★★★★★
Mary Gauthier's last album, The Foundling (2010), was based on her experience growing up adopted and her attempts to reconnect with her birth mother. On her seventh album, Trouble & Love, the Nashville-based songwriter wearily traverses more well-trod Americana territory: namely, moving on from a broken heart. Gauthier - something of a LGBTQ folk hero - is talking about getting over a woman, which reminds us just how universal these themes are...
- nowtoronto.com
2014-05-29
★★★★★
Given that she's a favourite draw on the folk/roots fest circuit, it's no surprise this acclaimed American singer-songwriter has come up with a live album, after six much-praised studio records. Her dark, intense material is not your typical "Kumbaya"-style campfire sing-along fare, as exemplified by "Karla Faye," dedicated to an executed murderess. The audience at the gig, a ranch outside Austin, is clearly attentive though...
- exclaim.ca
2013-06-25
★★★★★
Gauthier rejects mainstream entertainment values, the showy mastery, perkiness and polish that aim at providing musical diversion and courting mass popularity. Hers is a confrontational art, especially in a live setting. She directs attention to the unsettling side of contemporary American society, not only by making executed murderers, unrepentant alcoholics and troubled teenage adoptees her lead characters, but by telling their stories in such strenuous, committed fashion...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
It sounds like one of Robert Johnson's long-lost murder ballads. And Ms. Gauthier, with her bourbon-soaked voice, kicks you Dead Square in the gut. Welcome to the Hellhouse, kid. Yes, Between Daylight and Dark is a downer album. It's a slog to get through, sometimes, but an enjoyable journey, nonetheless...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Proper Records Watching Mary Gauthier in concert is something akin to a religious experience. It's one thing to listen to the studio versions of her songs - all the way back to her 1997 debut with Dixie Kitchen they've been killer with mounds of clever word and subtly elegant instrumentation. But watch Mary Gauthier in concert at Nashville's famed Station Inn or any other club, honky tonk or venue at which she plays and you'll arguably be bowled over by the power of her music as she toggles...
- www.jambands.com
2013-04-04
★★★★★
Proper Records Watching Mary Gauthier in concert is something akin to a religious experience. It's one thing to listen to the studio versions of her songs - all the way back to her 1997 debut with Dixie Kitchen they've been killer with mounds of clever word and subtly elegant instrumentation. But watch Mary Gauthier in concert at Nashville's famed Station Inn or any other club, honky tonk or venue at which she plays and you'll arguably be bowled over by the power of her music as she toggles...
- www.jambands.com
2013-02-22
★★★★★
Mary Gauthier is a terrific songwriter and charismatic performer. She's got the voice of a gamin mixed with the aches of a hard life: someone too young to know better and too old to change now. Gauthier has been playing live for more than a decade and compiled a half dozen albums that have earned the praise of such rock luminaries as Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. This is her first live release. There doesn't seem to be any particular theme to the selections...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-02-22
★★★★★
Mary Gauthier chooses her words carefully. My favorite moment on the country singer's 2005 breakthrough album Mercy Now comes about a minute into the title track, where she sings, without a trace of irony, "I love my father". Even in country music, a lyric like that shouldn't work. Listeners are too wary of anything sentimental. Gauthier did something right; the first time I heard that line it cut through my defenses and brought me to tears...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
★★★★★
Mary Gauthier's first concept album is strewn with emotional references. The whole album has been constructed around the skeleton of Gauthier's life. Her abandonment as a baby, her adoption, leaving her adoptive family at 15, her courage to contact her birth mother as an adult and the pain of being rejected again. Bearing this in mind, you could easily make the mistake of believing this to be a raw, depressing, public display of grief...
- hangout.altsounds.com
2010-11-02
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