Jeanne on Iris

Jeanne d'Arc finds some comfort and fire in the new album from Iris DeMent, Lifeline.

It's a collection of old-time country Gospel songs — including some of my favorites like "Near the Cross," "Blessed Assurance" and "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." DeMent, Jeanne writes, has "A voice you'd hear in the kitchen from a woman putting up beans."

Her songs are about values so old-fashioned, they've come round again. God. Family. Forgiveness. Community. "Our Town." "Mama's Opry." You'd call them conservative if conservatives hadn't abandoned their devotion to those things long ago. …

The songs of Iris DeMent — like the novels and poems of Wendell Berry — don't fit neatly into the shallow, distorting construct of Red vs. Blue. Trend-surfing pundits like David Brooks don't have a ready-made category for pigeonholing such values. Are they old-fashioned? Or are they revolutionary? Yes and yes.

Jeanne also offers a taste of two of DeMent's songs, including "God May Forgive You (But I Won't)" — which ought to be required listening for all those evangelical marriage counselors who have advised Christian wives to forgive their abusive husbands. (Do all such counselors give this advice? No, but many still do.)

The other song Jeanne offers is an older Iris DeMent composition, "Wasteland of the Free," which also provides the title to Jeanne's post, "They say they are Christ's disciples, but they don't look like Jesus to me."

I'm looking forward to hearing DeMent sing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." My favorite version of this hymn is the duet sung by Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter — countermelody between a menacing devil and a guardian angel, between left-hand H-A-T-E and right-hand L-O-V-E.

In a way, DeMent's "Wasteland" is a replay of that scene, with Iris in the rocking chair, shotgun across her lap.