az- Customer Reviews: Mercy Now: "The most helpful critical review" must be that three stars (or fewer) considered "critical" - this seems to be part of new design on az.
Larry Harris's review of Mercy Now: Folk singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier is Poet Laureate for White Trash America. With her downbeat singing style and unapologetic odes to drinking, heartbreak and t.v. dinners, she may very well be the most honest, expressive and talented songwriter to hit rock bottom and write about it since Johnny Cash was released from Folson Prison hrm, is this facetious? he wasn't in Folsom Prison, hadn't been in prison at all when he wrote that. The first track opens with this lyric: "It's a cheap hotel. The heat pipes hiss. The bathroom's down the hall. And it smells like piss." It's a song about love: love in Gauthier's world. But in her talented hands, despair has never sounded so romantic. Even though just about every song has a downbeat topic, Gauthier's matter-of-fact delivery leads to humor when you least expect it. "Fish swim. Birds fly. Daddies yell. Mamas cry. Old men sit and think. I drink." Producer Gurf Morlix sets the scene with gentle acoustic guitars, dirge-like drums, and wailing petal steels and fiddles. It's the music of last calls in dingy corner bars all across America. All that's missing is the clink of glasses, the hum of neon and the scattering of billiard balls.