Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free (CD)

Over the years, Bonny Light Horseman has accumulated manymiles on the collective odometer of life. The band’s core trio -Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson, and Josh Kaufman – has amassed anincomparable collected resume. Mitchell is a celebrated solo artistas well as the playwright and songwriter behind the hit Broadwaymusical Hadestown, which notched eight Tony Awards and aGrammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Johnson is best known asthe mind behind beloved indie mainstays Fruit Bats, as a longtimecollaborator with The Shins, and as a film score composer. AndKaufman is a multi-hyphenate extraordinaire: songwriter, producer,and position player, having recorded and performed with artistsranging from Bob Weir to The War on Drugs to Taylor Swift, HissGolden Messenger and The Hold Steady. As a group, Bonny LightHorseman’s debut album received a Grammy nomination for BestFolk Album, and the track “”Deep in Love”” was nominated for BestAmerican Roots Performance. More important than any of this, though, they’ve also lived a big ol’messy and tangled up pile of life, and all that living permeates theirmusic with the wisdom, humor, and depth that underlies theaccolades. Theirs is the stuff that defines folk music as a genre: loveand loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time.The Big Stuff, with the stakes sky high. At the center of Bonny Light Horseman is, always, the singularcombination of three powerful and tender artists, artists whoexpertly dodge superlatives but are quick to acknowledge that theirbond makes each one better, braver and more vulnerable thanthey’d be on their own. Nowhere is this more apparent than in theforce of their voices together, which work with complete trust inone another through the gentlest moments and the most ruthlesswails. Bonny Light Horseman’s new album, Keep Me on Your Mind/SeeYou Free, is an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity. Confidentand generous, it is an unvarnished offering that puts every feelingand supposed flaw out in the open. The themes are stacked highand staked even higher: love and loss, hope and sorrow, communityand family, change and time all permeate Bonny Light Horseman’smost vulnerable and bounteous offering to date. Yet for all of it’shumanistic touchpoints, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free wasforged from a kind of unexplainable magic.