Mary Gauthier: The Foundling

3 / 5 stars

Mary Gauthier is a survivor with a remarkable history. She was abandoned in New Orleans as a baby, ran away from her adopted parents as a teenager, then battled with drink and drugs before settling down to study philosophy, open a restaurant and change direction yet again in her thirties, when she became a singer-songwriter on the folk/country circuit. Her life story has been reflected in many of her finely observed story-songs, but now comes a concept album dealing with the pain of being abandoned, her struggle to find an identity, and her search for her birth mother. In the past, her finest songs, such as Sugar Cane or Camelot Motel, had a raw, gutsy edge, but the production work here is by Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies: he matches her highly personal, finely-performed songs against delicate, drifting settings in which her acoustic guitar work is backed by accordion, fiddle, keyboards or slide guitar. The result is a bravely thoughtful mood piece, dominated by the half-spoken March 11, 1962, which chronicles her agonising phone call with her birth mother, who refused to meet her. But the sadness is lifted, just a little, by the defiantly optimistic The Orphan King or the upbeat Goodbye – first recorded eight years ago and still a Gauthier classic.