You're Not Alone

On her first recording in four years, enigmatic chanteuse and songwriter Essra Mohawk weighs in with a tough, soulful, heart and body wrenching album of beautifully crafted, real life love songs. It's straight from an amorous battlefield that maps clearly the terrain of every crack and fissure, every veil of tears, and every hour spent writhing in pleasure with the Beloved — as well as the world view such a union creates. As Leonard Cohen stated so elegantly in "Anthem": "There is a crack in everything/that's where the light gets in." Since this is most certainly so, You're Not Alone is blazing with light. Written and recorded in Nash Vegas, Mohawk teamed with old friends producer Jon Tiven, and his songwriting, bass playing wife, Sally, to deliver 13 songs that hearken back to a time when blues, rock, R&B, and country, were inseparable in the best popular music. They assembled a crack band that includes both Jon and Sally Tiven, drummer Billy Block, and guests such as Steve Cropper, Keb' Mo', and Bonnie Bramlett — who co-wrote "The Moment."

Mohawk's voice is a multi-valent instrument. She has always been an inspired singer and songwriter. These 13 cuts, all but one written with Jon and/or Sally Tiven, are rooted in the earthy, sensual, poetic grain of Mohawk's utterance. Jon Tiven surrounds her with horns, beautiful ringing guitars, funky basslines, second line rhythms, and Hammond B3s; he allows the tight immediacy of these songs (all are under four minutes) to move through the body, soul, and throat of this truly gifted singer. On the Miami-soul tinged "Wings Of Grace," one can feel the bodies of angels caressing the singer as she allows them to speak in tongues through her; on the bluesed-out title track, Mohawk gets her voice in the deep end of the pool, coming out on the ends of lines with a falsetto that hovers above the guitar fills which are razor-sharp, yet graceful. Still more, on "Love Is Just A Dream," drenched with the beauty of Memphis soul charts, Mohawk delivers a tale of loneliness and the empty bed blues with an ache that goes to the very edge of the world. Only Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin at their best are capable of conveying this kind of emotion — felt in the spirit to the point that it inhabits the body like a ghost — in a song. The shambolic slide guitar blues rock in "One Last Kiss," echoes the raucous joy of Delaney and Bonnie live, but is firmly rooted in Mohawk's own soul-scorched delivery. And yet, on a minor key ballad, such as "Love Hates Hiding," Mohawk lets the song carry her voice forth like a spirit from the depths of her belly and into ethereal space, hopefully touching the absent Beloved where it counts.

Virtually every track here is laced with some kind of gift, some strange desire for connection and wholeness, and it is carried forth via Jon Tiven's uncomplicated, direct, raw, and muddy production; he keeps all of the edges in order to convey every nuance in Mohawk's message. You're Not Alone is a masterpiece of human yearning, straight from the grain of Mohawk's voice as it translates into song.