Mavis Staples - Sad and Beautiful World

Release date: November 2025

ANTI- Records

By Marty Gunther

Mavis Staples at Chicago Blues Festival 2025/ photo: Dianne Bruce Dunklau

The moment Mavis Staples opens her mouth to sing, peace comes over the world. Since emerging in 1969 from the Staple Singers – one of the most important groups in the Civil Rights movement – to record her first album, she’s consistently owned a voice capable of soothing even the most troubled soul. And at age 86, she remains at the top of her game when we need her most.

Named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 100 greatest singers of our time, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and Blues Hall of Famer is a master of taking you to church without being preachy, weaving the thread of gospel through unhurried blues and soul. And she delivers a dose of tender-but-fierce love and a big hug with every note.

Produced by multi-instrumentalist Brad Cook (Bruce Hornsby, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Cold Sweats) with vocals captured at Lost Boy Sound and Chicago Recording Company, Mavis gets a helping hand from Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Rick Holmstrom, Derek Trucks, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Eric Burton and other top talents as she fondly reinvents tunes spanning 70 years and culled from the American songbook.

The roster includes Brad on guitar, keys, bass and percussion, Nathan Shocker, MJ Lenderman and Phil Cook, who also adds keys, on guitar with Colin Croom on pedal steel, Matt McCaughan on percussion and bass, Matt Douglas on sax, Will Miller on trumpet and bass and additional vocals from Tré Burt, Sam Beam, Amy Ray, Anjimile, Kara Jackson, Katie Crutchfield, Justin Vernon and Patterson Hood. Other musicians include Will Miller (trumpet/bass), Andrew Martin (mandolin), Andy Kaulkin on piano and Spencer Tweedy on drums.

Staples kicks off the set with an azure-infused reading of Tom Waits’ “Chicago.” By traveling to the Windy City, she hopes, she’ll leave all her troubles behind. And while keeping the original’s heat on high, she makes it her own through her sultry, smooth tones. Things slow dramatically with the sweet “Beautiful Strangers,” which follows. Penned by Kevin Morby of The Babies, it offers hope to folks who see trouble on the horizon, urging them to look to the sky for better days, preaching in the most subtle way possible.

The mood darkens slightly and the pace slows even more for the title track, “Sad and Beautiful World.” Written by the late Mark Linkhous -- an indie-rocker who collaborated with Waits, Radiohead and Danger Mouse -- it finds Mavis alternating from sadness to madness because of the pain inflicted by a lover. Despite the sorrow, though, there’s hope, too. It comes through even more with a soulful version of Hosier and Allison Russell’s “Human Mind.” There’s plenty of pain here, but there’s also healing through thinking it through and finding a reason to improve.

Things brighten as Staples launches into David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s “Hard Times.” The memory of a man who loved to sing as he plowed behind a mule, it offers up the suggestion to not allow hard times to rule your mind. And they get brighter still as that tune flows into Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed,” which offers up a prayer for someone facing obstacles in life and assuring her that his love will always be there when she returns.

Curtis Mayfield’s “We Got to Have Peace” will definitely lift your mood as it claims that the world has no choice if we’re going to survive. Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” cautions the listener to stop running from killers in high places and lawless crowds. Mavis’ message tells us to rest assured that there’s a crack in everything dark that lets light through. And that hopeful thought comes through loud and clear with Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes’ country classic “Satisfied Mind” – which notes that only one in ten rich men are at peace.  Eddie Hinton’s simple but beautiful “Everybody Needs Love” is a fitting closer that will have you singing along.

I feel better after giving this a spin, and I know YOU will, too!

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Website: https://mavisstaples.com/

About the Author: The blues came calling for Marty Gunther in the 1960s, when he witnessed Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf perform at the Newport festivals in his native Rhode Island. A longtime Chicagoan who's now based out of Ohio, he's a professional journalist and harp player who studied under Sugar Blue before co-founding the Nucklebusters, a band that's filled clubs in south Florida since the '80s.