Iris DeMent is unabashedly personal, with a voice that could wring tears from a stone. There is no way to categorize her except “country” but it’s the country of John Denver, Emmylou Harris, and Joni Mitchell. In short: gentle, truer than life, and absolutely heart-breaking.
No song better exemplifies what I mean than this one. A lament for a life gone by, it begins with a chorus that could hardly be more evocative:
And you know the sun’s setting fast
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts
Well go on now, and kiss it goodbye
But hold on to your lover, cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now, and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun setting down on our town, on our town, goodnight
She continues, cataloging loves found and lost, lives led and discarded, children, first kisses that lead into the endless horizon, and the tears that spend years welling up. In the vein of some of the best Springsteen songs (“The River,” and “Racing in the Streets” to name a couple), this is a story of the lives we lead, the terror we all share about discovering one day that all of our opportunities have passed us by. Her town is a place full of sadness, pain, and loss, but it is also where all of those trials are marked into her identity. As such, she cannot help but end with the plaintively sung line: “I love you, my town, you’ll always live in my soul.”
Apparently, this song was featured in the final episode of Northern Exposure. I’m still several seasons away from getting to that episode, but I can very well imagine it. The earnestness of the song seems a perfect counterpoint to the show’s delicate balance between the surreal and the genuine.
Many of same themes show up in this song, but here the tone is far more optimistic. A song about her mother’s hidden desire to sing at the Grand Old Opry, it reveals the power of the shared song between mother and daughter and the importance of holding onto dreams, not just for yourself, but also for those whose lives you touch.
Both of these songs are from her debut Infamous Angel, which is unfortunately her best work by far. The later ones are worth checking out if you like the genre but if you only own one Iris DeMent album, this should be the one.