Album Review: Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi, They’re Calling Me Home

Across her 15+ year long career, the immensely talented multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens has been involved in many genre-spanning musical projects. She’s released old-time music as part of the Grammy Award-winning band The Carolina Chocolate Drops; folk, country, and bluegrass music as both a solo artist and with Songs of Our Native Daughters; and in 2019 she was commissioned to write an opera - just to name a few of her accomplishments.

Much like her career as a whole, Giddens’ second album made in collaboration with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, their first was 2019’s there is no Other, has a breathtakingly expansive scope. Over the course of They’re Calling Me Home, Giddens and Turrisi interpret traditional folk and bluegrass songs, a piece by composer Claudio Monteverdi, and an Italian lullaby.

But despite its sonic range, They’re Calling Me Home feels focused and contained because of what lies at its heart: home. Recorded in a small studio near Dublin during a COVID-19 lockdown, Giddens and Turrisi meditate on home as being a place of joy and tranquility but also as a final resting place. Songs like “Avalon” - an original song - and “Waterbound” feel like your home bathed in golden hour lighting: warm and full of love. On the other hand, “Calling Me Home” - originally written by Alice Gerrard - is a goosebump-inducing opening number whose minimal instrumentation gives Giddens space to loudly mourn: “I miss my friends of yesterday,” she wails.

At every turn, They’re Calling Me Home is stunning and is another impressive addition to Giddens’ already outstanding catalogue.

They’re Calling Me Home was released April 9, 2021 on Nonesuch Records.
Listen to it here