Anais Mitchell - Way Down Hadestown

A concept album about a greek myth in a post apocalyptic future setting heavily inspired by great depression era America while worryingly relevant to our situation today?  Sign me up!


It feels unfair to single out one track from Hadestown.  This is an album of constantly shifting moods, as great concept albums usually are.  From tender pieces like Wedding Song and Flowers to dark moody little numbers like Why We Build The Wall and Wait For Me, this is unquestionably an album that tells a story.  If you gave it to someone with no idea what it was about, who didn't understand the lyrics, they would still be able to hear the tale communicated through it.

But singling out one song is the format I've kept myself to and I've no intention of changing it now.  So I've picked the highlight of the album, the fantastic Way Down Hadestown.  The album had it's routes in a live stage show and that's probably no more apparent than it is here.  This is a big song and dance number, with a fantastic beat and the kind of insistent melody that has you humming for days after the tune's finished.

It's also a fantastic showcase for its singers, there are eight singers on the album total with half that number represented here.  The lyrics are tight and memorable, instantly communicating to you each characters motivations and feelings, from Eurydice's desire to be wealthy and Orpheus's fears of Hadestown itself, to the early bird cameo of Persephone (who's solo track Our Lady Of The Underground) very nearly pipped this song to the post of top song.  Hermes, recast as a crackvoiced train conductor rounds out the vocal cast and opens the song with a stunning verse, before coming back to trade lines with Justin Vernon's Orpheus later on.

All of this accompanies a thumping folk rhythm, all plucked banjo, pots and pans drums and raw energy.  More than anything else, it's the track that most resembles a sort of folk musical, as much stageshow and showmanship, while sounding as though it was constructed in a barn somewhere in America.  Hadestown became one of my favorite albums soon after I first heard this song and continues to be to this day.  Check it out.  You'll be glad you did.

Posted in: Anais Mitchell, Ani De Franco, Ben Knox Miller, Hadestown, Justin Vernon, Music, Music Review, Way Down Hadestown