Mavis Staples Reaffirms Her Faith With One True Vine

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 25, 2013 4:40PM

Photo credit: Chris Strong

“I looked in the mirror, what did I see? A brand new image of the same old me,” Mavis Staples sings matter-of-factly in a re-working of The Staples Singers’ classic “I Like the Things About Me” on her new album One True Vine, which hits record stores and online music sites today. The lyric, as interpreted by the 73-year-old singer, has a few meanings: The contentment found as one gets older; reflections of younger days; the power of faith.

Faith is the overriding theme of One True Vine and can succinctly explain Staples’s ongoing musical partnership with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. Their previous collaboration produced the 2010 album You Are Not Alone, which won a Grammy for Best Americana Album. It would be easy to view One True Vine as a victory lap for Staples and Tweedy but the album is a more solid effort that shows their relationship is an enduring one. After years in the musical wilderness, Tweedy has reintroduced Staples to the Millennial generation in much the same manner as Rick Rubin made Johnny Cash cool for Generation X with their American Recordings series of albums.

The Staples/Tweedy formula is a simple one—let one of the greatest voices of the past 50 years take center stage and don’t get in the way. Tweedy opts for sparse musical arrangements here and plays most of the instruments with the exception of drums, which are handled by his teenage son Spencer. The lean backing lends a force to Staples’s vocals, as in the slow dirge of the album’s opener “Holy Ghost" and the Tweedy-penned “Jesus Wept.” A cover of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That” does a remarkable job of capturing the original’s funky Clintonian blues. But Staples’s vocals are such that, when she decides to cover a song, it becomes hers.

After some slow numbers the album begins to pick up the pace with “Far Celestial Shores,” a song written by Nick Lowe specifically for Staples and the point where the Gospel, already predominant, comes to the front and the album becomes a tent revival peaking with “I Like the Things About Me.” Tweedy doesn’t attempt to replicate Pops Staples’s reverb-drenched guitar lines here and instead forms an almost military backbeat with his son and lets Staples bring the song home, singing “I like the things about me that I once despised.”

One True Vine is the latest success in Staples’s late career renaissance and, if her performance here is an indication, shows she’s not quite finished.

Download One True Vine on iTunes, Amazon and eMusic.

"I Like the Things About Me"