TRAGIC LOVE MONTH #6: Hadestown, by Anaïs Mitchell (2010)

Type of Media: Music Album/Musical

It's the things that you do when you have nothing that drive you for the rest of your life. It's easy to have lofty, moral priorities when you're well-fed and warm, but when you're down you'll do a lot for a meal and a decent night of sleep. It's a pretty universal weakness that only some understand. And the ones that don't understand, if they see it in you, they'll judge you for it.

Hadestown is a musical-turned-concept album, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but placing it in 1930s America and setting it to Southern folk music and jazz. It recasts Orpheus as a talented but poor blues musician, who woos the beautiful Eurydice with his music. But Eurydice soon grows tired of poverty and hunger, and is lured by the powerful businessman Hades to board a train to his underground city, Hadestown, and become his mistress. When Orpheus learns, he takes to the road and follows her.

Orpheus eventually reunites with now-voiceless Eurydice, but Hades' terms for her release are strange. To get her out, Orpheus has to walk back to the surface without looking behind him to check if Eurydice is still following. Hades figures that it'd be impossible for Orpheus to trust a woman who's already betrayed him once. On the trek out of the underworld Orpheus wants to believe Eurydice is behind him, but can't be sure. Doubt creeps into his heart. Hades turns out to be right.

By giving each of the key players their own songs, Hadestown manages to offer enough insight into its characters to make them more real. Eurydice doesn't leave Orpheus and then yearn for him because she's fickle, but because she's exhausted and hungry. In Hey, Little Songbird she sings that she wants to "lie down forever", but once she's found a place she can rest eternally in Hadestown and had her fill of sleep, her attitude changes to "dreams are sweet until they're not". Similarly, Orpheus' songs build him up as a naive and love-stricken dreamer, Hades' show him to be a cold, patriarchal dictator, and Hades' wife Persephones' reveal her dissatisfaction with her marriage and her craving for the surface world. 

The characters are certainly fleshed out, but what's unexpected and incredibly cool about Hadestown is its worldbuilding. Why We Build the Wall has nothing to do with Orpheus or Eurydice, but it's a standout track, a call-and-response work song that reveals how Hades keeps his workers in line by demonizing poor people. The following track, Our Lady of the Underground, is a jazzy number about a speakeasy run by Persephone that serves tastes of the surface world instead of liquor (like rain, a look at the sky, or literal moonshine). I've only heard the album recording of Hadestown, but touches like this make me think the live musical version is probably excellent.

Speaking of the album recording, album artist Anaïs Mitchell put together a great cast to bring the songs to life. Mitchell herself plays Eurydice, Justin Vernon of indie folk band Bon Iver plays Orpheus, veteran folk artist Greg Brown brings his deep, gravelly voice to bear as Hades, and Ani DiFranco plays a confident, sultry Persephone. The unsung hero of the record though is arranger Michael Chorney, who manages to bring a large amount of different sounds to Hadestown while keeping everything cohesive. The music perfectly matches to mood of the lyrics.

Concept albums sometimes get a bad rap (unfairly, in my opinion), but Hadestown is most definitely worth listening to. If you liked the film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, consider this a musical journey of the same kind that takes less than an hour to get through. Although if you're like me, when you come out the other side you'll immediately want to go back through it all over again.