February 27, 2017

Sallie Ford’s Raucous Self-Help

The singer’s new album “Soul Sick” is passionate and immediate.


Sallie Ford
Soul Sick
Vanguard
 

Courtesy of Vanguard

The ingredients of Sallie Ford’s stunning fourth album are easy to identify: ’50s teen ballads, ’60s reverb-heavy surf guitar, and plenty of timeless garage rock, among other familiar sounds. (Love those trashy organ riffs!) But that doesn’t begin to hint at the passionate immediacy she brings to these vivid stories of mental health struggles and the attempt to rise above “that feeling when you feel like giving up.” A deceptively powerful singer who splits the different between an earnest folkie and a fiery punk shouter, Ford reveals her darkest thoughts with fearless candor, daring to “imagine the worst that it could be/Fantasize, romanticize, my demise,” in the raucous “Loneliness Is Power,” and confessing, “It’s the feeling of failing that’s freeing,” on the lovely “Failure.” If she bends, Ford never breaks, concluding with the rousing, soul-inflected “Rapid Eyes,” exclaiming, “I need professional help…Gotta try and fix what’s inside.” Soul Sick is a riveting self-help session that could buoy the spirits of others facing their own challenges—and it’s great Rock ‘n’ Roll to boot.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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