Mark Erelli, John Francis O'Mara

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Joe Navas

A person looking up at the sky.

Mark Erelli

$15 ($12 adv.).

media release: Acclaimed singer-songwriter Mark Erelli has unveiled “Is It Enough,” the latest from his forthcoming LP, Lay Your Darkness Down, out on February 3 via Soundly Music."Is It Enough" fights back at the complacency that can set in when something or someone is taken for granted. It’s a full-throated appeal to really feel the love in your life and to never leave the ones you love doubting your capacity to show the same in return."There is a certain degree of restlessness baked into the artist’s job description. A creative soul must always be pushing further in, chasing a mode of expression that remains tantalizingly just beyond reach," Erelli says. "It’s easy to be so distracted by all this seeking that you miss the value of all that you already have. Really, what more should one need than to be loved?"

“Is It Enough” follows the emotionally raw “You,” which Erelli calls a “wrecking ball of a love song,” soulfully sultry “The Man I Am,” a tribute to Polly, his wife of 20 years, and lead single “You’re Gonna Wanna Remember This,” an epic track he co-wrote with his “musical big sister,” GRAMMY-winning artist Lori McKenna.

In the summer of 2020, Erelli was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa ("RP"), a degenerative eye disease that causes progressive loss of night and peripheral vision, and can lead to complete blindness. After his terrifying diagnosis, he began to wonder -Does diminished eyesight decrease one’s insight? What does it mean to be ‘fully seen,’ by oneself and by others? These questions, along with his drive to regain his creative agency, are at the heart of Lay Your Darkness Down. The tracks, though decorated with references to shadows, light, and obscured vision, are about resilience, love, and the human condition. The album is more than a collection of affirmations and optimism in the face of despair; it is a clarion call for anyone lost in the shadows. Yet Erelli doesn’t proclaim any easy answers for how to navigate the unknown. Instead, he squarely examines question after question, reveling in mysteries both great and small. With equal parts hope and resignation, he reminds us in the title track that our deepest challenges are more than a simple test of our endurance—they ultimately help us chart our course. Lay Your Darkness Down is a reconciliation of life’s trials and human frailties, adversity transformed into finely-embroidered rock n’ roll, burning with urgency.

“These aren’t songs about blindness. They’re songs I could only write once I realized what I was losing,” Erelli explained to The Boston Globe.“My impending blindness opened my eyes,and I was able to write from that new viewpoint.”