A Completely Unbiased Review of Jenny Youngman’s Latest Album, Psalms From a Hard Year

by Mark Youngman (adoring husband, president of the fan club, consumer of beautiful music)

*Psalms From a Hard Year is available wherever you download great music. Disclosure statement below.

Is it too much to say that Jenny Youngman is a modern-day Psalmist? Not at all. After listening to this brand-new album, you’ll probably find that you are a Psalmist too. Listen all the way through, and you’ll find yourself nodding in agreement, shedding the best kind of tears, and being swept up in beautiful words and songs.

I remember that Friday morning. Jenny had driven the carpool and I was off for coffee and a run on our weekly sabbath day. Jenny texted the words, "Come home." Her mother Pat had died suddenly of a heart attack in her new home two states away. After rushing home, I found Jenny in tears on the couch. It was a whirlwind with everything moving so fast and so slow all at the same time.

The 11 tracks on Psalms From a Hard Year were written in the months that followed. They reveal a journey through shock and grief, faithfulness and doubt, pain and beauty. The tracks are vulnerable, personal and somehow completely familiar. The search for hope and truth in a time of grief is universal. And while you might expect that songs born in a time of loss would be, well, sad, the movement of the album is always in the direction of hope and life.

The artists around Jenny’s lead vocals include some of the very best musicians, arrangers, and producers in Nashville. It’s almost ridiculous-- this list of artists who clearly cared deeply about this project. You’ll want to dig into the other works of each musician listed in the liner notes.  Listen for the stunning string arrangements from Cremaine Booker in the opening track and throughout the album. And make sure to catch the pure tone of Beckett Youngman’s trumpet as it amplifies the ache of longing for God’s promises to prove true in The Conversation.

From the start, Run to My Maker brings you right into the heart of the Psalms, echoing words of Psalm 121. Immediately, we are focused not solely on hardships but identifying where we look and where we go in our times of trial. You might be surprised by how upbeat the album begins.

Hard Year could describe any season of struggle. Jenny recognized that she didn't get a pass from the hard stuff, but that she was truly never alone. A similar theme appears in Through Something where Jenny sings,

When the heart breaks, it gets stronger in the mending, and when you feel the ache, it's just the stretching and the bending, and the scar left a sign to remind you that you've been through something. (Through Something)

Motherless Daughter is an ode to Jenny's mom. I can personally vouch for every word. This is the most raw and personal song on the album, but you might find yourself contemplating truths about your loved ones as you listen.

All I ever wanted was to love my mother well, and I tried really hard, and then I lost her. (Motherless Daughter)

The Conversation, captures both an external and internal wrestling with the dissonance between God’s promises and the presence of suffering.  Jenny responds to God’s promises with a confidence that ebbs and flows in the same way the journey of grief fluctuates like ocean tides. God will not leave us/ ok, ok.

Not all grief stems from the loss of life. When we risk real relationship, we will undoubtedly face disagreements that can turn into deep divides. Track 4 reveals an enduring hope that even in such divisive times as the ones we live in, Love Could Be Enough. Staying with this theme are songs that call on the importance of those who surround one who is grieving. You Stay, and What We’ve Been Through, both point to the role that community plays when we find ourselves in the shadow of death. Sometimes God proves that He will not leave us alone by sending others who will share the journey.

The album concludes with Beautiful Shore, a stripped-down setting of familiar hymns and Psalms of faith in which Jenny’s voice is joined by a chorus of family members that evokes a choir of angels and also seems to beckon the listener to join in and cling to the beautiful shore of heaven.

The Psalms of the Old Testament are meant to carry the stories of God's people into God’s bigger story of redemption. If you’re like me, you’ll want to let these songs carry your own stories of grief and loss into the presence of God who promises to be with us always, even (and especially) in the hard years.

Disclosure Statement:  Jenny Youngman is my favorite person in the whole world, and she is so dang pretty I can’t take it. Somehow I convinced her to marry me nearly 27 years ago (she rounded up to 30 in the song What We've Been Through!).