“I hope that people just hear American music. Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock – it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically,” says Rhiannon Giddens, the outstanding American singer, songwriter, composer, musicologist, author, actor, activist and sometime Irish resident. She certainly does like to play with the possibilities of genre, but the question this album poses is whether she is able to harness this array of styles into a singular album as distinct from a collection of tasty tasters. I suspect not, but her performances throughout are so strong and persuasive that the jury remains out.
You’re the One is her first solo album since Freedom Highway, from 2017, and the first for which she has written all the material. Six years would be an unusually long gap between albums for most artists – popular music can forget you very quickly – but it doesn’t take into account Giddens’s two roots albums with her partner, Francesco Turrisi, the latest of which was the haunting They’re Calling Me Home, from 2021, which won a folk-music Grammy. In addition (in collaboration with Michael Abels) she has written the libretto and music for an opera for which they were awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for music. Omar is based on the autobiography of an enslaved Muslim man, Omar ibn Said, who lived in South Carolina in the 19th century.
Giddens and Turrisi have also written the music for a ballet now retitled Black Lucy & the Bard. And somehow this 46-year-old powerhouse also finds the time to be an activist for racial justice.
You’re the One is, however, generally more personal. If the genres jump around, her lyrics are more grounded, with special mentions for those who have disappointed her. The sassy Too Little Too Late Too Bad summons the spirit of Aretha Franklin. Regret-soaked Memphis soul infuses the gorgeous Wrong Kind of Right, but the narrator of the countrified If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is is more direct. Ditto the chunky funk of Hen in the Foxhouse and the ribald blues of You Put the Sugar In My Bowl. The tender title track was written for her son, while one of the album’s highlights is when she is joined by Jason Isbell for a duet, on Yet to Be. Other powerful performances include the angry Another Wasted Life and the old-time Way Over Yonder. The most ill-fitting is the Great American Songbook-styled Who Are You Dreaming Of?
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Alone, each of the 12 tracks carries a punch of varying strength, but the album doesn’t knit together convincingly. That said, Giddens is just so gifted that a new album, even a flawed one, gladdens the heart.
