AOIFE O'DONOVAN : ALL MY FRIENDS

AOIFE O'DONOVAN : ALL MY FRIENDS

All My Friends
Crisis
War Measure
Someone To Follow
The Right Time
Daughters
America, Come
Over The Finish Line
The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

Label : Yep Roc Records

Length : 38:46

Release Date : March 22, 2024

Review (AllMusic) : All My Friends grew out of a commission Aoife O'Donovan accepted in 2019, a project designed to celebrate the centennial anniversary of women being granted the right to vote in America. O'Donovan found herself drawn to suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, whose letters and writing served as the catalyst for the song cycle of All My Friends. Dense in its imagery and fleet on its feet, the record unfurls swiftly - with eight original songs and an inspired cover of Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" serving as its coda - yet O'Donovan plays with pacing and production, letting the album expand and contract so it gives the illusion that it's longer than its 40 minutes. The richness is musical as well as thematic: working as producer for the first time (Darren Schneider and Eric Jacobsen are credited as co-producers), O'Donovan gives her resolute folk-rock a cinematic flow, shifting from symphonic to jazz textures with ease. The additional instrumentation, harmonies, and strings don't overwhelm O'Donovan, they give her music an enveloping grandeur that's as alluring as it is haunting.

Review (Folk Alley) : Layers of swelling harmonies and soaring instrumentals shimmer through Aoife O’Donovan’s new album All My Friends. Lush orchestration spaciously unfurls and flows beneath O’Donovan’s crystalline vocals as she delivers a remembrance and tribute to the suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt in this poignant song-cycle. In 2019, as part of a commission to celebrate the centenary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote, O’Donovan discovered the letters and speeches of Chapman Catt. Chapman Catt’s words inspired O’Donovan to write songs that both celebrated the suffragist’s vision and tenacity and that carried her wisdom about the nature of democracy, community, and women’s rights into our own day. The title track opens with O’Donovan’s lilting solo voice; the tendrils of a trumpet and trombone wrap themselves around O’Donovan’s vocals, layering down an ethereal harmony. The dazzling harmonies of the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus add texture as the song evokes the gathering of a community of women to march for women’s rights, just as Chapman Catt did in Tennessee in the summer of 1920. “All My Friends” slides sonically into “Crisis,” a Joni Mitchell-esque jazz symphony that captures the struggle that Chapman Catt faced in 1916 around suffrage, and Sierra Hull’s silvery mandolin picking on the instrumental bridge breaks like blue sky through stormy clouds. The crescendo of “Crisis” tumbles seamlessly into “War Measure,” a shuffling ode to Woodrow Wilson’s support for Chapman Catt and suffrage. Snappy snare rolls open the quietly tender “Someone to Follow,” featuring Noam Pikelny’s lilting banjo and Rob Burger on shimmering accordion, which ponders Chapman Catt’s life prior to her suffragism as O’Donovan meditates on her daughter’s own future. The quietly moving “Daughters” takes up the same theme. With its syncopated rhythms, the spare “The Right Time” mimics Chapman Catt’s movement from Iowa to San Francisco, while O’Donovan incorporates Chapman Catt’s own words—”What is the democracy for which the world is battling, for which we offer up our man power, woman power, money power, our all?”—in the swirling, atmospheric “America, Come.” The spacious and poignant “Over the Finish Line” features the harmonies of Anaïs Mitchell and Luke Reynolds playing call and response with O’Donovan’s vocals in an echoing and haunting song that carries the themes of the album into the current day. The album closes with O’Donovan’s achingly exquisite version of Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” On her new album, O’Donovan testifies to the power of the community of women to change the world around them as well as to the fragility of democracy. All My Friends dazzles in its cinematic scope and intimate warmth, and these songs provide spiritual sustenance for women who find themselves struggling with many of the same issues that Chapman Catt confronted over 100 years ago.

