March – April 2007
By Russell Hall

The first thing that grabs you about Anaïs Mitchell is her voice. Girlishly sprite and brimming with innocence, her singing brings to mind the hippie-throwback charm of Victoria Williams, though she says people more commonly note a resemblance to ‘80s pop star Cyndi Lauper.

“I never though of my voice as quirky or unique,” Mitchell says, “but when my last record, Hymns For The Exiled, came out, it seemed some people had to get past something to start to like my voice. That was a surprise.”

That near-childlike sense of wonder in Mitchell’s vocals, coupled with literature-inspired wisdom, helps power Mitchell’s songwriting as well. The Brightness, her new album (and first with Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label), features intimate songs that feel spindly on the outside but sturdy at the core. Recorded in a converted grain mill and nearly devoid of percussion, it features arrangements built mostly on fingerpicked acoustic guitar, with a smattering of organ, piano, banjo and viola.

“I lived above the studio,” Mitchell says, “so I was able to just stumble down and record in my pajamas. The sound of the room was great. And being surrounded by these convex, honeycomb-shaped grain bins was a wonderful feeling.”

Making the album in a grain mill was fitting, given that Mitchell, 25, grew up on a sheep farm in Bristol, Vermont, that was run by her parents and shared with her grandparents and other tenants. Among the tenants were members of a jazz band, and when Mitchell was 13, a deal was struck whereby the band’s guitarist gave her lessons in exchange for reduced rent. For years later, inspired by the Lilith Fair crowd, she began writing songs.

“I knew from the start that’s what I wanted to do, but I was too shy to talk about it,” she says. “You get this sort of pitying look from people when you say you’re going to be a singer-songwriter. They figure, ‘Oh, you mean you’re going to be a waitress.’”

Mitchell studied political science in college and began attending music festivals and playing local gigs. Her first big break came in 2003, when the Kerrville Folk Festival honored her with its New Folk Award. Events unfurled quickly after that, starting with 2004’s Hymns For The Exiled on Waterbug Records. A promoter friend of DiFranco invited the indie-label pioneer to one of Mitchell’s shows. Eventually, DiFranco and her manager offered Mitchell a record deal.

“Actually they said, ‘You should make the album you want to make, and if we like it then we’ll put it out,’” Mitchell explains. “They’re pretty non-interventionist in that way.”

High points on The Brightness include “Song of the Magi,” a guitar-and-viola ballad inspired by a friend’s holiday trip to Bethlehem; “Shenandoah,” which brings to mind the recent work of Sam Phillips (if Phillips’ voice were an octave higher); and “Hobo’s Lullaby,” which features John Cale-style viola set against an Appalachian backdrop.

Themes of unrequited love haunt the disc, but Mitchell’s main inspiration was The Alexandria Quartet – a series of novels from the late 1950s by British author Lawrence Durrell.

“It’s a sort of tenuous connection,” she concedes, “but the heart of the record does come from that. The novels are about arriving onto a scene whose moment of cultural brightness has passed, and wanting to will that era back into existence. That same feeling can apply in the case of a former lover. There’s that feeling of trying to recapture a flame that you could have sworn was there.”

All Music.com
by Margaret Reges

Anaïs Mitchell is a bundle of contradictions. She has the earthiness of Shawn Colvin, the child-like bite of Joanna Newsom, and the urban jumpiness of Ani DiFranco. Her lyrics are sprinkled with rosy similes ("you roll like the rolling waters/you rise like the bright morning stars") while they simultaneously touch on everything from politics ("Hobo's Lullaby") to literature ("Namesake," a reference to Mitchell's namesake, Anais Nin) to mythology ("Hades & Persephone"). These elements, as disparate as they might seem, come together as nicely as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, and from the sound of it Mitchell is poised to live up to her new record label, Righteous Babe, on The Brightness. This is a decidedly, ahem, brighter album than her previous effort, opening with a joyful summons ("Come out, come on, come outside"). The Brightness finds Mitchell with a newfound confidence. Not that she skirts pain or sadness on this outing; songs like "Of a Friday Night," a meditation on a departed poet, and "Shenandoah," a ballad about the loss of a friend, dip into isolation and loss. On Hymns for the Exiled, Mitchell might have approached these songs with a helping of self-consciousness and timidity, but on The Brightness they're approached with a kind of sympathetic energy that lifts them nearly to the level of exaltation. This is, granted, incredibly earnest music, but it's hard to hold that against Mitchell given how well she writes, how honest she is, and how far she's come in such a short period of time.

About.com: Folk Music
by Kim Ruehl,

Anaïs Mitchell starts her latest album, The Brightness, with this line: "Come out, come on, come outside ... I wanna see you half-lit ... laughing with the whites of your dark eyes." With the whimsically simple guitar part and Mitchell's reticent, pixie-ish voice, it's a tempting invitation. It may take a few listens, but sooner or later, your bound to follow Mitchell into The Brightness. For me, the urge to follow came from the thickening of this first song. In the throes of a chorus of sorts, Mitchell's voice is joined by other voices on the one syllable of "Oh," which they repeat so many times, it becomes its own invitation.

Mitchell, according to her bio, has spent quite a bit of time traveling the world and commenting on it through song. The Brightness only adds to her collection of observations, musings, flirtations, and demands. She tackles just about every topic here, turning each experience and observation into a verbal force that straddles the line between the personal and political. In "Song of the Magi," to Jesus, she sings, "Welcome home, my child / your home is a checkpoint now ... welcome to the brawl."

In "Changer," to some unnamed untouchable person, she sings, "Everybody knows you / Nobody knows you / I wanna know you," in such a way that each pronunciation of the word "know" means something different. It's the kind of rare songwriting that needs to be heard to be understood, and few artists have managed that skill so early in their careers.

Using piano and guitar, Mitchell plays each instrument until it's dripping with both sorrow and hope, spinning her way deep into The Brightness before removing the glare. "It's like I slipped between the fingers of the century / I know you know what I mean," she sings in "Of a Friday Night." Even if you're not sure what she means, chances are better than not that the answer lies somewhere in The Brightness.

Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Philip Fairbanks

Anaïs Mitchell has lived the role of traveling minstrel already at only 25. From her Vermont roots in farming country to Europe and Africa, Mitchell has already got miles behind her. Originally she planned to be a writer because: "Not unlike artists, they're always traveling, always writing, loving their loneliness, feeling that they have their finger on the pulse -- worshiping the truth and trying to render it legible."

After debuting in 2002 with The Song They Sang When Rome Fell Mitchell became known and loved in the folk community. She also released Hymns for the Exiled on Waterbug and returns with 2007's The Brightness. The album's title is derived from the jazzy folk tune "Of a Friday Night", in the lines "out in the brightness of a Friday night." On tracks like "Namesake", Mitchell resembles Lisa Loeb in her vocal style. Lyrically her songs celebrate that loneliness she describes loving. Hammond organ and baritone sax contribute to the somber air. "Shenandoah" evokes a traditional mountain gospel hymn. Then there's the urgent, driving melody of "Song of the Magi". The song is told through the eyes of the three wise men on their way to see the nativity. Anaïs shows off her musical prowess in the almost classical intro to "Santa Fe Dream", then switches to operatic form for "Hades and Persephone", a dialogue in song between the title characters concerning Orpheus. This piece is an unsettling rumination on love and mortality. Throughout the album, Mitchell shows she is both musically and lyrically adept. For fans of good writing and understated modern folk, this is one to hear.