'Another Country' shows new Merritt By John Staton, Staff Writer In…

'Another Country' shows new Merritt
By John Staton,
Staff Writer

In October 2006, I sat down with Tift Merritt on the front porch of her
friend's Carolina Beach bungalow. I was there to interview the singer and
songwriter for a story about a concert opening the local Cucalorus Film
Festival. Over a couple of cans of Guinness Stout, she talked about the
songs she'd written during her time in Paris, the new album she was
starting to work on and The Spark, an interview-style radio show she was
putting together for KRTS, a small but influential public radio station in
tiny Marfa, Texas.

Now, nearly 17 months later, all that Merritt talked about on that warm
October night is coming to fruition.

Those songs she wrote in Paris, ones that she reworked on a piano in
Carolina Beach? They make up Merritt's lovely and intimate new album,
Another Country, which was released Feb. 26 on Fantasy Records. And
The Spark? It debuted in January with Merritt interviewing the writer Nick
Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy). The show's third installment,
featuring the band Nickel Creek, airs this month.

A struggle is implied in the length of time it took to make these projects
happen, but we'll get to that.

The next time I talk to Merritt, it's Leap Day 2008, and we're on the
phone. She's friendly and thoughtful, as always, if a little bit distracted,
not that you could blame her. It's her last day in New York, where she
lives when she's not in her home state of North Carolina, before heading
out of town to tour for Another Country. Between doing a back-to-back
wall of phone interviews, she's trying to get ready to be on the road for
two months. (Her closest show to Wilmington is in Durham on March 22.)

Merritt, who was born in Texas and grew up in North Carolina, lived in
Wilmington briefly during the mid-'90s, working at downtown restaurants
Deluxe and Water Street and playing solo acoustic gigs where she could
get them. After leaving Wilmington and moving to Chapel Hill, she
eventually signed with Lost Highway Records, which released her 2002
debut, Bramble Rose, and 2004's Tambourine, which got a Grammy
nomination for best countrya album, despite not sounding all that
country.

Even with the Grammy nod and much critical acclaim, Merritt was
dropped from Lost Highway, home to such artists as Willie Nelson and
Ryan Adams, probably because sales of Tambourine were well under
100,000 copies. But given the fanfare Another Country got upon its
release - Merritt appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno Feb. 25,
and the new album has gotten almost uniformly favorable reviews - Lost
Highway's decision to drop her seems dubious. What was the label
thinking?

"Honey, you would have to ask them that," Merritt said, the exasperation
still evident in her Southern-accented voice. "I did get dropped, but I
think everything worked out for the best."

After several listens to Another Country, it's hard to disagree. The album
is arguably Merritt's best, and certainly most mature, work to date. And
while it still shows much of the rootsiness evident on Tambourine and
Bramble Rose, more than anything, the new album is reminiscent of
strong, intelligent female singer-songwriters of the '70s like Carole King,
Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. Not that Merritt particularly sounds like any
of those women. In fact, her voice's sweetly husky tone is among the
most distinct in pop music today. But it's the personal nature of the new
songs, which seem to depict a search for maturity and clarity, that's
similar to what King, Mitchell and Simon did around the time they were
Merritt's age (33).

"I put a lot of myself in these lyrics," Merritt said. "There was nothing
about these songs that were a means to an end ... I was totally writing for
myself."

Many of the songs on Another Country, which, like Tambourine, was
produced by George Drakoulias (Black Crowes, Jayhawks), are about
trying to get through hard times, while others sing of breakthroughs. As
the album's title implies, living in France off and on for a year was a
major influence, and Mille Tendresses (1,000 Tendernesses), is sung in
French.

"I was able to step out of my life for a while," Merritt said of her time in
Paris. "Going to the post office (in a foreign country) is a bit of a thrill, so
I think the songs are imbued with that feeling."
Many of the songs on Another Country, including Morning is My
Destination, make reference to night and all its uncertainties as well as to
the hopeful light of day, a metaphor that could apply to what is
essentially a new stage of Merritt's career.

On Broken, a soulful country-rocker and the album's first single, Merritt
sings, her voice sounding delicate but feeling strong, "I think I will break
but I mend." Keep You Happy, which starts out spare and stripped down
before expanding into a mellow lushness, is a thing of almost
unbelievable, heart-breaking beauty. And on the gospel-tinged Tender
Branch, Merritt speaks directly to a more grown-up way of looking at the
world: "Was young and I thought it brave/ Fighting to find the mystery's
face/ You got to give it a gentler chase/ 'Cause oh, the tender branch is
gonna fall."

Many of Merritt's lyrics call to mind a comment made by the poet C.K.
Williams when Merritt interviewed him recently for The Spark. Williams
said his "impulse is to say everything and nothing" in his poems, and, in a
way, that's also true for Merritt's words, which can be like a breeze,
insistent one moment, barely tangible the next. Divining her songs'
meanings is no exact science, but it's a beautiful journey, much like the
one that brought Merritt to France. While living there, she rented a tiny
studio with her bed pushed so close to her piano that she would wake up
with her hand pressed against it. Likewise, the Carolina Beach cottage in
which she spent time working on the new album's songs was nothing if
not cozy, as is her New York apartment.

"Most of it is because I live on an artist's budget," Merritt said of the small
spaces with a laugh. "But simplicity is key. If your life is filled up with
things, and cleaning the things, have less time to look within, and
without. You have to take time for the real things, not the thing things."

John Staton: 343-2343

john.staton@starnewsonline.com