Review (Silent Radio) : In the United Kingdom, women couldn’t open a bank account until 1975 (the same year they invented the digital camera, for context). Taking it back a few decades earlier for those of us that are ill informed, The Suffragettes were a group of women that tirelessly campaigned for the right to vote and for general equality in the late 19th and early 20th century. Carrie Chapman Catt and Emily Wilding Davison are names that should be eternally burnt into our consciousness at the ballot box, the latter even giving her life for the cause of women’s suffrage. You might ask, why dredge all this up now? Surely today, the subject of feminism is the type of thing that only the ‘woke liberal lefties’ care about, if anything gender equality has gone too far. I often hear “women have never had it so good!” 18 countries have seen gender inequality worsen since 2015. Women in Yemen can’t marry or receive health care without the permission of their spouse. 14 states in the USA, the world’s most ‘progressive’ nation, have a near total ban on abortion. The right-wing media tell me everything is fine though, remember, “women have never had it so good!” Of course, I am speaking purely in the spirit of satire. If you can understand that then you hopefully also understand women deserve basic human rights and access to healthcare. The Suffragettes achieved what they set out to do for the most part, but there’s still a lot of work to be done before we even come close to gender equality and I firmly believe we can all do our bit to help achieve that. The Grammy award-winning songstress and vocal titan, Aoife O’Donovan, is taking her own powerful stance on the matter in the form of her upcoming political folk record ‘All My Friends’. The subject matter bleeds through all of the record’s impressive nine tracks, O’Donovan had a clear message in mind while crafting this unique project and her admirable passion has undoubtedly paid off. The opening (and title) track is introduced with a sublime harmony between O’Donovan and the New York based quartet, ‘The Westerlies’. ‘All My Friends’ is a number that is so rich with strings it almost feels picturesque and would perfectly fit in a movie sequence exemplifying the uprising against oppression of any kind. ‘Crisis’ incorporates extracts from a 1916 Catt speech, which was a stroke of genius on O’Donovan’s part. The melody is structured perfectly, replicating the atmosphere of angst being expressed in its lyricism by building and then dispersing when appropriate. The album bounces between tracks that are deeply engrained with historical references, an ode to Woodrow Wilson’s ally-ship here and further tributes to Catt there, it’s now strikingly apparent that O’Donovan is taking the torch from the likes of Lesley Gore and Tracy Chapman to light up the patriarchy in a way that folk music often shies away from. ‘Someone to Follow’ demonstrates the first instance of O’Donovan intertwining Catt’s personal life with her own experiences and showcases a wonderful addition of the banjo from Noam Pikelny. It’s also imperative to note that the transitions between tracks on this record are seamless, another indication that the project was intensely aforethought. ‘The Right Time’ is intended to examine Catt’s tireless fight with inequality whilst experiencing her own personal hardships, namely her husband’s untimely passing, although the message is universally relatable. When many of us face adversity, we often ask ourselves the same question, “when’s it my turn to catch a break?”. The melody is infectious and undeniably an earworm, it currently stands as my favourite track from ‘All My Friends’. ‘Daughters’ has a darker feel production wise, which might be a deliberate attempt from O’Donovan to exemplify her dread at imagining her own daughter fighting the injustices women deal with day to day. By the halfway point of the record, you might expect a dip in quality or for the artist to run out of steam somewhat, but this isn’t the case for Aoife O’Donovan whatsoever. In fact, tracks five and six present the most solid compositions on the entire album. As we near the end of the project, we are pulled headfirst into the dreary reminder that is modern America. With guest vocals from Anaïs Mitchell, ‘Over The Finish Line’ feels reminiscent of O’Donovan’s prior work, her raw grief and distress oozing into the vocal layers as she painfully notes “America’s bleeding, we’re watching it die, fire and blood on the screen”. The final addition to the record being a rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ initially struck me as peculiar. However, upon reflection of the album’s defiant message against oppression of all types, it actually fits quite perfectly. It also helps that O’Donovan’s soothing voice adds a whimsical quality to the song that Dylan’s vocal range doesn’t always manage to perfect. With ‘All My Friends’, Aoife O’Donovan envisions the past, present and future through the eyes of both herself and the inspirational legions of women that came before her. The record is beautiful, poignant and excruciatingly relevant to the current social and political climate in the United States and across the globe. O’Donovan bares her unfiltered soul across nine tracks that encapsulate a time where women had to fight tirelessly against frequent injustice, unfortunately that time has yet to pass us by. Think about this record the next time you hear that “women have never had it so good”.