"Her first all-original album in 25 years, and a benchmark effort in a career in song that spans more than 40 years, veteran American folk-pop singer-songwriter Janis Ian's Folk Is The New Black is a bona fide jaw-dropper, a stunning achievement that embraces the zeitgeist of the age, rocks at an assured pace, oozes with satiric wit, edgy humour and barely concealed rage, flaunts her disgust of the new republic, of human greed and cruelty with intellectual muscle and a burning imagination, and wrenches the heart. With just bass, drums and a couple of acoustic guitars, Ian has constructed - apparently in a three-day session and live of the studio floor - a rich and complex musical experience, 15 songs whose lucidity and melodic potency define a composer at the peak of her abilities, all rendered in a sweet, quiet voice that urges the listener ever nearer. Both intensely personal and robustly inclusive, Ian's new songs are among the very best she has written - indeed, among the finest in the entire American folk songbook." - Greg Quill, The Toronto Star

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"Surprisingly contemporary collection from the Sixties' 'Society's Child'. It was forty years ago when the teenage Janis Ian wrote Society's Child, a young girl's sad confession that society's smirking prejudices had crushed her own innocent heart. Damned and bullied by those who should have supported her, she lost that boy whose face was 'clean and shining, black as night.' So powerful was that lyric that it stood along Sylvia Plath and Robert Frost in my High School English curriculum. Seven years later, she wrote At Seventeen, a song which gave voice to all those children who watched life on the sidelines 'whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball'. I've never owned a Janis Ian record but, somehow, that particular lyric, those dizzying little truths, are in my blood. But what does a young folk sensation do with the rest of her life? Roughly thirty albums down the line, Janis Ian still tours and releases albums to an adoring faithful. Her website is a testament to her social conscience as all her net profits go directly to The Pearl Foundation, her own scholarship and education charity. Sadly, inevitable perhaps, there's some tacky merchandise for sale too and many of her albums (autographed on request) are now out-of-print but, even so, she doesn't take herself too seriously and seems to have waltzed through middle age with humour, grace and conviction. This rather long-winded preamble is important as it puts her new album, Folk is the New Black, in context.

"This is an unhurried, contemplative, almost meditative collection of songs that contradicted many of my own prejudices about her music. I expected something rather comfortably old fashioned; sentimental, anachronistic songs about healing and loving each other with maybe a touch of gender politics in there to 'keep it real'. I was wrong. Social commentary does surface on a few of these songs (and, okay, the title track is a bit 'twee') but, crucially--with the exception the light-hearted rant Danger, Danger --nothing here is preachy or overtly 'worthy' and most sound closer to her younger contemporaries like Mary Chapin Carpenter than the folky grandmother I'd imagined. Although uptempo tracks like the Moondance-y Crocodile Song are fairly anonymous jazzy/blues arrangements, they may work better live and, in fact, are necessary tension breakers between the superb, almost mystical, slower numbers. Jackie Skates and All Those Promises are particularly memorable although The Last Train, Home is the Heart and Joy are equally poignant and moving, all caressed by Ian's lustrous, crystalline guitar playing. Joy could be her Forever Young. All in all, this is a very strong collection that far exceeded my expectations, challenging my preconceptions about 'mature' female folkies. Once again, confronting prejudice --be they social or musical--is a calling Janis Ian continues to answer." - Americana-uk.com - Review by Robin Cracknell

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