Peggy Seeger
Album: Everything Changes
Label: Signet/Red Grape
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.peggyseeger.com

Although rapidly approaching the ripe age of 80, Peggy shows no sign of losing her grip on - and unwavering interest in - the important concerns of the world. This latest collection finds her in fine voice, as brilliantly expressive, articulate and precisely controlled as ever - hell no, I'd say even more so - and still in possession of all her faculties, notably the gene which controls her right-minded thinking. Courage of her convictions has always been the keynote of Peggy's modus operandi, while her performances have always been characterised by her involving personality and her unerring ability to communicate, for she possesses the entirely enviable gift to inspire her listeners, at whatever entry-level.

So far then, plus ça change. But in many other respects, this new record (Peggy's 22nd, I believe) finds that (virtually) everything (else) changes - and not just because Peggy is, as ever, pushing beyond her normal boundaries. Here, for the first time, she's backed on almost all of the selections by a small band (Calum and Neill MacColl, James Hallawell, Simon Edwards and Martyn Barker); also, unusually, she's engaged a collaborator in the writing of three of the album's songs. Everything changes on the most obvious (audible) level too, whereby Peggy contributes very little instrumental accompaniment of her own (this is confined to piano on two tracks and concertina and organ on a third): firstly on the very practical grounds that this gambit has released her to focus 100% on singing, and secondly on the aesthetic grounds that most of the songs needed "an "expertise and a vision" that Peggy "just doesn't have". As Peggy expounds in her typically honest and forthright booklet note: "I am a folk musician and these are not folk songs". Whatever your view on this latter statement or the vision of the lyrics, I'm sure you'll find much to enjoy, savour and provoke thought during the course of this CD.

But it's not an easy ride, for the subject matter is quite often significantly dark ("not black but deep chocolate with burgundy wine", Peggy herself says). Finest of the bunch IMHO are the disturbing Nero's Children; the uncomfortably poignant Flowers By The Roadside; the telling, desperate observation of When Fairy Stories End; the cinematic Titanic tale of Swim To The Star; and the Alzheimer's-themed We Watch You Slip Away, the latter co-written with Kate St. John for Kate's mother Diana. The title track is Peggy's anguished and quite remorseful reminiscence of her own mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, who died of cancer all of sixty years ago. Perhaps closest to the folksier material we associate with Peggy is the lilting Over The Mountain To You, which Peggy describes as a co-write in all but name between her child-self (age 10) and her crone-self (age 76) - remarkably charming nevertheless!

Maybe not quite everything that changes here, changes for the better, methinks - the jazzy trombone-bedecked lounge vibe of You Don't Know How Lucky You Are just about gets away with it due to Peggy's fabulously delicate vocal work, but her cover of Rutthy Taubb's Miss Heroin is arguably a touch over-arranged for the starkness of its lyric, and Peter & Lou Berryman's fun Santa ditty Do You Believe In Me? feels out of place in this illustrious company. But hey, Peggy's personality is irresistible whatever she sings!…

David Kidman