Now in her 80th year, folk figurehead Seeger is ringing the changes on her 22nd album. For the first time in her long career she’s working with co-writers, her sons Calum and Neil MacColl prevalent in the credits.
Some of these songs will be familiar to close followers of Peggy’s craft. Swim To The Star was originally commissioned for a BBC radio programme marking the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and its descriptions of passengers fighting for their lives (“down, down in dark water”) are chillingly evocative. Closer to home, the delicate piano-led title track is a catalogue of girlhood memories and dedicated to the memory of her mother.
Seeger has rarely been in better voice, imbuing folk melodies with jazz phrasing on the tender tale of innocence lost, When Fairy Stories End, and the smoky You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. There’s less reliance on traditional numbers than on previous albums, but fewer “found” songs are as affecting as Miss Heroin, a frightening and atmospheric first-person account of drug dependence.
