Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi They're Calling Me Home (LP)

(Nonesuch Records) 12 tracks
Rhiannon Giddens' new album, They're Calling Me Home, recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, is released on Nonesuch.

Giddens and Turrisi, who both live in Ireland when not on tour, have been lingering there as a result of the pandemic since March 2020. The two expatriates found themselves drawn to the music of their - native and adopted - homelands of America, Italy and Ireland. Exploring the feelings of the moment, Giddens and Turrisi relocated to Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside Dublin, where they recorded these songs over the course of six days.

The result is They're Calling Me Home, an album of 12 tracks that deal with the longing for the security of a home as well as the metaphorical "call home" - death - that became a sad reality for so many during the C-crisis. Minstrel banjo, accordion and frame drums, which have become characteristic of the duo's sound, again play a leading role on the album, but it is the combination of viola and cello banjo that creates unexpected emotion and intensity.