I've been looking forward to this ever since I heard about it, and while it's not as revelatory as I'd hoped it might be given the concept and the principals, it's a nice listen. It's constructed very deliberately: one song with each of Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney (who I didn't know before), Natalie Merchant and Rhiannon Giddens, an instrumental version of "Last Kind Words" (which also showed up as the opener on Giddens' Tomorrow is My Turn), and then another each, in the same order, with Amidon, Chaney, Merchant and Giddens.
Given the source genre - i.e. traditional folk songs (English, American, and one from France, or at least in French) - it's not surprising that the prevailing mood is one of quiet melancholy, epitomised by Merchant's take on "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier" (a perfect singer-song pairing which works predictably well), though the lilting and somewhat lighter-hued "Montagne, que tu es haute" (one of Chaney's, and a nice contrast to her other contribution, the long, slow, drawn-out - but quite magnificent - "Ramblin' Boy") is another highlight. The quartet keep their own contributions relatively low key, the strings often humming below and accenting the vocals more than driving the melodies in their own right, which tends to serve the songs well but maybe leaves these versions ending up as less distinctive than they might have been.
Given the source genre - i.e. traditional folk songs (English, American, and one from France, or at least in French) - it's not surprising that the prevailing mood is one of quiet melancholy, epitomised by Merchant's take on "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier" (a perfect singer-song pairing which works predictably well), though the lilting and somewhat lighter-hued "Montagne, que tu es haute" (one of Chaney's, and a nice contrast to her other contribution, the long, slow, drawn-out - but quite magnificent - "Ramblin' Boy") is another highlight. The quartet keep their own contributions relatively low key, the strings often humming below and accenting the vocals more than driving the melodies in their own right, which tends to serve the songs well but maybe leaves these versions ending up as less distinctive than they might have been.
