★★★★★
Stripping the legend froma legendary person is never easy, but this double-disc compilation offers an opportunity to do just that.
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-09-12
★★★★★
Have you ever asked yourself, "I wonder if Joan Baez has always employed the slightly excessive and quite annoying vibrato so evident in her recent work?" If you have, the answer is at hand, thanks to this reissue of her first recordings; and that answer is... "No, she hasn't." Or, at least, not to the same degree. Flippancy aside, the 23 tracks here represent a historic moment...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2011-05-23
★★★★★
Re-wind a couple of decades There are few artists as true to themselves as Joan Baez - her life and music inseparable from the events and issues that shaped the 60s. Baez never let up, imploring her fans to engage in righting the wrongs she sang about. 1975's Diamonds & Rust brought her moderate mainstream success, but her relentless outspoken activism was quickly alienating her from an audience whose radical tendencies had mellowed over time...
- www.recordcollectormag.com
2011-04-25
★★★★★
Given Joan Baez's centrality to American cultural and political life over the past five decades, the greatest surprise about this documentary is that it wasn't made much sooner. While Bob Dylan's career has been the subject of a multitude of docs and bios, essays and retrospectives, Baez's work--both as artist and activist--has received comparably little scrutiny or contextualization...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-01-20
★★★★★
Joan Baez always knew a good song when she heard one. Exactly 40 years ago she took on tour with her a little-known ingrate called Bob Dylan and she's been championing the cream of left-field American songwriting ever since. The current crop to get the seal of approval on her new album includes Ryan Adams, Caitlin Cary and Gillian Welch, while selections by Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant are also smart choices. Sadly, though, her once pure voice has gone...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Once the face of American folk, Joan Baez's legacy was then cast into the shadow of the man whose career she fostered, Bob Dylan. Baez, like Judy Collins, subsequently struggled to maintain popularity against the likes of Joni Mitchell and Carole King who, significantly, were also intuitive songwriters...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
It's 50 years since Joan Baez launched her career in a Boston folk club, and she is still a force to be reckoned with - both because of her political stance and her ability to reinterpret new songs by other artists. The process continues on her first studio album in five years, produced by Steve Earle - who makes use of a classy, understated acoustic band, featuring his own guitar and vocal work. But what makes this set successful is the choice of songs...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-04-02
★★★★★
Grasslands, wind in your hair, long, dusty roads travelled - it's all evoked in Joan's fine 24th studio album, and her voice, high and flowing, low and gravelly, flows timelessly through it like a mountain stream. Guided by the big, gentle hands of producer Steve Earle, she sings songs by her favourite writers (but no Dylan here), including T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, and Tom Waits (the title track)...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-04-02
★★★★★
This is a welcome rarity, a CD and DVD set that deserves to be heard and viewed, in contrast to those dire packages in which the "bonus" DVD consists of badly shot concert footage. This DVD is an impressive PBS documentary -celebrating Baez's 50-year career, with rare footage and interviews with David Crosby, Steve Earle and even Bob Dylan, matched with frank, revealing and -personal commentary by Baez -herself...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-04-02