John Mellencamp - Life,Death, Love, Freedom

Tue 1st Jul, 2008 in Music Reviews

Springsteen (60 years old in 2009!), Petty, and now Mellencamp are facing up to mortality and also coming out with some of their best songwriting in their career. This is not the John Mellencamp of anthem rock and roll, but of a man who has matured and wants to do some talking. But it is not all brooding and darkness – even when we are talking about death, such as in the churning If I Die Sudden, where his tight touring band kicks out and you can almost feel John prowling the stage (or studio floor).

These songs lean more toward folk and Woody Guthrie then they do to Chuck Berry. I think I have read they were calling them electric folk songs in the studio, and I can’t improve upon that genre. My Sweet Love has tinges of the Everly Brothers and Jena brings out the always left-leaning songwriter that he has been. The Jena Six are a group of six black teenagers who were charged with beating a white student. The charges of attempted murder were seen as extremely excessive and quite possibly racially driven. Nooses in the schoolyard are not an image I want to contemplate and that attitude and imagery should have disappeared long ago.

Beautiful lyrics throughout the record and tight, warm, light production make this a record that old Mellencamp fans will enjoy, and people who disliked the in-your-face side of him may warm to. This is not the record of the North America Summer that will be booming out of convertibles as you head to the beach. But it is the writings and the music of an intelligent, mature, statesmen from Middle America. Country Fair sounds like an up-tempo version of Blind Willie Mctell to me, but as far as I am concerned, if you are going to rip off anyone, go for Bob Dylan.

Ending the album with Brand New Song is a nice touch and seems to show that no matter how much life is ahead of us, there is a trail of life behind us. Maybe we don’t know where we are headed but without a song, or without the people we surround ourselves with, the journey is only that – just a journey. John has worn many a guise through his years in the record industry. But here we have no pretense, no setting – nothing but a man, his music and his thoughts. Life, Death, Love and Freedom is what we are all going to get at some point on this trip, along with taxes.

Life, Death, Love and Freedom is out 12 July on Universal. We will get to hear John Mellencamp and his fabulous band of travelling minstrels, supported by Sheryl Crow, in November and December 2008.