writing songs to even up the score

A tune for every single body blow

and I sing’ em at the sideshow.”

Mary Gauthier – Sideshow

I’ve often joked with musicians that their heartache and sadness provide the bandages that heal so many others, and having a good life is sometimes the worst thing for their careers. This is what is running its course through my head after my first listen to Mary Gauthier’s The Foundling.

Given her catalogue, it should be no surprise that Mary Gauthier has written another amazing album that fits so well with both her ragged, whiskey-soaked voice and a life that could not be told through someone else’s mouth. Coming from the heartache and terminal loneliness of being given up at birth and running away from her adopted home at the age of fifteen, The Foundling itself starts off like an orphan. Cold, scared and alone the first few tracks focus on finding one’s own legs, and knowing that they’ll probably never stop walking away. Sadly, tracks like Sideshow suggest that even now Mary has not found a comfortable place in the world.

Luckily, there seem to be moments that suggest the search for this comfort will continue. Perhaps it’s the restless soul of the lonely and the inability to settle that has left The Foundling with at least a small sense of hope. Despite lacking so many of the key figures in her life from birth, Mary seems to suggest that she still believes in love (The Orphan King), and she will continue to hang on to another day (Another Day Borrowed).

For this, we are lucky. Like so many artists that are willing to pour their lives out through microphones, Mary Gauthier, and the life she led, will forever be available the minute we hit play on such beautifully sad offerings as The Foundling.

Whether or not Mary’s life should have gone another way, and whether or not someone should have intervened is pointless to ask now. However, the question of how to stop the same thing from happening to so many others is one that is sadly just as relevant now as it was when The Foundling was a life instead of an album.

For more information on adoption, and how you can help, check the links on Mary’s website.