Anaïs Mitchell’s storytelling skills shine through in an understated album

Amid the puffery and razzmatazz of Frank Sinatra’s “Theme from New York, New York” lies a conundrum. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” Sinatra cries, in the role of a small-town wannabe with big dreams. But what happens after you have conquered New York? Prove that you can make it anywhere by moving to Ulaanbaatar? Stay and be dethroned by the next wave of small-town thrusters? Or bank the victory and retire in glory?

On her self-titled new album, Anaïs Mitchell opts for the latter course of action. It is her first solo studio album of new material since 2012’s Young Man in America, an impressive treatment of the US culture of ambition that centred on a protagonist born as “hungry as a prairie dog”. The decade-long gap between it and Anaïs Mitchell follows the triumph of her hit Broadway musical Hadestown, which won eight Tony awards in 2019. Based in Brooklyn at the time, the Vermont-raised singer-songwriter found herself living her own version of Sinatra’s anthem. She was the toast of her adopted town.

Anaïs Mitchell opens with a New York song. “Brooklyn Bridge” has Mitchell voicing the part of a woman sitting in the back of a taxi with her significant other as they cross the East River. “I want to be someone, want to be one in a million,” she sings. So far, so Sinatra — but there is no puffery or razzmatazz here. The song’s narrator isn’t flush with worldly success, but rather basks in the satisfaction that she has “finally got you by my side”. Hushed rhythmic swells and murmuring melodies give the song’s sense of accomplishment a placid bearing. The brass and blare of “Theme from New York, New York”, its macho peacockery, are deliberately absent.

Subsequent songs shift the action to a setting where birds singing are rhymed with church bells ringing. There is the gentle patter of acoustic guitars and muffled drumbeats. The inspiration is Mitchell’s move from New York back to her home state of Vermont in 2020. In the album’s depiction, she returns not as the victor of Broadway but a married woman nearing 40 with a small child and a baby on the way.

She catches a glimpse of herself in a reflection looking like her own mother in “Little Big Girl”. “Backroads” is about teenage high jinks in the small town of her youth. “You might be someone, someday,” she sings. The cliché is salvaged by unexpected chord changes and a beguiling sense of groove borrowed from the classic era of 1970s singer-songwriters.

Produced by Josh Kaufman, a member of her folk band side-project Bonny Light Horseman, the 10 songs last just over 30 minutes, including a rearranged cover of the previously released “Now You Know”. The album’s purposefully understated air at times becomes inadvertently underwhelming. But Mitchell’s voice has a sharp edge that keeps saccharine sentiments at bay, while her storytelling skills shine through on tracks such as “Little Big Girl”. The qualities that helped her take Manhattan are present on Anaïs Mitchell, albeit in muted form.

★★★☆☆

‘Anaïs Mitchell’ is released by BMG Rights Management