Iris Dement My Life

There’s an old-fashioned quality to Iris DeMent’s music that invokes faded photo albums, Sunday church socials and lonely walks through cornfields. The small-town pleasures and tragedies chronicled on My Life (1994) have the feel of timeless folk art. This sophomore release finds Dement painting closely observed portraits drawn from her Arkansas heritage. Her slightly awkward but deeply affecting voice carries a trace of girlish innocence even as she sings of mature heartaches in “Easy’s Getting Harder Every Day” and “You’ve Done Nothing Wrong.” Tunes like “Sweet Is the Melody” and “Childhood Memories” are sentimental without being cloying, thanks to Iris’ undercurrent of wistful humor. Her rendition of Maybelle Carter’s “Troublesome Waters” hearkens back to her roots in old-fashioned gospel. Most memorable of all is the album’s title song, a starkly poetic expression of love and humility that may be DeMent’s finest composition. Producer Jim Rooney rounds up an impressive crew of acoustic folk and country players for these tracks, lending the album a bright veneer without sanding down every rough edge. As guileless and open-hearted as its title implies, My Life is a work of understated brilliance.