Workin’ on a World is like a parade on a stormy day, a celebration beneath increasingly ominous skies. Lyrical references to gun violence and police brutality place its stories in a modern context, along with a litany of proper nouns ranging from the Chicks and Mahalia Jackson to John Lewis and Rachel Corrie. But Iris DeMent also works to ground her writing in timeless forms, with songs that play like folk standards and gospel ballads, populated by Bible characters and old American idioms. “I’m not trying to impress anybody with my new, clever metaphor,” the 62-year-old songwriter recently told Paste. “I’m trying to speak to people emotionally and spiritually, and if something that’s been used before works? I’m not going to let my ego get in the way of letting it work again, if it says what I needed it to say.”
For her first collection of original material in over a decade, the country-folk songwriter slowly amassed material without an overarching structure in mind. Inspiration came from all directions: “Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas” is an eight-minute protest song written after she played a venue in Austin, where a sign at the door instructed attendees how to handle their firearms during the performance. “The Cherry Orchard,” a piano ballad featuring the single most breathtaking vocal delivery in her deep catalog, delves into the psychology of a character from the Chekhov play of the same name. “Let Me Be Your Jesus” is a poem written by her husband, Greg Brown, that she delivers in a devilish whisper, taking audible pleasure in setting his words to music.
It was Brown’s daughter, Pieta Brown—the folk songwriter who co-produced the album with Richard Bennett and Jim Rooney—who pushed DeMent to follow her muse wherever it led. Spacious, cozy, and glowing with urgency, her new album collects six years of work but plays like an everflowing vision. “Nothin’ for the Dead” seems to speak to DeMent’s current process, capturing her ethos in four distinct verses—one about a tree in the snow, another about the dynamic between two young parents and their screaming child, the next about the brutality of the world, and the last about leaving a mark during our short time here. “Use me up while I am living, Lord,” she sings with intensity. “Let’s not leave nothin’ for the dead.” A horn section and pedal steel wind uneasily around her words with an almost comic persistence, suggesting that the chaos and carnage will continue; it’s only our perspective that will change.
As always, DeMent’s writing is generous and quotable, showing the lingering effects of a childhood spent poring through the Bible. It also furthers the literary influence that informed her previous release, 2015’s The Trackless Woods, which set new arrangements to the poetry of Russian writer Anna Akhmatova. But the performances are also among the liveliest and most dynamic in her catalog, ranging from the full-band, Mark Knopfler–style riffs of “The Sacred Now” to gentler tracks like “The Cherry Orchard” and “I Won’t Ask You Why,” led by DeMent’s piano, an instrument she wields as elegantly as her writing. (Notice how in “Say a Good Word,” she gives herself space to sing the word “magnanimity,” adding a sense of musicality with a light, rhythmic touch on a major 7th chord.)