Kathy Mattea, Coal
An angry lament for a vanished way of life, as well as an invigorating, rallying catharsis.
It would be tempting to recoil from a concept album about coal miners and coal mining in the expectation of it being a po-faced, lemon-sucking exercise in nostalgic pastiche. It would certainly be easy to make a concept album about coal miners that was a po-faced, lemon-sucking exercise in nostalgic pastiche. However, through judicious song selection and typically passionate delivery, Kathy Mattea has created something which, though essentially an angry lament for a vanished way of life, also functions as an invigorating, rallying catharsis: Coal possesses something of both Bruce Springsteen's defeated Ghost of Tom Joad and exuberant Seeger Sessions.
Mattea leads off with a double-shot of songs by Kentucky folk veteran Jean Ritchie ("The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore," "Blue Diamond Mines"), setting the tone for an album unflinching in recalling what should and should not be missed about life on the coalfields. The arrangements, fittingly, are more orthodox bluegrass than anything Mattea has recorded in decades, though some evidence of her more recent affinity with Celtic folk is audible in the versions of two Billy Edd Wheeler tunes: "Red Winged Blackbird" and "The Coming of the Roads."
A fine show is stolen by a glorious, gently portentous version of Darrell Scott's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive." Mattea sings it, appropriately, as if caught between missing what was left behind and relief at getting out, and the song sounds both a promise and a threat.
