Spotlight Albums: Anais Mitchell "Anais Mitchell" and Aoife O’Donovan "Age of Apathy"

Having missed spotlighting an album in the short month of February, I’m doubling down with two Spotlight Albums for March: Anais Mitchell and Aoife O’Donovan. They have a lot in common, starting with their unusual first names: both around the age of 40, mothers of young daughters, natives of New England (Vermont for Anais, Massachusetts for Aoife) who spent many years in Brooklyn and then decamped during the pandemic (Anais back to Vermont, Aoife down to Florida). Most important, they both released albums in late January which I have enjoyed digging into. 

Anais’s self-titled album was the more anticipated, having not released any music in the 10 years she spent developing Hadestown, her Tony Award-winning musical. Anais Mitchell is based on her life experience, rather than the Greek gods. She gives a nod to her time in NYC on “Brooklyn Bridge,” riding back from a Hadestown rehearsal with her hopes high (“I want everything I want”).  Brooklyn also figures in “On Your Way (Felix Song),” a tribute to her friend, the multi-talented writer and producer Felix McTeague. The lyrics (“riding the F train in the dark”) and an insistent rhythm underscore his forward movement, cut short by his premature death in Nashville couple of years ago.

More of the songs are set in Vermont, where Anais & Co. settled on her family’s farm during the pandemic. In “Revenant” (literally “come on back again”) she looks at some journals she had kept from her youth, and “Little Big Girl” talks about growing up. One of the strongest tracks, “Backroads,” describes a party in the woods with a bunch of small-town teenagers. They recognize her potential (“you might be someone”) before they get busted by the cops. Looking back, she realized it might have been a different story if they weren’t white.

While a couple of songs (“Now You Know” and “The Words”) talk about a married couple’s relationship, the ones that most reveal her artistic ambition are “Bright Star” (using the Epiphany metaphor about dreams that guide her life) and “Watershed” (climbing up a path to view the vista “from the river to the fountainhead”).

This is an album by a mature woman in touch with herself. The 10 songs are compact, and the production by Josh Kaufman (bass player in her touring band and her side group Bonny Light Horseman) is impeccable. Anais and Josh have an intuitive relationship, and the other musicians, including Thomas Bartlett on keyboards, Michael Lewis on saxophone, and J,T. Bates on drums (the last two also part of her touring band) are there to serve the songs and Anais’s distinctive voice.

Age of Apathy is Aoife’s third full- length album. Like Anais, she refers to Brooklyn in the crosstown bus “B61”, but when she left Brooklyn for Orlando (where her husband is an orchestra conductor), she seems to have had the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on her mind. She was in college when that event happened, and as the world changed, she and her contemporaries felt they were no longer carefree students. In the title song, taking a trip on Route 23 in upstate New York (near the Grey Fox and Falcon Ridge festivals), she recalls the day:

hold me like you held me on the day the towers fell when we stumbled over to the christian science center pool was it the end or the beginning? all i remember is the singing and the music trying to drive away the fear 

i’m still here

The song closes by quoting Joni Mitchell’s “My Old Man” (“keeping away those lonesome blues”), but as she sings on the opening track, “Sister Starling,” about finding a letter in an old festival tote, she observes “when life gives you gin, you make something.” The message 20 years later is about coming to terms and having a joyous, purposeful life. That’s easier when your songwriting is exploding, as Aoife’s apparently was. “Phoenix,” (which has an echo of Joni musically) celebrates the return of her muse, like rising from the ashes.  

Aoife recorded rough mixes of the song in Florida, but turned to Joe Henry to collaborate on the final production in Maine. As is typical with Henry, the production is never overstated, using studio regulars David Piltch on bass and Jay Bellerose on drums and Joe’s son Levon on reeds. Joe himself contributed the words to “Town of Mercy,” with Aoife supplying the music and playing piano. The images are actually reminiscent of Anais:

I walked away from Mercy


out to the deepest woods…


so I might rise from what might shine


keep your place surrender mine


as if your name as old as time


waited like a song upon the tongue

of all the mercy begging to be sung

Unlike Anais, whose sole group experience has been Bonny Light Horseman, Aoife has spent much of her career working with other musicians, in the great progressive string band Crooked Still, Sometymes Why (with Kristin Andreassen and Ruth Ungar Merenda), and I’m With Her (with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz), and that teamwork and love of harmony has always informed her music. Joe recruited Allison Russell and Madison Cunningham to add harmony vocals. Allison, whose solo career has skyrocketed since her days with Birds of Chicago, can be heard on “Elevator,” “Galahad,” and especially “Prodigal Daughter,” a song written by Tim O’Brien (who also contributes mandola to the mix). The last track, “Passengers,” features Madison’s folk-pop exuberance on vocals and lead guitar. It’s an upbeat send off to the album: “We’re passengers and the road is long.” Or as Joni might say, “I am on a lonely road and I am traveling…”

For whatever reason, I’ll often think of Anais and Aoife together. They’re good friends (when I saw Hadestown Off-Broadway, Aoife was there, along with her family). Both Anais Mitchell and Age of Apathy are the work of artists in their prime with solid accomplishments and the promise of much more ahead.