Rhiannon Giddens is broadening her scope. Her first album of all original songs, You’re the One, goes well beyond her profile as an esteemed folk singer and traditionalist, as it embraces pop, rock, blues, jazz, and gospel. Recently Giddens was touring Europe with her partner, pianist Francesco Turrisi and the renowned, seemingly ubiquitous jazz bassist Christian McBride. That alone hints at her far-reaching musical paths these days. Yet, to say that Giddens is on a roll vastly understates her recent accomplishments, having won GRAMMY, MacArthur and Pulitzer awards after just two studio albums, this being her third.
Working with producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solango, Alicia Keys, Tank and the Bangas), Giddens tapped both her longtime musical colleagues and welcomed some from Splash’s wide network. In addition to stalwart Turrisi, multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, upright bassist Jason Sypher, and Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu are aboard. Many more musicians join in as electric bass, congas, Cajun and Piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section and a horn section as well as background vocalists add to the mix. Guests Jason Isbell, Leyla McCalla, and Lalenja Harrington each appear on one track. Speaking like the late Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Giddens says, “I hope that people just hear American music.”
Giddens is an R&B vocal powerhouse on the Aretha-inspired “Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad” replete with the classic “oohs and woos” of background vocalists, a funky beat, and Shoals-like horns. She doesn’t waste any time in shedding her folk persona. We know from the outset this a very different Giddens record. The snappy R&B title track, co-written with Harrington follows, with Giddens’ banjo and McCalla’s cello prominent in a dense mix that also features Tsumbu’s nylon string guitar. The song was inspired by a moment that Giddens had with her then-newborn son. (He is now ten and her daughter is fourteen) Here’s the lyric that captures that moment – “Then you came along/With your sweet sweet smile and/Then you put your cheek/Right next to mine and/All those shades of gray slowly turned into a /New technicolor world…”
Jason Isbell joins Giddens singing her folk tale about the fated union of two runaways in “Yet to Be.” The Black woman and Irish man falling in love speaks to Giddens real-life situation, with the elements of the story itself likely fictionalized. All the wonderful nuances of Giddens’ superb voice are on display in her horn-drenched soul ballad “Wrong Kind of Right.”
The centerpiece of the album is “Another Wasted Life,” where an especially poignant Giddens sounds like a modern-day Nina Simone chronicling the tragic story of Kalief Browder, who was imprisoned on Rikers Island for three years without a trial. Giddens’ vocal here is a blend of anger and soaring, wailing beauty. Speaking of Simone, the Powell/Giddens rollicking blues of “You Put the Sugar in My Bowl” evokes the iconic singer both titularly and musically. Likely inspired by Powell, who accompanies her with his Cajun fiddle, she taps into her seminal Carolina Chocolate Drops sound on “Louisiana Man.” “Way Over Yonder” plies similar turf, this time not only with the fiddle but with a teeming choir of voices. On the other hand, the infectious “If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is” taps into early Dolly Parton Appalachian singalong. “Hen in the Foxhouse” is another raw, primitive turn, but it leans more closely to the blues, evoking that chestnut “Little Red Rooster” in her own way – “I’m just a hen in the foxhouse/A pigeon set amongst the cats…A sheep in wool’s clothing/And there ain’t no turning back.”
The Giddens/Powell orchestrated “Who Are You Dreaming Of” casts Giddens as a Judy Garland-like torch singer. While an outlier of sorts on this album, it’s just more evidence that the fearless Giddens can render just about any music type with aplomb. Heck, she won a Pulitzer for an opera after all. Nonetheless, she reminds us of her roots in the brief instrumental bluegrass closer, “Good ‘Ol Cider.”
Giddens is one of the most important, and as this proves, versatile artists of our times. Certainly the crowning achievement of her three recordings so far, we’re left wondering if there is anything she can’t do.
