We'll all be together

 

(Photo by Laura Sheeran.)

I'll bet that there's a PhD candidate somewhere writing a paper on how Covid and the lockdowns affected music and musicians. Touring ground to a halt and many musos were forced to turn to virtual busking. Others posted brief clips of themselves performing and chatting for free usually, I think, in the spirit of we're-all-in-this-together. I fully expect books to be published in the near future that document albums written and recorded during the pandemic and for them to note common themes such as death, fear, and dislocation just as skeletons and memento mori became common in medieval art and illumination in the wake of the Great Plague. One such album these texts will surely explore is They're Calling Me Home by Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi.

Giddens and Turrisi live in Ireland, although they hail from the United States and Italy, respectively. When the pandemic hit and lockdowns began in the spring of 2020, the pair found themselves not only unable to tour, but also unable to visit their friends and families in their homelands. They're Calling Me Home was recorded that autumn as they and people around the globe struggled with the lack of social contact and the specter of death that never seemed far away as hundreds of thousands succumbed to Covid every month.

The album is mainly traditional songs and has a sombre tone overall with tunes such as "Calling Me Home" and "O Death" giving off particularly mournful vibes. But there is a new song here amidst the ones handed down, the Giddens-penned "Avalon".

It too is concerned with the end of our mortal coils but it's not doleful. Turrisi's drum and the acoustic guitar of Niwel Tsumbu begin the song and are soon joined by Giddens' sprightly viola. Her spectral, wordless harmonies enter and weave their way through the rhythm. They are a prelude, of sorts, as when they fade away, the viola takes up the main melody that will be echoed by Giddens' lyrical singing. But rather than lament the loss of loved ones, she invokes the idyllic isle of Avalon from Arthurian legend as a meeting spot in the hereafter - "We'll all be together in Avalon".

This song is a thing of sheer beauty. Listening to it, I feel as if I was being carried off on a summer breeze. Turrisi's drum keeps things moving while Tsumbu picks out a lovely rhythm that complements it perfectly. Giddens' voice is angelic and the vocal melody, echoed by the viola, has that alluring Pied Piper catchiness to it, a beatific guide leading the listener to the next world.

While "Avalon" isn't a million miles away from Giddens' work in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, it replaces their cornpone approach with something more ethereal. I will never foreswear the Chocolate Drops but it's great to hear Giddens' folky M.O. expand and take on new shades.