Gretchen Peters

‘Hello Cruel World’ is Gretchen Peters' ninth album. In it, the singer and songwriter from Nashville, USA, has managed to compile a pleasing array of songs. Granted, most of her work ranges somewhere between the folk and American country genres; much of it reminiscent of Nancy Griffith and Joni Mitchell. However, her work is by-and-large well-written (though sometimes too simple), with some really very nice pieces slotted in the array.

‘Paradise Found’ is one of the best songs on the set, both musically and lyrically. Peters is not an artist that writes merely for the sake of it; her songs have something to say in a fast-moving, complex world. ‘Love’s the only thing that will set us free/Worship no idol, seek no god/I don’t believe in the ‘holy jihad’/ I don’t believe in original sin/I believe in the heat underneath our skin’, she swoons, a jazzy underlay in the background. Her voice is honey-smooth.

‘Woman on the Wheel’ is an ode to life, taking chances and to the idea of leaving your life to god and religion. ‘There’s a man out here who throws knives at a wheel with a blindfold on/ I can feel the rush and the whoosh of every blade of steel/’Cos I am the woman on the wheel.’ The delicate beauty of piano ballad ‘Five Minutes’ easily puts it in the top three songs on the compilation ‘It was nearly twenty years ago/I should have locked that door/ I’ve got five minutes/Not much time to reminisce’.

What is clear is that Peters is a versatile artist. She easily moves from ballads to more jazzy pieces such as ‘Camille’. And while the album is not for a mainstream market (I doubt she’d want it to be), Peters has written an LP that delivers on issues about love and life, but also on the wider extension of goings on in the world. Describing it as her ‘most close-to the-bone work’, you can tell the album draws from many personal, emotional experiences as well as things relevant to the socio-political world. Closing with track ‘Little World’, you could fall into a dream-like stance listening to her touching lyrics: ‘I’m a soldier back from war/Too tired to care anymore/Too tired to put up any kind of fight’. Emotive work from the Grammy-nominated artist.