★★★★★
Though singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter was initially considered a country performer, she was never easily boxed in; her interests and songs ran from folk to rock to pop, and she never reined them in. She was part of an anti-establishment group of writers and performers who came from the East Coast acoustic music scene and hit Nashville in the late 1980s...
- www.allmusic.com
2014-01-22
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Mary Chapin CarpenterSongs From The MovieDecca (UMO)2014 Mary Chapin Carpenter is a Grammy-winning country star who was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012, but she has always been a maverick, influenced by folk, country rock and even stadium rock. She has written some fine, pained and thoughtful songs, often dealing with ageing and unhappy relationships...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-01-10
★★★★★
It's not been an easy few years for Chapin Carpenter, having gone through a painful divorce and the loss of a parent. Additionally, she was hospitalised with a pulmonary embolism, which brought on another bout of the depression from which she's intermittently suffered since childhood. However, unlike the detached observations of 2010's The Age Of Miracles, her new album more directly addresses her personal life, and can clearly be interpreted as a form of therapy...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Mary Chapin Carpenter is the master of the breathy earnest vocal, the kind that makes you think you will hear a revelation or at least something important every moment of the song. She uses this singing style in various ways. She can set you up for a joke one minute and then get to the serious heart of the matter the next. Usually, Carpenter executes this sparingly on her albums so when she does, it makes a big impact. However, Ashes and Roses is different...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-07-19
★★★★★
It is impossible to listen to this latest offering from Mary Chapin Carpenter without wondering at the experience that led to its raw and emotional feel. And knowing the background to the album, it is impossible not to review the thirteen tracks without mentioning that very same back story. Illness, death and divorce fuel this reflective collection so heavily that a certain context is needed...
- www.music-news.com
2012-07-09
★★★★★
Country/folk icon and multiple Grammy-winner Mary Chapin Carpenter describes her latest album as "about grief and loss". In recent years she's experienced divorce, serious illness and the death of her father, the accumulative trauma of which hurled her into depression. A hard-hearted person might observe that the accompanying biography reads like a parody of country singers' inspirations. But Ashes and Roses is certainly no summer breeze...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2012-07-02
★★★★★
Since 2010's The Age of Miracles, singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter has endured a series of personal setbacks and tragedies, including a divorce and the death of her father. Those are the kinds of life experiences that, for most of her career, Carpenter has been able to translate into introspective, insightful songs that showcase both her wisdom and wit...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2012-06-11
★★★★★
Between wars, economic crises and natural disasters, it has been a rough few years. There are two schools of thought as to how music should deal with times like these. The first theory is that music should reflect the times and tell the stories of people while they are living them. Independent music tends to err on the side of this. The other theory is that music should be light and fun fluff that people can use to escape their problems...
- roughstock.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
MCC puts some fine lyrics between her voice and the accompanying band on this disc: Thematically the 12 songs find her searching for America, her existence within a myth in crisis. Goodnight America recalls Paul Simon's America and Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans, conjuring, as do many of the titles, the conflict between the callings of home and the road. Elsewhere the quest takes a spiritual left, as in My Heaven and the lovely closer Elysium...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
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