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By BEN ZOLLO
 n his first album in five years, John Mellencamp touches upon our country's current conditions (for better or for worse) with an optimistic and comforting voice while intentionally remaining apolitical. "Our Country" (the anchor to Chevrolet's recent TV ad campaign) takes the centrist's road toward some of the most basic moralistic issues confronting our country, navigating between war vs. peace and religion vs. science. But a tinge of pain in his voice subtly acknowledges America's flaws while patriotically only mentioning the good and the near-good.
The first track of the album, the restrained "Someday," preaches for a vague cessation of intolerance. It opens with an eerie and melancholy guitar riff and climaxes as the back-up vocalists (Little Big Town, the country group that toured with him in early 2005) belt out the song's title in an anthemic chorus of hope in the face of despair. A classic rock compilation, it could be the best song on the album.
The album's darkest song is "Jim Crow," a collaboration with Joan Baez. Although the Jim Crow laws are long gone, the song asserts, racism persists in America. Baez, surprisingly, is difficult to hear in the few lines that she was allotted; but together, she and Mellencamp exude comfort and restrained anger in a beautiful yet disturbing song.
Physical movement-across a highway, a country road, and even a skyway-is used as a metaphorical springboard throughout the album. Hope and other broad, widely accepted American values (freedom, tolerance, social activism) wait at the far end of Mellencamp's roads for Americans to reach. In the album's title track, Americans ride Freedom's Road and pass by rape, murder, unemployment and even the devil en route to freedom. "Rural Route" details the story of a missing girl on an empty road. But the song's specifics fade into vagueness as problems such as drug addiction and the "mentally ill" unnecessarily enter into song's final verse.
In an age of uncertainty that includes polarizing politics, a long and expensive war, hurricanes, global warming and religious fanatics, Mellencamp, through the use of broad societal themes, creates a statement that both blue and red states can embrace. Almost poignantly speaking to and empathizing with America's majority swing-voters, the album searches for hope and happiness, firmly entrusting the inherent goodness found in our country and its citizens. Mellencamp, of course, wants peace, but he doesn't offer a suggestion about how to reach it. His optimism is comforting and yet not idealistically naïve. He reminds us in the title song that we're all held accountable for our future. "If you take a ride, you've got to pay a toll." Freedom-from intolerance, from addiction, from dictatorial control-comes with a price. But once that toll is paid our dreams will be realized.
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