Eleni Mandell - Wake Up Again (2019)

Inspired by her experience teaching songwriting at a women’s prison, Eleni Mandell’s 11th studio release, Wake Up Again, is a set of compelling personalized musical portraits and vignettes. From the dark, dreamy “Circumstance” to the noisy “Be Together,” and the jagged brutality of “What’s Your Handle”, the album highlights Eleni’s strengths as a writer and performer going back to her start under the tutelage of Chuck E. Weiss, Tom Waits and other top chroniclers of people in the shadows. Wake Up Again is a probing look into the lives and minds, the regrets and hopes of those she met, but ultimately also of her and us.