Iris DeMent's 'The Trackless Woods' Channels Anna Akhmatova

The Arkansas-born singer/songwriter, Iris DeMent's latest album, "The Trackless Woods," sets to music a series of poems left behind by the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). Like DeMent's 1992 debut, "Infamous Angel," "The Trackless Woods" shares a similarly straight-forward and "plain-spoken" lyric style. Akhmatova is widely regarded as one of Russia's greatest poets. At Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot reviews DeMent's newest accomplishment:

Iris DeMent recorded her latest album in her living room in five days with a group of friends, which sounds just about right. DeMent bides her time between albums until she feels fully invested in the music, and then plunges into it without making a big fuss. She aims for an emotional connection that would only be diluted by technically labored production.

"The Trackless Woods" (Flariella) finds the Arkansas-born singer creating music for a series of poems left behind by a Russian writer, Anna Akhmatova, who was persecuted by Soviet authorities and denied an income, and saw her only child imprisoned. Through it all she continued to write rather than flee her homeland, in an effort to bolster the spirits of her countrymen and most certainly her own.

DeMent trusts the words: clear, concise, heart-breaking. She never over-emotes, but sings in the plain-spoken tone of an artist steeped in the country songs and hymns of her youth. With each track, DeMent sounds like she's losing her innocence all over again when confronted by the world's cruelty, a quality that has imbued her recordings ever since her stunning 1992 debut, "Infamous Angel."

A number of tunes share a similar tone and tempo, as if the singer's reverence for the poet hemmed in the arrangements. But she adds just enough texture to make the album a moving listen: the bluesy, nearly rollicking "From an Airplane," mirroring the sense of possibility mapped out in the verses; the country-soul of "Listening to Singing," with mandolin and drums instead of piano leading the way; the harpsichord-like tones that haunt "The Souls of All My Dears." [...]

Continue at Chicago Tribune.