CD Reviews - Love Call Me Home

RAMBLES - a cultural arts magazine online

In a world where stars can fade by age 25, it is great to review an album by a lady approaching her 70th birthday who has entertained and enlightened us for half a century. I believe that the second part of that accolade is the more important in assessing this diva of folk. Her songs always entertain but by making us think she achieves her greatest hold.

Love Call Me Home marks her 21st solo release, and there is more to come -- it is only the second of a planned trilogy of albums. It mixes old and new songs, but always great songs.

The magnificent feat here is not just the choice of material but the fact that many of the traditional songs are released in her voice for the first time. Imagine 50 years and 21 albums and she is still coming up with "new" old songs. This release is like an anthology of folk. We get the full range of songs from the ever-popular murder ballad "Poor Ellen Smith" through supernatural tales like "Rynerdine" to romance and betrayal in "Careless Love."

I loved the old stuff but was mesmerized by the two new compositions that open and close the album. The title track refers to a friend of Peggy's who passed away, and it will tug all the more at the heartstrings for knowing that it is about a real event.

But my favourite track is the opener, "Singing about Hard Times." This is a brilliant song that does not refer to the hard times of the Stephen Foster song. It reminds us that we live with job losses, wars and suffering every bit as bad as the 19th century and makes us wonder what progress has been.

This is a great release from a wonderful singer, interpreter and writer of folk songs.

review by Nicky Rossiter

NET RHYTHMS REVIEW Love Call Me Home

This is a truly delightful record. I absolutely loved Peggy's last two releases on Appleseed, especially the beautiful Heading For Home (released in the fall of 2003) which formed the first instalment of a projected "Home Trilogy" (the fluid concept of "home" embracing her American birthplace, England, stages where she's performed, her physical body and the music that has shaped her career) - of which Love Call Me Home is now the second. Believe it or not, Peggy's fast approaching her 70th birthday, but on this record she sounds virtually ageless, ie every bit as fresh as she has in ages, radiating the good vibe that can only come from a singer so deeply connected to her material and displaying that innate and comprehensive understanding of the songs she chooses to sing.

Love Call Me Home is Peggy's 21st solo album, on which she again mixes old songs with new compositions of her own, of which here there are just two, bookending the album. Dealing with the latter category first, these - although highly contrasted - are particularly fine examples of homage-writing; Sing About These Hard Times is kinda based (at any rate musically) on the spiritual Down To The River To Pray, and updates the mood of the times as a contemporary response to an exhibition of artwork of the Great Depression, whereas the album's title track is a tenderly felt remembrance of a friend Christine Lassiter who died of cancer four years ago (for in the end, love calls everyone home).

The rest of the songs are traditional in origin; as Peggy explains in her liner notes: "I love new songs, yet I still find myself returning to the old ones… songs handed down to us by singers who loved and tended to them, as I love and tend to them for those who come after me." These are loving performances indeed, and tremendously affecting; they include a stark, superbly authentic unaccompanied rendition of Bad Bad Girl (a song her mother had transcribed from a 1936 recording of Ozella Jones), while the second of the unaccompanied tracks - Love Is Teasing (where Peggy uses the American melody, different from the usual English and Irish versions, which is well worth reviving) is delectable. There are also very fine versions of Rynerdine and Loving Hannah, not to mention two hanging ballads (Hangman and Poor Ellen Smith), an eerie, quite chilling rendition of Who Killed Cock Robin? and a derived playparty song (London Bridge).

Accompaniments are homely and simple, using favourite instruments like autoharp, Appalachian dulcimer, banjo, psaltery, guitar, fiddle and mandolin; musicians include two of her sons by Ewan (Calum and Neill) and daughter Kitty contributes some backing vocals. Much of the album was recorded in England in fact, five of the tracks at Calum's studio here. The whole project has a tangible and highly satisfying unity that's brought to it by Peggy's own potent and thoroughly likeable presence (the personification of a folk artist) and her inborn understanding of the repertoire, songs with which she's truly at one and at home. The press release is spot-on - for this is indeed an album that will call you (too) home.

Net Rhythms Magazine UK, David Kidman
May 2005
Note: Kidman's review also appeared in FOLK ROUNDABOUT, Issue 136, June 2005

from Midwestern Record Recap:
PEGGY SEEGER/Love Call Me Home:

One of the pre-eminent traditional singers still working delivers the second in her home trilogy of new works. Tackling a raft of traditional music she hasn't recording in her 50 years of waxing, Seeger delivers like a true pro that could do it with her eyes closed but thinks her fans deserve more than that. True, classic folk fans will go nuts for this set. APR 1087