On 'Our Country,' Miko Marks' Musical Lineage Comes Full Circle
In the 167 years since the Stephen Foster-penned sheet music for "Hard Times Come Again No More" went on the market, the parlor song has been done, and done, and done again, by performers of numerous generations and styles, long ago passing into the desensitizing familiarity of the American folk songbook. Still, the rendition that Miko Marks recorded for her third overall album, and first in more than a dozen years, Our Country, stands out, even from her own past studio performances.
What she brings to the song is deep fluency in the downhome ornaments and idioms of country, blues and gospel, applied so shrewdly, over shaggy, acoustic accompaniment, as to heighten the sentiment. Her well-placed curlicues, slides and plaintive notes bent blue, the suppleness of her vibrato, the bursts of impatience and vigor in her brief vocal runs tell a story of moving through hardship: straining to bear it, but also withstanding it stoically, and ultimately insisting on seizing an existence beyond it.
That's but one demonstration of the capacities Marks has collected in her vocal repertoire over her lifetime, a repertoire that deserves close listening because she's been doing the thorough work of deepening her connection to her ancestors while elaborating on the expressive possibilities of any
