Review by Dan MacIntosh

(Cont’d)

The pivotal moment on Folk/pop singer Meghan Cary’s new Building This House album arrives during the song “Invitation.” It’s a lyric about trust. Trust must be earned, therefore trust is never cheap. “If you wanna love me,” Cary asks (dares?), “You’re gonna have to be strong.”

As Cary states in the CD notes, “All songs written and lived by Meghan Cary.” And much like any true home, these 10 songs sound as though they’ve been lived in. This is something much more than mere habitation, however. Instead, there is the sense that a real, living soul breathed life into these mostly autobiographical songs. Cary admonishes listeners and lovers alike to be strong because she never pulls punches. Don’t enter this listening experience, she suggests, unless you’re prepared to go the distance.

The first hint that Cary is a sincere fighter, and that these songs are fighting songs, arrives with “Responsibility.” On it, Cary sings about the rush of emotions that flood the mind and heart when walking past the homeless. Those hungry eyes following us along city streets are not mere eyesores; these people are our responsibility. It’s our job as humans to lend a helping hand.

Cary’s blues-y vocal on “Through Walking” is applied to a lyric that appears to concern her former fiancé, Matthew Black. Black was influential in helping get Cary’s career started after inviting her to sing in his band. Sadly, Black, whom Cary had also become romantically involved with, died suddenly of heart failure. This song speaks about Cary’s weariness in walking with another’s ghost – presumably Black’s.

It doesn’t take a muscular construction worker to tell you that houses cannot stand without a sound foundation and solid structure, and Cary frames her recording with sturdy opening and closing songs. “Building This House” sets the scene with a slightly funky groove underpinning words about creating a family out of hope and purpose. Along with its soulful organ fills and complex vocal textures, Cary lays out her own personal habitat for humanity in song.

Cary closes the album with “Live!,” which has a happy, piano-plunking tune. It has rhythm of a Sunday morning gospel roof-shaker, matched to the gusto of a barroom sing-along. Cary sings about coming face to face with trouble, and reacting by jitterbugging through it all. “You’ve gotta live like there’s no tomorrow,” she advices, and then follows that up by adding, “You’ve gotta love like there’s no tomorrow.”

Both “Building This House” and “Live!” come off like secular spirituals. “Building This House” is similar to the old African-American spiritual, “I’m Working on a Building,” which was recorded by The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Elvis Presley and others. Whereas that vintage old gospel song spoke of “working on a building for my Lord,” Cary focuses on constructing a sound dwelling place – especially an emotionally secure one – for her young family. Cary is married now, with two small children, so house and home are the building blocks of her life. While she doesn’t point to a spiritual savior figure with “Live!,” she does speak at one point of how her angel came tumbling down. She doesn’t sing specifically about what Jesus would do, but He would most certainly endorse Cary’s advice to love like there’s no tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Cary’s album-closing joy is believable because the singer/songwriter has obviously lived through the dark night of her soul. The house she’s building has withstood potential emotional foreclosure. Losing her fiancé Matthew Black could have caused her to take a wrecking ball to it all. They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Everybody faces tragedies of various degrees, it’s true. How one reacts to tragedy, however, is a choice. Cary has chosen, and chosen well, to rebuild what circumstances have threatened to crush. Building This House is the sound of Meghan Cary’s new life, under construction.