Iris DeMent: Let The Mystery Be
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Iris DeMent didn't get to spend Sundays the same way as the other kids in her Southern California neighborhood. Her parents took her to Pentecostal and Assembly Of Life churches where she spent hour after hour listening to fire and brimstone sermons which sometimes involved speaking in tongues. As Iris told The Aspen Times recently: "There's a lot of weird stuff there that anybody could do without."
When Iris left home, she left the church. But the church didn't leave her. From her 1992 debut Infamous Angel, "Let The Mystery Be" takes on the subject of religious uncertainty: "Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from/ Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done."
"I've never met anybody who went to the other side," she said. "So I just don't know what's there."