Published on Nov 23, 2007
Spirituality, it seems to me, enjoys somewhat of a love-hate relationship with creativity. I say this because, of the many creative people I have known in my life, the vast majority have been either intensely spiritual, or intensely not so—the exception being in the rare cases when I've caught one of them traveling faster than a speeding bullet from one of these two poles toward the other.
Kathy Mattea, one of the country world's most-admired singers—as much for her expert choices of songs written by others, as for her dynamic, full, rangy voice—embarked on a spiritual quest on the enigmatically-named Love Travels. It's a quest filled with angels, loneliness, wanderings and ultimate resolve in the power of love, and the end result is about as fresh and inventive and thoughtful as you could ever ask a country album to be. Whether swinging through the Celtic folk-rock of the title tune, quietly contemplating strength gained from inside and out in "Sending Me Angels" or pressing a troubled friend to change in the mid-tempo "If That's What You Call Love," Mattea's clear, expressive voice carries the day with a generous dose of honest emotion.
On this, Mattea's tenth studio album, she employed a crack team including producer Ben Wisch (Marc Cohn's first two albums), players Hutch Hutchinson (Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo'), Duke Levine (Mary Chapin Carpenter), Matt Rollings (Carpenter and many others) John Leventhal (Cohn, Shawn Colvin), George Marinelli (Raitt, Bruce Hornsby) and Jim Keltner (sessions beyond measure) and guests Suzy Bogguss, Kim Richey, Michael McDonald and John Jennings to fill out her vision with their considerable talents.
And their talents are well-spent; this journey, marked by songs of personal growth and change like the wistful, gorgeous "Further and Further Away" and the edgy, dangerous "All Roads to the River," is remarkably fulfilling in the end. Whatever direction you may be moving in spiritually at the moment, Love Travels should make your list of road music.