Mavis Staples carves out a little space for herself on “Heavy on My Mind,” a time-stopping song on her fifth album of the 2010s. The mood is dark, the music spare: just a steely electric guitar, a distant tambourine that sounds like rattling chains, and Staples’ mighty voice. She’s mic’d so close you can hear the breath catch in her throat between words, subtle exhalations that reveal her sincerity as well as her age. She turns 80 this year, and she doesn’t mind showing her experience and wisdom. “Heavy on My Mind” grapples with the devastation of loss and the confusion that accompanies grief: “Sometimes I wish, sometimes I fall in the well,” she sighs. “We can wait out the storm or we can stand in the rain/Gonna have to mourn or hide from some pain.” It’s a remarkable vocal performance by an artist who specializes in them, and a reminder of just how easy it is to take Staples for granted.
Staples has sung quietly before, in particular on some of the more prayerful songs from her recent trilogy of albums with producer Jeff Tweedy, but “Heavy on My Mind” is a little different, in that it allows her to escape her own legacy and sing for herself. For 70 years—ever since she started singing with her family’s gospel group in the late 1940s—she has conveyed a sense of moral authority, drawing from the faithful certitude of gospel as well as the populist activism of folk. Her voice is so powerful and her disposition so joyful and generous that she sings for every American, as the first-person-plural title We Get By implies: We are all in this together. Her music has a communal glow and a steely determination, but “Heavy on My Mind” shows how hard her walk has been.
Perhaps through divine intervention, Staples launched a comeback right when we needed her: celebrating a hopeful new era in American politics in the late 2000s and commiserating the seemingly hopeless era that followed. We Get By is about the strength and determination required to weather these storms, to sing for so many people without losing focus or hope. She and producer Ben Harper don’t shy away from big, public statements about the direction of the country, and songs like opener “Change” (“things gotta change around here”) and “Brothers and Sisters” (“not too far down the wrong road to turn around”) don’t venture far from her recent albums in sound or sentiment. Harper gently harkens back to the Staple Singers with raw, rolling guitar licks that recall Pops’ innovative style and a genially funky rhythm section that would be at home in the concert hall or the church sanctuary.
Because Staples has lost little expressiveness with age, We Get By sounds surprisingly raucous and admirably rough around the edges, especially on the percolating “Anytime.” But these songs are more about the small, quiet spaces where Staples can catch her breath and steel her nerves. Weighing particularly heavy on her mind is the idea of change, both the change she’d like to see in our country and the change she’s going through as she outlives beloved friends and family. The recent passing of sister Yvonne Staples looms large over these songs, so much so that Mavis dedicates the album to her. “Grab hold of the days, before the days grab hold of you,” she advises on “Hard to Leave,” which traces the distance between herself and home. Written by Harper, the song might be just another sad tale about the trials a touring musician faces during a life on the road, but Staples lends it extra gravity, as though aware she’s reached an age when each goodbye might be the last. The tone, however, is wistful rather than grim: “I’m passing through time like a warm summer breeze,” she sings. “It’s always hard, so hard to leave.” It’s a heavy burden, but she gets by.
