Helene Cronin

Maybe New Mexico

 Self- released

Helene Cronin is one our unsung singer-songwriters, deserving far more acclaim. Maybe New Mexico is her third full-length album, and unlike the previous, Landmarks, the sounds here are softer and more acoustic as she turns to a different producer, Mitch Dane. For the first time she plays acoustic guitar on some tracks and layers in some of her background vocals as she did on Landmarks. She and Dane recruited a cast of Music City musicians, including Bobby Terry (acoustic guitars, Dobro, steel guitar, mandolin), Matt Pierson (bass), Paul Eckberg (drums), Charlie Lowell (piano, keys, organ), Melodie Chase (cello), and the background vocalists Caitlin Anselmo and Matt Singleton.

Cronin is a wordsmith who pulls no punches. Nonetheless, she works with co-writers on ten of these twelve. Some songs may make you uncomfortable but leave you marveling at her songwriting just the same. She writes from experience and with a keen observant eye. Here she gets more personal than on previous efforts as she poses rhetorical questions, seeks unity and healing, touches on mortality, but mostly delivers relatable tunes. Opener “Copperhill” decries man’s assault on the environment – “You don’t live long if you don’t get out/Look what they’ve done to Copperhill.” In “Power Lines,” one of two she wrote alone, sung to weeping pedal steel and a dusty, spacious soundscape, she uses the image of a blackbird on a power line (somewhat like Leonard Cohen’s “A Bird on the Wire,” perhaps) to describe a relationship where one clearly has the upper hand – Oh, the one who’s more in love/Is at the mercy of/The one who doesn’t feel it as strong/It isn’t really anyone’s fault/But that’s how the power lines are drawn.”

The gently flowing title track cites the literary notable towns in New Mexico such as Tucumcari, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque as refuges from a broken relationship. Yet, the linchpin track, the other she wrote alone, is “Rifleman,” a devastating indictment of what war can wreak on an innocent boy – “Scared is something you won’t understand/Till you’ve wrestled a rifle out of the hands/Of a rifle man.” Cronin sings it, as she does throughout, as she’s lived through the harrowing experience. She uses all kinds of descriptors of humans in the generally upbeat “People,” co-written with Scott Sean White. In a similar theme to “Power Lines,” in Switzerland she details a far from amicable breakup, equating the country to a peaceful place that doesn’t exist between these two. Again, I’m seeing some similarities to Gretchen Peters in this kind of writing. Yet it’s not all about breakup tunes as she nods to an honest, loving relationship in “Ain’t That Just Like a Man,” co-written with Nicole Lewis.

The latter half of the album, six songs in all, deal with mortality. She raises an interesting question in “Not the Year” – “What if you were told on the day you were born/The day you’d die, just not the year,” paying it off with the constant refrain “Time’s tickin’.” “Maker’s Mark” deals with the same subject in a far different way, with the protagonist wanting to leave this life, having spread joy and making a lasting impact. In somewhat a trilogy of songs, along with Briana Tyson, Cronin writes an open letter in “Dear Life,” essaying the highs and lows, ending it cleverly with “I’ll keep holding on for dear life.” “God Stopped By” is a rumination on guilt and the uplift that faith provides, while “Visitors” reminds us that ultimately life is fleeting and that when we leave we only take love.

These arrangements frame here lyrics beautifully and are never intrusive. She doesn’t mince words or waste them. Cronin is an extraordinary songsmith that can stand with the best.

– Jim Hynes

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