From her first performances as a teenager in the 1950s through her era-defining hits in the 1970s and even up to her Grammy-winning comeback albums with Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples has created some of the most joyous music ever. For her latest solo effort, however, she wanted something even more exuberant, even more celebratory—something in the vein of Pharrell Williams’ "Happy." "When I heard it, wow, it just lifted me up," she told the Guardian recently. "I told my songwriters I wanted songs just like that, that would make people smile, also because I’ve been making people cry for so long."
Certainly Livin’ on a High Note sounds like a happy album. Featuring production by M. Ward and boasting songwriting credits from Nick Cave, Neko Case, Justin Vernon and others, its burst of beneficent energy is refreshing after the cloistered prayer of last year’s Your Good Fortune and two thoughtful Tweedy records. The tempos on here percolate amiably, with flashes of horns and bold basslines supplied by members of her longtime backing band. Ward doesn’t have much facility for groove, so the celebration often sounds muted and controlled—more studio than church. But he knows to keep things airy and light and to give Mavis’ voice some space to move around.
"I’ve been making people cry for so long" isn't entirely true. But the statement does hint at her own place in the complicated history of civil rights in an era defined by dignity and social progress as well as by systemic prejudice and even outright hatred. She has shared stages with MLK and Southern jail cells with her father and siblings. Livin’ on a High Note nods to that history, especially on the opening track, "Take Us Back," penned for her by Benjamin Booker. As her back-up singers encourage her along ("Mavis, take us back! Mavis, take us back!"), she reminisces sweetly about her early days as a teenager on the gospel circuit: "Chicago wasn’t always easy, but love made the Windy City breezy."
From other artists such a sentiment might sound too pat or prescribed, but Staples’ voice infuses it with affection and joy. "They don’t call me Bubbles for nothing," she declares. Seventy years into her singing career, her voice has lost none of its ecstatic expressiveness and only a bit of its technical agility. She can still swing low into a baritone range, and she can still soar into a churchly higher register. But really it’s the way she shapes her words that makes these songs so distinctive: The way she fawns over a word like "darling" makes you want to wrap the syllables around you like a warm blanket.
It might seem like an odd time for an upbeat message, but Livin’ on a High Note is as well timed as her 2008 live album, Hope at the Hideout, released just a week before Obama was elected the country’s first African American president. Eight years later, we’re deep into a confounding election cycle that has already defined itself by blatant concession to voters’ basest prejudices. At the same time, some of our best artists—D’Angelo, Kendrick, and Beyoncé—are making race and class dominant subjects in pop music, with songs like "Alright" and "Formation" prompting heated discussions about black identity and police brutality.
High Note complements rather than contradicts those bleaker depictions of 21st century America and casually argues for Staples’ legacy as an agitgospel singer. Would we have Beyoncé singing, "I like my Negro nose and my Jackson 5 nostrils" in 2016 without the Staples singing, "I like the things about me that I once despised," at Wattstax in '72? In that regard, the most crucial song on here is also the shortest: "What do we do with all of this history now?" Staples asks on "History Now," penned by Neko Case. Bearing all this weight can’t be easy for anyone, but with that divine voice of hers, in fact, Staples seems uniquely suited for it. And Livin’ on a High Note suggests she may even be happy to have that responsibility, if only because it reminds her that happy doesn’t have to mean complacent.
