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Album review: Joan Baez

Folk

Joan Baez

Day After Tomorrow | 3 stars out 5

The clarion purity of Joan Baez's voice has weathered into something deeper and darker now that the legendary folksinger is 67. And she and producer Steve Earle have chosen material that is suitably deep and dark for Day After Tomorrow, her 24th studio album. Earle collaborates, providing three songs and often joining on harmony vocals and guitar. Patty Griffin, Elvis Costello, T-Bone Burnett, Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan and Thea Gilmore are among the other writers of these visions of political and spiritual crises.

Baez sounds wise and earthy rather than angelic, fronting a group of Nashville's best acoustic musicians, including multi-instrumentalists Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott. But she is a fine enough musician to stand alone, and indeed she does, finding her way to the devastating heart of Waits' war-torn lament Day After Tomorrow, accompanied only by her own guitar-picking.

Steve Klinge, The Philadelphia Inquirer