Songs We Love: Mary Gauthier, 'The War After The War'

There's a cartoonish perception that it falls to hawkish country singers to take up for the military and to lefty folk singers to protest the very idea of going to war, though there are actually quite a few exceptions to that rule. In four years of volunteering with the nonprofit Songwriting With Soldiers, singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier has been working in an environment where such divisive us-and-them thinking has no place. She and a handful of accomplished songwriter peers have spent numerous weekends holed up with active duty members and their families at secluded retreat centers, collaborating on songs that make tangible the toll of combat.

From that body of songs, she's culled 11 vignettes on her arresting new album Rifles & Rosary Beads, including "The War After The War," which NPR is premiering today. It's a devastating testimony to the quiet suffering of the partners and spouses who welcome soldiers home.

Gauthier is two decades into a recording career that's earned her respect among fans and fellow practitioners of serious songcraft, but all this time, she's most often turned her unflinching eye on herself: her own processing of abandonment and adoption, youthful rebellion, recovery from addiction and . "It's a relief in some ways," she reflects during