She sings her one story in many ways.
A new Mary Chapin Carpenter solo album, “Personal History,” has been released on the heels of “Looking for the Thread,” a collaborative album released in January 2025 with Scottish folk singer-songwriters Karine Polwart and Julie Fowlis. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England with Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman producing, the album is musically rich with backing by some of her favorite players: Duke Levine, Cameron Ralston, Chris Vatalaro, Matt Rollings, Katey May and Xav Sinden (backing vocals) and horns from Stuart Bogie and Dave Nelson. Carpenter continues a string of striking and distinctive albums that began in 2004 with her eighth, “Between Here and Gone,” followed by “The Calling” and “The Age of Miracles.” It felt as if this triad signalled a reboot of her career and a shift from pop-oriented music to more introspection.
“I started writing the songs on this album as the pandemic began winding down,” Carpenter shared. “The titular song ‘What Did You Miss’ pointed the way forward, with its final verse: I’ve been writing it down/song by song/as a personal history when imagining this collection of songs as memoir, and how the wisdom that comes with growing older becomes a north star, whether one is celebrating quotidian joys or navigating life’s inevitable losses.”
The eleven songs on “Personal History” could be seen as chapters in Carpenter’s life, even autobiographical. Strident piano accompanies ‘Paint + Turpentine,’ which is about sitting in the dark of the Birchmere Music Hall watching the late, incomparable Guy Clark teach a master class in songwriting and storytelling. The lucid, coming-to-terms-with-life ‘Girl and Her Dog’ uses the old canard in the lyric, keeping it as simple as it can be to convey the pleasure of walking her dog, Angus, or enjoying his presence at her feet while sitting at the kitchen table writing songs. ‘Bitter Ender’ touches on our propensity for not letting go, whether in love at its end or the material world. The chorus unfurls with a gloomy grace as Carpenter wonders: What if the cure is to give up the allure of the magic of the magical thinking? The uncertainty of what awaits us after death hangs over the song like a dark cloud, but the yearning inherent to Carpenter’s songwriting allows shafts of light to break through.
Taking stock of what matters in ‘The Saving Things’ has that realistically lived-in feel. Discovering the wisdom in words and phrases that we usually recognize accompanied by a homey fauna of sounds marks ‘Say It Anyway,’ closing the record with hope of understanding that money won’t by you happiness: When it’s time to take the measure of our days, The ones that shine will hold hands, with the ones that fade, I think we’re getting closer to it every day, It goes without saying but say it anyway.
How far are you willing to go to change your life? What would you be willing to risk to change your fortune—and your future? Those are the central questions posed by this album, entertaining melodically and full of interesting messages brought with poeticism, simplicity and precise composition.
Carpenter is utterly timeless, the type of artist who can unite listeners of many generations with the rich timbre of her voice. “Personal History” is a compelling record with exquisite artistry that elevates her to new heights, transferring an inner peace through her voice and into her creative process. She approaches music like one would yoga, as a “practice,” leading with intention, ever mindful of the energy she emits through song.
One fault that needs mentioning is the mastering, as in some of the songs, Carpenter’s vocals are too evenly mixed with the instrumentation, resulting in difficulty understanding the lyrics without the accompanying booklet.
Nevertheless, for those unafraid to look inward, this album is a feast for the soul. The human condition is a complex array of emotions and experiences, and there aren’t many singer-songwriters who plumb the depths better than Mary Chapin Carpenter.
“If songs are snapshots in time,” she posed, “in these I tried to use a longer, finer lens to capture the light that illuminates memory, identity, place, meaning, the stories we carry and portals to new ways of being and seeing. I hope it takes you to similar places.”
