You’ll recall that there’s a new album on its way from the incomparable Mavis Staples, and its title track, ‘Sad And Beautiful‘, is also the latest single to be released from it. It’s a meditative and sombre song with Staples looking out at the prospects around us and finding that the world can be a beautiful thing – but that’s tempered with sadness as well, and we’re not really talking about the presented sites and views of nature, rather the fact that we could all be having a fine time on this one planet we have if there weren’t so many people who just seem determined to mess things up for other people.
It was originally written by Mark Linkous a.k.a. Sparklehorse, and Mavis Staples brings her own gravitas to a song that, with its funeral-march rhythm and spare lyrics, finds beauty even amid the grief over everything that’s been lost.
