Hadestown

Love this one, kudos to whoever chose this one! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who's ever heard of Anais Mitchell. I found her through her Tiny Desk performance many years ago and became obsessed. Seriously, an incredible singer and songwriter, and the fact that she made this stage play (by now, it's become a Broadway thing and won Tonys!) is really impressive. Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco on this thing is also awesome. "Why We Build the Wall" is still one of the greatest songs ever, ever. I could write an essay about that one, but will save my breath today. Anyway, fantastic album. 4.5/5

Oh god the first minute or so of this was a real rollercoaster. First I read that it was folky, which made me want to throw up. Then the first few notes of acoustic kicked in, and it sounded alright. Felt a bit of hope. Then the chick's voice started and I felt physically ill. The guy's voice seemed vaguely passage, but then he either changed it or another guy turned up with an even worse voice. By the time I got to some gang singing "COME ON DOWN TO HADES TOWN" I realised it was just an irredeemable piece of utter shit with an added rock opera snobbishness. It went for about another 45 agonising minutes, loving itself the entire way. This was just too much for me. That whole vibe where art school dorks pretend they're voodoo southern cajun hipsterbilly honky-tonk afficionados, all high on reviews they or their friends wrote for their own stuff, probably referring to themselves as a "collective"... ugh, spare me. 1/5.

Hades gonna hade.

What ever you think this album will be, it will surprise you.

I never heard of Anaïs Mitchell before this list. The album consists of great songs, inspiring lyrics and terrific guest singers.

This is great and as a side note, Ani DiFranco should have an album on this list.

3 Probably better as a musical

A folk album that is elevated from being quite nice to cool and intriguing by Greg Brown's Tom Waits-esque vocals popping up on a handful of tracks. Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Hey, Little Songbird Date listened: 17/12/24

Always up for a musical concept album. Liked this quite a bit, now I want to see the musical!

I'd heard about this as a show but had never really followed through with finding anything out about it. It's lovely. Thank you!

Cool!

Wonderful! I'm very interested in seeing this show now...

Not 1st listen! “Oh my god… I get it now” My curiosity about this album/musical led me to seek it out last year, as well as some Bonny Light Horseman music, a group Anaïs Mitchell is part of. It’s a particularly odd case, where I felt it was caught between its various genres and influences at first listen. Too cleanly produced for rootsy folk, too dry & deadpan for the theatrics, plus the only voice I was familiar with was Vernon/Bon Iver, which kept distracting me from the story. But today, somehow, all the threads came together. The added context of financial woes to the Orpheus & Eurydice story goes a long way in making it contemporary, where the rattles of cello and musical saw keep the songs planted in this eerie, Tom Waits-esque world of Hadestown without overwhelming the lyrics and story.

very cool and interesting and dark music feel it would be better watching it as a musical rather than an album.

I liked this pretty well. I'm not surenit needed to be well-versed an hour, or that it brought anything much new to this well-travelled myth, antlers it was leaning on Tom Waits pretty heavily throughout. But the music was very nice and it generally held up.

Folk, Americana, indie folk. Me han gustado algunas canciones. Venga, un 4.

I had no knowledge of this, weirdo fun and I’d love to see the musical

I get major theater kid vibes from this pick despite this technically being the concept album version. It’s a good album though with a solid mix of jazz and blues applied to Greek mythology which is super unique. Also why we build the wall feels a bit too literal now despite it being written almost two decades ago.

Never listened to the album but Why We Build the Wall is a classic. My brother introduced me to that song. We build the wall to keep us free...powerful stuff. I was shocked to learn the album was from 2010, I would have bet money it was 70's. The whole album is very unique too, lots of folk and jazz. Songs like When the Chips are Down reminded of New Orleans. All in all, very cool someone included this album so I could reminisce about those memories. Also caught Justin Vernon on a couple songs, I believe that is Bon Iver himself.

Very interesting & enjoy Anais' voice...Appreciate this recommendation!

This is going to be a tough review. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this, never having heard of it, or her. When it started up, I was genuinely pretty intrigued. And then she started singing, and oh my very god, I hate her vocal style. Justin Vernon is grand - and Greg Brown is better - but when the primary artist has a voice that drives you nuts, it makes it very hard to work through. It really is a shame, because in almost every other respect, I actually really quite like this. I say "almost every" because there's that fingernails-on-a-blackboard "bwap-bwap-bwooow!" of country guitars every so often too. God. I really can't express how much I hate her vocal affectations. In "Flowers", 'red' becomes 'Ray-ee-aye-eh-hed' - utterly piss-boiling, especially as it's clear she's actually got a voice in her. If it wasn't for her indie-girl, cursive singing nonsense, I think I'd actually say this was one of the better entries on the list - easily top 100 - but I'm afraid I really am gonna have a ding a star for it.

