Album: John Mellencamp, Life, Death, Love and Freedom (Hear Music)

Life, Death, Love and Freedom features 14 songs in the authentically stark, wind-blown style of early-20th-century country-blues, when poverty stalked the land. Things have since changed but not exactly improved, Mellencamp believes: songs such as "Jena" and "Without a Shot" rail against the remnants of racism and corruption in the American body politic, while in "Troubled Land" he senses more hard times a-comin'. But of the four titular concerns, by far the one occupying most of Mellencamp's attention is Death: from "Longest Days" on, the album is gripped by the guttering of life's candle. The lonely, embittered protagonists of "If I Die Sudden"... [read full story]