Mavis Staples’ Sad And Beautiful World finds the legendary singer channeling decades of soul, faith, and strength into songs that search for hope and love in hard times. Guests include Buddy Guy, Derek Trucks and Bonnie Raitt.
At 86, Mavis Staples remains one of America’s truest voices. And her new album Sad And Beautiful World feels like a dispatch from the front lines of the human heart, a collection that finds her pushing through sorrow with that familiar blend of grit, grace, and soul.
Produced by Brad Cook, whose credits include Bon Iver and Waxahatchee, the album unfolds like a conversation between generations. It reaches across time and style, from gospel and soul to folk and blues, gathering a community of kindred spirits including Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Jeff Tweedy, Derek Trucks, and Justin Vernon. Each steps into Staples’ orbit and sounds a little stronger for it.
The first single, “Human Mind,” written by Hozier and Allison Russell specifically for her, is a meditation on resilience and the strange tenderness of hope. When Mavis sings, “Even in these days, I find good in it sometimes,” that “sometimes” lands like a confession from someone who’s seen it all and still chooses to believe.
Her take on Tom Waits’ “Chicago” roars like an engine, a nod to her family’s own journey north. With Guy and Trucks trading guitar fire, it becomes both history and prophecy, a migration toward something better even when better isn’t guaranteed. From there, she turns Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous's “Sad And Beautiful World” into a hymn for the grieving, then reshapes Gillian Welch’s “Hard Times” into a promise that we might still make it through. On Kevin Morby’s “Beautiful Strangers,” she sings for those caught in the crossfire. On Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed,” she sings to the lost. And when she returns to her late friend Curtis Mayfield’s “We Got To Have Peace,” it’s both memory and warning, a prayer with its sleeves rolled up.
Cook recorded much of the album live, starting from Staples' voice and letting everything else find its place around her. The result feels open and unguarded, like a room full of people making music because they need to. “We tried to build everything around her,” Cook said. “The voice is the anchor. It always has been.”
She talks about faith a lot these days, not as something lofty but as something practical. “You have to stay hopeful,” she says. “You have to believe it’s going to get better.” It’s the kind of thing only someone who’s endured can say without flinching.