dying / Lying in your arms). There’s a sense of confusion, as if she’s at odds with what she wants and what she wanted, and that what she wants is also what she fears. “The Words” tries to make sense of this, as she grasps for the words to describe impossible feelings. She lets the lush strings fill the space, sending waves of catharsis that capture the emotions better than words ever could.
At the end of it all, Mitchell comes to “Watershed.” In the song, Mitchell is climbing a mountain. She doesn’t have a map, only a river to follow. She follows it to the mountainhead, looks down from which she came, and drinks from the water that guided her. Dreamlike and full of metaphor, Mitchell gives her past one last glance before moving on to the next peak and the uncharted stream before her.
Over 32 minutes, Mitchell takes us through the ghosts of her past and leaves us looking at the horizon ahead — maybe from the backseat of a cab. She may not know what’s coming next, but she knows who she is and who she loves, and maybe being present with that is enough.
[Mark Metzger is a New York-based musician, theatre artist, and cinephile. Check out his work at mark-metzger.com]