Melissa Etheridge

 “I chose to survive,” Melissa Etheridge sings on “Being Alive,” the powerful, exuberant opening song of the Academy Award and Grammy Award winning artist’s 17th studio album, “Rise.” She then takes a pause, the flurry of her guitar and her bandmates’ boisterous sounds fading out, before she practically shouts, with unbridled joy: “God I love being alive!” The words say so much. But in that pause — just a few seconds long — it’s as if she’s looking at everything that has happened in her life in the time since she last released an album of new material, 2019’s “The Medicine Show,” and with it everything that is to come on this remarkable, emotional mosaic of songs. And it’s a lot. Co-produced by Etheridge and Shooter Jennings (whose production credits include Brandi Carlisle, Tanya Tucker, Charlie Crockett and, of course, his father Waylon Jennings) and featuring her sharp band of guitarist and keyboard player Max Hart, drummer Eric Gardner and bassist Erik Kertes, “Rise” soars as an intimate and richly realized collection. At turns it’s celebratory and playful, as in the explosive “Don’t You Want a Woman” (picked as the official rally song of the Kansas City Current professional women’s soccer team) and “Tomboy” (reclaiming the term as a badge of pride), both punctuated by Etheridge’s hearty laugh. There’s “Matches,” a frisky ode to the guitars that sparked her musical passion as a kid, steeped in the spirit of childhood hero Johnny Cash. There’s the lusty honky-tonker “Davina,” its singalong chorus sounding as if it could have been recorded in a raucous saloon. And there’s “If You Ever Leave Me,” which starts with Etheridge cruising down Melrose in the ‘80s after first arriving in L.A., but goes on to glory in her marriage with Linda Wallem. “If you ever leave me, I’m coming too,” she sings, with another burst of laughter. At others it’s contemplative, most profoundly and movingly in “Call You,” her deeply affecting account of living in the wake of the opioid death of her son, Beckett, in 2021. In it she looks deep in her soul and cherishes the strengthening embrace of family, friends and community. This also filters through “The Other Side of Blue,” a light-in-the darkness anthem co-written and co-sung with Chris Stapleton. And at the end of the album she shines in the warmth of “More Love,” written for and sung at her daughter Bailey’s wedding last fall. Ultimately, it’s an album of acceptance and resilience. As she sings in the title song:
You’re gonna fall to earth sometimes
You’re gonna taste the dirt sometimes
Then you’re gonna rise