Heart and soul adds to mood music

Tracy Chapman's Let It Rain, the sixth album in a career that rocketed to prominence in 1988 with a powerful, eponymous debut and spiked again with 1995's bluesy New Beginning, is dark.\nAt least it sounds dark. Dour strings, sparse arrangements and doleful vocals combine to produce an album that, at first listen, sounds almost like a dirge mourning the loss of happiness, or, as suggested in the aptly titled "In the Dark," innocence: "Make my mind unable / To force the body to do its will / Let it be right for belief and denial / To share a space in the heart and leave us only to imagine / About the things some do in the dark."\nAnd the mournful mood continues through the somber yet uptempo "Goodbye," which laments a remorseful breakup, and "Almost," which details the pain of a happiness that comes so close, but eventually slips through one's fingers. Even a song titled "Happy" is turned into a forlorn experience as it chronicles the way some people fight hard to avoid love. "Some can see the face of love," Chapman sings, "and turn away in disbelief."\nOf course, there is nothing wrong with all this sadness. In fact, as always, Chapman's brooding lyrics and moody introspection is a big part of what makes her such an appealing troubadour. She, like very few artists are able, can delve inside the farthest reaches of the heart and of the soul and bring all that darkness to light.\nThat doesn't mean that Let It Rain's consistently solemn tone doesn't weigh heavily on the listener, who is left praying for at least one ray of sunshine. And that reprieve only comes at the very end of the CD, with the rejuvenating optimism of "I am Yours": "When time decides / It won't stop for me / When the hawks and vultures / Are circling / I am yours / If you are mine." It's a reassuring way to finish an emotionally draining experience.