Whoa! Here's one we hadn't been expecting. Despite being the embodiment of everything legendary for helping to introduce Bob Dylan to the world, being the possibly the ultimate female protest singer and sustaining a career spanning four decades, it's hard to imagine JOAN BAEZ sounding so fresh and relevant as she approaches pensionable age.
"Dark Chords On A Big Guitar," though, is the irrefutable proof and it's a remarkably consistent record, with Ms.Baez breezily proving she retains bags of presence and a voice to match throughout these ten moving, sympathetic tunes.
Anyone still expecting some prissy, folk-revival throwback is gonna be in for a shock, as "Dark Chords..." is haunting, beautifully arranged and punchy, featuring a very live-on-the-floor, close-miked sound - not dissimilar to Suzie Ungerleider's albums as Oh Susannah - and plenty of evocative playing from an inventive and well-drilled band.
Melancholic opener "Sleeper" and a no-nonsense 4/4 treatment of "In My Time Of Need" serve immediate notice that a commanding presence is in the air, and it gets better the longer you hang around, with both the atmospheric, widowed blues of "Rosemary Moore" (dig that nimble stand-up bassline! and those lyrics - "Take out your hearing aid, let's go have a drink") and the furious invocation of "Caleb Mayer" scoring serious points. This latter is especially striking: good enough to have come from Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads", no less.
It doesn't end there, either. "Motherland" is even more desolate, with dense brushed drums and stinging tremelo and E-bow guitars cradling a vocal tour de force, while her reading of "Rexroth's Daughter" casts a similar spell to the one Emmylou Harris cast with Daniel Lanois's help on "Wrecking Ball."
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"Dark Chords..." also wins by keeping genius in reserve for the final stretch. Baez's booming, funky take of Gillian Welch/ David Rawlings' "Elvis Presley Blues" ("he shook it like a Harlem Queen, he shook it like a midnight rambler baby", she thrusts) is every inch the equal of the original, while a credibly rockin' "King's Highway" cruises through in its' slipstream and the album closes with its' masterstroke: a consummate version of Steve Earle's "Christmas In Washington", with the refrain: "Come back Woodie Guthrie, come back to us now" not only bringing Joan's past full circle, but also underlining how precarious the world remains four decades after our heroine first came to peoples' attention.
So, against all the odds and the weight of history, "Dark Chords On A Big Guitar" rings and resonates and sound thrillingly modern. There are some people who seem to be able to continue to embody the idea of a living legend and Joan Baez, it seems, remains one of them.
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