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I asked Caroline why she picked that as the title of her album and, since it has a lot of mythological associations, primarily Goddess associations, if she is into mythology, Wicca or any such streams of thought, to which she replied:
"I wasn't thinking of goddess associations so much with this song, with this title. I saw it as the mystical hope of mankind, enduring hope. And of course with silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun, nature's cycle."
Musically and artistically, this album marks a continuing expansion, maturity, and blossoming of Caroline's work. We are well beyond simple "country" or even "Southern" music with this album, with rhythms, themes and chords that merge with the greater Americana sounds and words of singers like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell. In fact, as if to emphasize this, Caroline tastefully explores one of Joni Mitchell's well-known hits, Cactus Tree, taking up the challenge of singing one of the great octave leaper's vocally gymnastic pieces, while not trying to match Joni in degrees of difficulty.
Do not let me mislead you that Caroline is leaving her Mississippi roots behind in this album. On the contrary, The Dozens, a hard-driving, chord-throbbing drama about overcoming segregation in the South, leaps into the heart of the Mississippi experience, past and present, while A Little Bit of Mercy keeps up the torrid musical pace and existential theme of hometown limitation and tradition in tension with the need for universal freedom of heart, mind and spirit. In Mississippi and elsewhere in the Deep South, one can suffocate unless one climbs higher to breathe in the oceanic current:
Underneath this house of stones
A whole wide world beckons us on
To leave behind the walls and doors
Windows, ceilings and floors
Let us breathe in mountains
Breathe out sun
For ourselves
And this race we run
Producer David Goodrich, "Goody", who also is the accompanist on this album, strengthens this song even further by mixing in Caroline harmonizing with herself throughout the piece, to great effect. He does the same in the refrains of the dark and haunting ballad, Long Black Veil, adding the steady, somber strum of a banjo to the gallows mood of the song.
Caroline's rendition of the Steinberg/Kelly song, True Colors, made popular by Cindi Lauper, is more in the vein of a classic country piece, deep-voiced and more up-tempo than Lauper's version, with excellent and upbeat guitar work on her part.
Caroline, never shying from poetic tradition, even throws in Dante's Inferno for good measure in her song The Great Unknown, the Medieval theme of ascension from Hell to Heaven serving as metaphor for her recurring theme of escaping the darkness of the past for the Light, escaping, to borrow from astrological concepts, Capricorn and Saturn, who would eat his own children rather than relinquish power, for Aquarius and the universal and liberating energy of Uranus, planet of transformation.
Here is a pretty decent video of her introducing and singing The Great Unknown on YouTube live at Toogenblik, Haren in Brussels in June 2008.
