Within minutes of first pressing play on singer-songwriter Diane Coll’s latest album, I found myself positive that my shelf system had somehow picked up radio waves transmitted from Chicago’s WLS-AM in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and not the bluetooth signal from my computer. I half-expected, when checking the credits, to discover that Up From the Mud was produced by Chips Moman at American Sound Studio in Memphis and that Chip Taylor wrote or cowrote at least a few of the tunes.
Yet Up From the Mud doesn’t consist of a hit single and a bunch of rushed cuts turned about in a few days. Coll wrote the songs and co-produced the bulk of the album with Daniel Groover; it’s a suite of songs about moving out of the darkness and into a light that’s not so overly bright that it blinds you. In short, it’s welcoming and warm, a sonic bath that’s sure to cure the psyche’s nagging aches and pains.
Coll, it should be mentioned, is a Chicago native who moved to Georgia in the early 1990s. She’s a certified therapist who, according to her website, helps people overcome anxiety, depression and relationship issues. Whether her songs are culled from her life or those of her patients is beside the point; just as we don’t expect novelists to have lived their fictions, we shouldn’t expect troubadours to have experienced everything they sing about. The most important attribute anyone—artist or not—can have is empathy, after all.
The set opens with the title track, an ambient cut that turns a drum into a beating heart; it’s the sound of waking up, just about. To my ears, “Eyes” conjures a long-ago melody from the 1960s that escapes me while, lyrically, it encourages someone to see her partner for who he is, not who she wishes him to be: “Look into my eyes/You will see what I see over time/But, it will take a little more/‘Cause your heart’s beaten, broken, bruised, and sore.” “Night Sky Speaks,” which follows, sets a safe space for confession and introspection sans judgment: “You’ve got stories you need to tell/Feel no shame now, I wish you well/Got some memories turning you blue/Yet, this bright light will guide you through.”
As a whole, the songs replicate the slow-moving epiphany that is this thing we call life. (To borrow from the poet Wallace Stevens, “We say ourselves in syllables that rise/From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak.”) The gradual awakening culminates midway through with the dramatic “Body Don’t Lie”: “I used to think something’s wrong with me/When my lungs wouldn’t let me breathe/It’d feel like an eternity/Confusing danger for safety.”
If the album’s first half represents darkness, the second finds the sun cutting through the clouds. “Wasting Time” finds Coll, eyes wide open, realizing that it’s finally time to move on with life: “You know they don’t tell you, but I can say it’s true/Your years don’t define you/Time will take its toll yet, forward I go/There’s no use wasting time/No wasting time.” “Sugar,” for its part, is a tasty confection that ruminates on cranberries, lemons and love. The folky flavor of “Fool’s Gold” is as delightful as a god’s ray: “All of that I’ve released, I have released/Into the earth, the air, into the flame/Back to the sea where no one knows my name/I am free, am free, am free again.” It’s a remarkable song imbued with self-awareness and self-acceptance. The main set close with the gentle “All is Well,” about how light, if one allows it to, can and will chase away life’s shadows.
The album comes with an addendum I’ve yet to hear: five ambient tracks, produced with guitarist Jonny Daly. While I can’t speak to those, the first 14 tunes remind me of the sounds of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, before the AM-FM divide became a chasm. They’re folk, pop and even rock, ambitious and artful all, and well worth one’s time.
The Old Grey Cat 
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