Rhiannon Giddens

Soulful voice walking a thin line between bluegrass and blues.  I've looked at her music twice before, once with the New Basement Tapes supergroup, and then for the release of her first solo album.  That album, 2015's Tomorrow is my Turn, is really nice.  And mostly covers.  Her voice is velvety smooth like warm honey, I love it.  

Her most popular and most listened-to track on Spotify is a cover of "Forever Young" that was apparently used for NBC's show Parenthood.  A duet with Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, it clocks in at 879k listens.

I bet eight million tears were shed when that song played over some special montage of the ending of that show.  I watched the first few seasons and then just got exhausted by the soap opera aspects of it and gave up.  My wife still chastises me for not sticking it out.  If she reads this review and hears that song, she'll likely bawl all over again.  Sweet version of the song though.

From that new album, she's got three tracks that crack six-figure listens.  The most popular of those is "Don't Let it Trouble Your Mind," with 334k.

Live version, but check it out.  Sultry and powerful (and according to the comments beforehand, a Dolly Parton song).  Men who don't step right, you can step right on off.  Dolly and Rhiannon will tell you what's up.  My favorite of those top three songs off the new album is called "Shake Sugaree," and it has just over 150k listens.

A little mountain music, baby.  A million years ago, my sister made me a ton of tapes for the car, and one of them was a Taj Mahal mixtape, which is the only recollection I have of this song, but I dig it. "everything I got is done in pawn" is a good lyric.  If you want to trip down a rabbit hole into the meaning of that song, be my guest: philblank.net/Shake%20Shoccoree.doc

Giddens got her name from a book called Mabinogion, "the Welsh mythological epic," which is way cooler than what I thought, which is that her mom liked Fleetwood Mac.  Prior to this solo career, she was the singer for the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.  I've never heard them before, but I might give them a shot once this project is over.  In addition to her album, she also has an album on Spotify called "All the Pretty Horses," which is kind of a world music pastiche of Celtic sounds with occasional French or unidentified languages thrown in.  I actually enjoyed hearing it today.

As for my final thought, I honestly have enjoyed listening to her new album.  In general terms, this is kind of like the Norah Jones albums a few years ago, I can fully appreciate the fact that this is really well-done and beautiful music, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to go back and listen to it again and again.  I likely won't search out her show at the festival, but I'm not ruling it out either.