Mary Gauthier’s new album "Rifles and Rosary Beads" is a powerful change in direction for her. After eleven albums of mostly autobiographical songs, she has turned her sympathetic ear to the plight of the military and has co-written all the songs with men and women who are veterans of combat in the Army, Marines and Navy, all of them younger than 30 years old. It’s an album unlike any other, directly tapping into the lives of those who protect this country.

She came to this experience through a nonprofit group call Songwriting with Soldiers that uses songwriting as a way of therapy for military veterans. She uses her skill with Americana songcraft to polish and make these stories instantly relatable.

Not only do the songs deal with the trauma of combat but also the difficulty of adapting to civilian life once back home, sexual assault at the hands of a superior, empty veterans day salutes, deployment after the birth of a child and life from the partner’s point of view.

Gauthier says she hopes her album “will help bridge what she sees as a civilian-military divide in the United States, too often buried in politics to prioritize the lives and health of veterans.” "Rifles and Rosary Beads" may be the most significant album of 2018.

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