Artist In Me

When last heard from on record four years previously on his tenth album, Ambition, Maine folksinger David Mallett seemed to have succumbed to bitterness. But Artist in Me, released on his own North Road Records, finds him persevering and even displaying moments of hopefulness in comparison, though it certainly is no laugh fest. Mallett’s murmuring voice and gentle folk-rock arrangements tend to belie the sadness and bile sometimes found in his lyrics. As usual, his songs are full of references to life on the road, even when that is not their main subject, as it is in the self-pitying “So Far, So Good.” The narrator of his songs tends to be an isolated, diffident character, but he manages to celebrate that in the title song, in which he sings, “Why I make my livin’ being lonely right out loud/Guess it’s just the artist in me.” In addition to his personal disaffection, Mallett also recognizes a global malaise, notably on the antiwar “Livin’ on the Edge,” and sometimes he relates the two, such as on “Like Me Without You.” But the album also contains moments of respite, and one of them is the disc’s best tune, “Angel Standin’ By,” which even reveals a wry wit in lines like “When you run outta luck/And you can’t even fix the truck/Someone sends a hundred bucks.” And, occasionally, love seems to present at least a temporary solution to a world of loneliness and despair (for example, on “The Wind Is on the Water”). David Mallett is still a sad sack on Artist in Me, but he seems to have backed away from the precipice he had arrived at last time around. – William Ruhlmann