Rachel Baiman

Since I’m into high-level textual analysis of popular music, I’d like to direct your attention to singer-songwriter and bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Rachel Baiman’s 2017 tune “Let Them Go to Heaven,” a track from her album Shame. Like the rest of Shame — as well as the songs on Baiman’s 2018 EP Thanksgiving — “Let Them Go to Heaven” situates the Chicago-born Nashville musician in a universe that abjures traditional modes of spirituality in favor of real-world concerns and pleasures. “Don’t surround me with cherubim / And their curly yellow locks / A place where there’s no vodka on the rocks,” she sings about her vision of what life might be like after her death. Shame and Thanksgiving are devoted to populism, which means Baiman does well with John Hartford’s paean to communal creation, “Madison Tennessee,” one of the tracks on Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, she writes about homelessness in another Thanksgiving song, “Tent City,” which avoids sentimentality without stinting on empathy. There’s nothing fancy about Baiman’s plain, expressive voice, and I think her approach suits her subject matter. I hear a lot of bluegrass-influenced singer-songwriter records. Thanksgiving stands tall as a superior example of the genre. EDD HURT