Review: Michelle Mandico holds her bleeding heart in her hands with ‘Ptarmigan’
The two-year wait for Mandico’s debut album was well worth it.
Robert Frost once famously poeticized the uncertainty of life. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” he wrote in his transcendent 1916 poem. “The Road Not Taken,” which came on the heels of a three-year excursion to England, where Frost befriended fellow wordsmith Edward Thomas, displays remarkable wisdom, determination and a willingness to live boldly and freely. It’s an incisive and simple narrative about one individual coming to a fork in the road, metaphorically and literally, and is faced with an even greater decision that could forever change the course of their entire life. Frost’s prose is stark but yields grains of brawny truths buried underneath the crunchy foliage, imparting universal truths so colossal they mean just as much, if not more, 100 years later.
Singer and songwriter Michelle Mandico unwittingly unlocks an equally profound and romantic body of work with her debut album. Ptarmigan, executive produced by Luther Dickinson (frontman of North Mississippi Allstars) and co-produced by Mandico and Kevin Houston (Lucero, Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale), catalogs the wise decision to leave her home state of Colorado for the shiny, neon-splashed honky-tonk strip and stale concrete of Nashville, a town burdened with being the epicenter of a nearly-religious pilgrimage for thousands of aspiring starlets. But Mandico’s ambition serves her well, paying off across the delicately-delivered 12 songs, often two-ton confessionals weighing down her heart in a fashion that’s both marvelous and mournful. “There was a time when I couldn’t stay / Before the wind could blow me away / But now there’s a mountain in my way / Who’s going to be the one to move,” she sings on “1,000 Feet” in hushed, exasperated whispers, bound by taut harmony and a past still shackled to her feet.
When she does let go, finally unfastening her extremities from self-doubt, blame and social pressures, she tugs and snaps the heartstrings. “I don’t need it to be easy,” Mandico tearfully bares with “Water Bearer,” pushing humanity to ignite a revolution before the earth is cast in darkness and grows cold and distant and so far removed from any kind of existence we’ve ever known. “Watch this terror / Humans helping humans helping humanize our fears / Humans helping humans helping…” The guitar babbles as a brook when the first signs of springtime peek out from under snuggly blankets of snow and frozen mud, and her voice is as the sun’s rays, sharp, swift and warm. The title song is as melancholic and sees her remembering those she long left back at home. “I made it out to the slopes alone / Empty all of me / I made it up on Christmas Day / Empty highway lanes / Oh what a clear voice / The mountains calling / And it’s funny how we need no words when silence carries,” she paints, breathtaking brush strokes coloring the blank pages before her.
Mandico plots a fantastical, grown-up retelling of Jack & the Beanstalk with “Giant Love,” which moans and creaks with sparkling steel and mandolin. Even the framework is chipped and dented, her heart tired and heavy, but the lyrics spit profuse amounts of cheekiness. “I don’t want your love back / I don’t need you, Jack / Giant love fell down on me / And a giant fell for me,” she sings, straight-laced with only a smirk playing at the edges of her lips. Then, the emotional stakes swell once again with “First Winter Without Colorado,” strings spliced together in cascading teardrops. “Oh my, darling / I do hope that you find the pale moon soon,” she concedes, winter’s breath descending around her shoulders, as she promises to ride lock-jawed and armed into combat.
Ptarmigan stands firmly and triumphantly in the warmth of Mandico’s angelic presence, her voice lilting and offered in intimate prayers barely escaping her lungs. Even in full chest voice, she’s a songbird swooping in and out of cotton candy clouds and caw cawing in the sunlight. She honors her mother’s courage and compassion with “My Colorado Sun,” percussion traipsing along in the woodlands; “Astounding” wafts in brilliant curves and coolly lit musicianship, her own reflection bouncing off the spliced strings; and the bookend called “Sister” cries in classic country fashion, employing the majesty of Virgin Mary in an observance of sisterhood and seeking strength in faith.
Mandico sacrifices her innermost admissions with a record that spans times, places, peoples and rises as a critical manifesto of hope, resilience and empathy. Through threading together her own cross-country adventures and growing song-craft abilities, she traces the toil and conquests of humanity in the here and now.
Photo Credit: Kristen Castro
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