"Yarrow's ultra-modern musical argument on the album Rock Island is a convincing one. She re-articulates, revises, reshapes, and remodels folk music in the image of today's "folk" styles -- through the sounds, dynamics, and textures of the people's v [+]"Yarrow's ultra-modern musical argument on the album Rock Island is a convincing one. She re-articulates, revises, reshapes, and remodels folk music in the image of today's "folk" styles -- through the sounds, dynamics, and textures of the people's vernacular given the way music is heard and experienced today. In so doing, she is closer in feel and intent to the historic "folk" traditions than many folk revivalists who claim to read some of these same songs through rarefied ideologies. Yarrow paints the hallowed pearls of Celtic and American song lore with huge rhythms, samples, taut melodies, crunching bass lines, snaky guitars, and seductive, hypnotic loops. This is not some gimmicky attempt to fuse tradition and technology... She offers a hearing in how they transcend time and context, how they seem to inform the current age from their ghostly presences in the collective historical past, and how they communicate their metaphorical truth as relevant in any age.... There are taboos that get celebrated here, as Ms. Yarrow is nothing if not political, and addresses issues of race and class throughout the set. The murder ballad "Pretty Polly," is lacerated with samples of a fire-and-brimstone gospel preacher just under a tranced-out, dub-heavy rhythm...The tension and feel of suffocating dread permeates the track. No longer a fable, it becomes a near slice of life portraying violence against women. The title track, a version of "Rock Island Line," features a backbone slipping, hip-hop rhythm, Chandler's ethereal dulcimer, and the sample of Leadbelly wafting though the proceedings. Yarrow's singing, with its bluesy-gospel and rockabilly inflections, echoes the bluesy 1957 Johnny Cash version -- albeit in a more sultry, steamy manner -- it seems to bubble up from the swamp... This is music that carries its messages and metaphorical contexts through the centuries and decades -- into the heart of our fractured era -- and attempts to weave voices, ancient to future, together in defiance to what would separate and fragment them. Rock Island fulfills the promise of great folk music: it seeks to foster the commonality and truth of shared experience -- of the song to be sure, but also of cultures thrown together in a confusing, bewildering time. 4 stars! -- Thom Jurek,
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