Joan Baez - Whistle Down the Wind

The Guardian 80

(Proper)

There is a disconnect between the cover of Joan Baez’s 25th studio album, showing the 77-year-old folk queen beaming and radiant, and its 10 songs about mortality and war. Baez is a more playful character than is often painted (she is a wicked mimic of her ex, Bob Dylan), but her calling card has always been gravitas: earnest peace anthems, fearless campaigning in line with her Quaker background, not much in the way of personal candour.

On what she has declared her final record, she finds a just balance between private and public personae through a set of well-chosen cover versions ably, if austerely, produced by Joe Henry; picked guitars, thrumming bass, dabs of percussion, the odd wailing saw.

Pitchfork 74

On her first album in a decade, the folk great takes a hard look at the state of the world and tries to muster something like hope.