★★★★★
Just as it took until 1999 for the larger world to wake to the brilliance of Stephin Merritt, in 2010, the popular musical consciousness caught up with the work of Anais Mitchell via her ambitious album and stage show Hadestown. And just as Merritt didn't squander all that goodwill with his follow-up release i, so too has Mitchell put a permanent stamp of approval on her already sparkling reputation with the gorgeous and striving Young Man In America...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
The pairing of Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer is nothing short of magical on this seven-song collection of tracks. Mitchell's clear, spritely voice is the perfect complement to Hamer's thick, rich vocals, and when combined with the simple folk stylings of these traditional ballads from England and Scotland, these ballads are made stirring and beautiful. Child Ballads transports you to another time and place, and in so doing becomes one of the year's most unique releases...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2013-04-04
★★★★★
Vocal collaboration draws ancient and modern together... The folk songs accumulated by the 19th century Harvard professor of rhetoric and oratory Francis Child have become an endlessly malleable core of material upon which each successive folk revival has drawn. Perhaps because he never heard them sung, but instead collected them as written texts, there is a protean, metamorphic quality to the Child Ballads which is well suited to their often supernatural themes...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2013-04-02
★★★★★
The existence of Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer's Child Ballads, a deceptively wispy little collection of old English and Scottish folk songs, seems somehow inevitable. For the last decade or so, the dove-throated Mitchell has been whittling out a catalog of introspective acoustic albums; 2010's Hadestown was a "folk opera" based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a post-apocalyptic mining town and with a side-eye cast upon the underbelly of the Great Recession...
- pitchfork.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
It was hard to imagine how Anaïs Mitchell could credibly move on from a record as sprawling, ambitious and involving as her folk opera fourth set Hadestown. But the brilliant Young Man In America was about as fine a follow up as you could imagine - continuing to develop Mitchell's razor sharp ear for texture and arrangements across the top of a suite of more traditional pieces of exquisite song writing...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-03-05
★★★★★
Over 10 volumes released between 1882 and 1898 (posthumously), American scholar and folklorist Francis James Child compiled 305 traditional Celtic and British ballads in a major and enduring contribution to the study of oral storytelling. Now, over 100 years later, Vermont singer-songwriter and New York-based musician Jefferson Hamer are the latest artists to fall under these songs' spell. It is another neat example of transatlantic exchange, and a fluid, natural fit...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Anais Mitchell & Jefferson HamerChild BalladsWilderland Records2013 Francis Child's 19th-century collection of British ballads that crossed the seas to the US is a cornerstone of folk music. Fairport Convention, Fleet Foxes and the Decemberists have sung them, but here they've been reimagined as material for a duo...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-02-07
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Anais Mitchell & Jefferson HamerChild BalladsWilderland Records2013 After two acclaimed self-written "folk operas" (Hadestown and Young Man in America), Vermont-born Anaïs Mitchell sidesteps into deep tradition...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-02-02
★★★★★
When Justin Vernon paid tribute to "the non-nominees who will never be [on this stage]" in his acceptance speech for the Best New Artist Grammy, it's possible one of the artists he had in mind was the ambitious, somewhat overlooked Vermont-born folk singer Anaïs Mitchell. Bon Iver has been covering a new tune of hers, "Coming Down", on their most recent tour, and Vernon sang on Mitchell's last release, 2010's Hadestown...
- pitchfork.com
2012-04-05
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