goddess of the upper world
In an era when many musicians in the indie scene believe weirder is better, Anais Mitchell proves that moving lyrics, a memorable voice and a cute pair of heels can still steal the show. Her reputation as a mesmerizing performer has even caught the attention of Ani DiFranco, who will be releasing her new album, “The Brightness,” on Righteous Babe Records in mid-February.

Mitchell is extremely well traveled and educated (she graduated from Middlebury College), but seems inextricably linked to her native Vermont, where she was raised on a sheep farm. There is an organic and revitalizing quality to her music that feels like an awakening, like stepping out of a Vermont farmhouse just after sunrise, with mist still hovering around the silos and haystacks, and the dew-wet grass tickling your ankles. In fact, “The Brightness” was recorded in an old gristmill where Mitchell lived for a time, coming downstairs in the morning, still in her pajamas, to track songs. Working with her longtime producer and collaborator Michael Chorney, the setting embellished the intimacy and rusticity in her music.

“There was a lot of intimate material on this record, ‘love-sick’ kind of stuff, and I knew I needed to be in a place that I felt comfortable. I’d had a few offers from different producers, but Michael (Chorney) and I already had a comfortable vocabulary for talking about music from our time working on ‘Hymns for the Exiled’ together,” she says.

Mitchell recorded “Hymns” during her last year at Middlebury, and at the time, wasn’t sure she was going to have a music career.  “I was a lot less serious at the time, which actually made it easier to write and record. After getting a lot of recognition, I became very focused on success, but now I’m trying to be more lighthearted again, because that helps me to be a creative person,” she says.

Hopefully wearing multiple music industry hats is a thing of the past for Mitchell, who has been doing her own booking on and off for years. A release on Righteous Babe Records at least assures strong promotional and distribution efforts.

The opportunity was an unexpected dream come true. “Ani’s music was the soundtrack for my teenaged years,” Mitchell said. She was introduced to DiFranco in Buffalo after Michael Meldrum, DiFranco’s childhood guitar teacher, hosted a house show for Mitchell. “He invited her to come out and see me and things grew from there. They (RBR) were very laissez-faire about the recording and the production, saying, ‘Record the album you want and if we like it we’ll put it out.’”

The record is now being promoted on the Righteous Babe Web site (www.righteousbabe.com), and Mitchell can take a step back, knowing that everything is coming together. In the meantime, she has produced another substantial piece of work, a folk-opera entitled “Hadestown,” based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and set in a prohibition-era company town.  Although the original inspiration for the series of songs happened years ago after reading Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending,” it took winning a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation to help cement the project.

“Orpheus is a particularly popular archetype for artists because he shows that you can save a life—you can break through impermeable boundaries—using the power of a song. There is a crazy optimism in what he is trying to achieve. Ultimately it is the story that love can triumph over death,” Mitchell says. In the myth, Orpheus is presented with a lyre by his father and learns to play it with such perfection that he charms everyone with his music. Shortly after he is married to Eurydice, a tragedy occurs: she dies from a snake bite and descends into the underworld. In Mitchell’s version, Eurydice is instead lured into the underworld, with the promise of riches and stability, something that Orpheus’s art-obsessed lifestyle had never given her. “Hey, little songbird, let me guess/ He’s some kind of poet—and he’s penniless/ Give him your hand, he’ll give you his hand-to-mouth/ He’ll give you a poem when the power’s out...,” Hades sings to Eurydice in the opera.

Ultimately she is lured away, but Orpheus is determined to rescue her, and actually succeeds, when Hades (a cruel wall-building boss-king) begins to see Orpheus’s music as a political threat—it has the power to unite the workers of Hadestown. Hades makes a deal with Orpheus: Eurydice is free to escape into the upper world with Orpheus, but only if he refrains from looking at her until they are out of the underworld. Just as they are about to escape, he anxiously looks back and she immediately falls away. Orpheus spends the rest of his life playing mournful songs of love lost on his lyre. 
Part of the reason the story was set in the prohibition era is that Mitchell wanted to have a speakeasy represent the underworld, with Persephone as the proprietress. As with most of Mitchell’s work, there is a poignant political undercurrent.

“The underworld represents a place where you are not a name but a number. It doesn’t matter who you are or how strong your passions are.... I think there are elements of that perspective in a social bureaucracy and even more so in a capitalist society, where individuals are turned into a commodity,” she says. This sentiment is exemplified in lyrics sung by Hermes, “Follow that dollar for a long way down/ Far away from the poorhouse door/ You either get to hell or to Hadestown/ There ain’t no difference anymore.”

Chorney fleshed out the songs and wrote music fit for his five-piece band, Magic City, the opera’s official orchestra. Mitchell describes the band as art-rock-jazz without the jam, “though he would not like any of those labels,” she laughs.

“Hadestown” was directed by Ben T. Matchstick of the Glover, Vt.-based Bread & Puppet Theater who Mitchell met recently after moving to Montpelier. With the Vermont debut performances in Barre and Vergennes coming off without a hitch, Mitchell is looking to take the ensemble on the road, or at the very least to Boston and Burlington.

“The whole process was fun, I really enjoyed the camaraderie involved in a theater project and the opportunity to see what other people could bring to the table. It was particularly liberating as a singer-songwriter, because at times my career can feel lonesome and egotistical,” she says.

Besides the pure joy of collaborating with others, Mitchell’s other favorite part about the project was the chance to write a series of songs that “had an arch.” 

“It seems like most musical shows I go to—even my favorite band or songwriter—I get bored about three-quarters of the way through. I think that is because there is no anticipation and reward in the experience. It’s strange, because even a really bad film has the ability to hold my attention. Storytelling is an amazing vehicle for transcendence.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that Mitchell’s new album, “The Brightness,” is a meditation on a series of books by the British author Lawrence Durrell. The books are about a British ex-patriot living in Egypt in an artistic community. “I started to think a lot about these romanticized eras, the time of the Beats in New York, and the Lost Generation in Paris, and how their creativity was a period of intensity, of brightness. That ebb and flow is a lot like being in love.”

“The Brightness” will be in stores Feb. 13. And if we ask really nicely, we might even get a Portsmouth showing of “Hadestown” in the spring.