A really cool bluesgrass/rootsy album that sounds like Ancient Greece by way of New Orleans. The instrumentation is brilliantly rustic, the songwriting is winding but also hooky, and the narrative drives the whole thing along at a great pace without diverting from the impact of the music. It really is crying out to be a musical and it’s quite surprising it took six years to bring it back to the stage - all of the key elements are already here! Mitchell gives a very diverse and powerful performance, but it’s the guests who really do help bring this version to life. Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco both sound fantastic as Orpheus and Persephone all across the record, and Greg Brown’s Hades sounds like he smokes twenty Tom Waits’ a day

There are some things I like about this, but I'm really not a fan of musical theatre. It's just sort of over the top dramatic. I may check out other works by her to see if there are some that are less theatre-y. 3 stars.

This was something completely new to me, and it was pretty nice actually.

Half an hour would have been enough, but it was interesting at least

I remember reviewing this for my local student radio station in college when it came out. It's an interesting project with some fun numbers (one or two are earworms for sure). Overall it feels less than the sum of its parts.

That time that Tom Waits had a jam with the cast of Sesame Street.

Fourth studio album!!! Go album! It's decent. Not really sure how many more times I'm going to listen to it, though.

I was interested to find that the musical I had been listening to was a concept album first. I think I preferred this one, it made more sense.

Pretty interesting, enjoyed it more than I thought.

Overall this was decent. With all the different voices a couple of the songs sounded straight out of a musical. Some interesting songs.

Interesting

Interesting proposal with retro overtones, but nothing spectacular. A very long album for this type of more "passive" performance, it was tiring.

A re-imagining of a Broadway soundtrack recorded as its own album? Kind of a silly premise to begin with – losing the orchestral flair (and going for this super-soft indie vibe) means the dramatic moments aren’t emphasized, and at the end of the day I now still have to watch the play to get the full experience. An hour of softly-whispered narrative with only a few dramatic highlights is a lot to ask of a listener without the staging behind it, and as a standalone LP this falls flat on its face as a result.

Wasn’t for me. I can see why people would like it, but just not anything I would ever want to listen to again.

I thought this album was a bit odd until I realized it’s an accompaniment to a play. In that sense it makes sense why it sounds the way it does but it still doesn’t make the album all that enjoyable. It’s like not being part of an inside joke. The Justin Vernon songs weren’t bad. 4.6/10

I have nothing but a question mark about all of this. Why does it exist? Why would this be nominated to the list? HUH?

It's all very route one lyrically. Nice music, and I get it was a musical, but it always seems to go for the easiest rhyme, the most obvious statement. Not a bad album, but it felt a bit obvious. Probably suffers from following some prog lunacy yesterday.

Not sure this is an addition to the list

Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SU0gFPMwP8 Jesus fucking Christ, who is the evil warlock forcing modern pop/indie artists to sing with that godforsaken affectation and how do we break his curse. Justin Vernon was pretty good though. Other than that, this is a pretty standard concept album about the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with an Americana spin. Extremely cheesy, kinda just straight up stupid at times, but that's par for the course, I guess. Not a Musicals kind of guy. Interesting choice nonetheless. Strong 2/5.

Now I love this album. I've seen the show 3 times and I really like Anais Mitchell. However, I can imagine this is hard to enjoy without context. But overall, I first heard this in 2011 way before the broadway version was done and I loved it. The music is so good, great story telling, great vocals. Big fan of Anais Mitchell.

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Way down Hadestown, Hey little songbird, Doubt comes in

Really enjoyed this, good folk album. Liked the duets with veron

One thing I will say for this album is that it's thematically ambitious in a way I wish I heard more in music. Musically it was fine, if with a rather strained, oddball vintage sensibility. I imagine this plays better if you are familiar with the musical it inspired, or even with Greek mythology. I struggled with Anaïs Mitchell's voice and mostly preferred the tracks that featured other vocalists. "Flowers (Eurydice's Song)" was a notable exception. Fave Songs: Hey, Little Songbird; Flowers (Eurydice's Song); If It's True; Wait for Me

Yeah this was quite good! James is obviously a big fan and I bet if I had seen the play I reckon it would mean more. Loved hearing Justin Vernon. I think I appreciated it, but didn't totally love it. Some songs more than others. And I can't help but not be into listening to albums with a narrative where you're not seeing it. Tricky one to rate! 3.5?

I cannot believe that this album was NOT initially written as a Broadway show. I enjoyed it; I got mostly grown-up Nightmare Before Xmas vibes from it. One of my wife’s faves; one of mine.

Sufficiently oddball to be original it kept me guessing. In places I could get the 'Princess and the Frog' Disney vibe which was then saved by Tom Waits barfly numbers. It's original.

Hadestown isn't bad, just a bit one-speed folk listening, the guy's vocals are cool because they're so deep and almost instructive, but the production is a little too stripped back and it doesn't work for me. It's interesting enough, just not my thing. 2/5.