Rating: 5/5
Review:
An outstanding disc
This is terrific. I
thought it would be good, but this collaboration with Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Natalie Merchant and Rhiannon Giddens is even better than I expected.
The Kronos Quartet are a superb ensemble who, for well over
40 years, have made magnificent recordings of their own and have collaborated
with the likes of Bowie, McCartney, Björk, Nelly Furtado and many others. Here they have recorded an album of folk
songs with four outstanding singers. The
choice of material is excellent, some haunting traditional melodies alongside
social comment in songs like Factory Girl.
It's uniformly excellent (although personally, I find the closing
Lullaby a little ordinary by comparison).
The arrangements are fantastic, with the quartet giving real
life to the songs and sounding in some places like a hurdy-gurdy, in others
like a rootsy Appalachian folk ensemble and so on. The singing is quite brilliant, as you'd
expect from these four outstanding singers, and the whole thing is a pleasure
from start to finish.
In short, I think this is an outstanding disc which I can
recommend very warmly indeed.
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