Rhiannon Giddens' last solo album, You're the One, was a surprisingly modern record. There were even a few slight urban touches here and there, and much of it seemed aimed at a mature pop and rock audience. Hope Is the Thing with Feathersgoes in almost the opposite direction. This is Giddens digging deep into old-time American music, with folk, blues, gospel and country all feeding into a record that feels much closer to the traditions she has spent so much of her career exploring and preserving.
Of course, traditional doesn't mean dated. That's an important distinction with Giddens, because she has a remarkable ability to take music rooted in another time and make it feel immediate. A lot of that comes down to her voice. Technically, it's a beautiful instrument, pure and remarkably controlled, but what really matters is how much emotion she can get out of it. She can sound warm and comforting one moment, wounded or menacing the next. Whatever a song calls for, she seems to find exactly the right shade.
"Angel Fire Rise" opens the album with a banjo riff and a hypnotic vocal cadence, then gradually fills out with strings and voices. It's a simple, earthy tune given a surprisingly lush arrangement, and that contrast is one of the things that makes it so effective. There is a lot going on by the end, but the song itself remains wonderfully uncomplicated.
The title track begins with delicate guitar picking and has the feel of an old mountain folk ballad. Giddens layers her voice in places, creating a slightly eerie effect, while the fiddle comes in almost like another voice. More instruments and vocals join as the song progresses, and what begins very sparsely becomes increasingly rich and cinematic. Once again, the underlying tune couldn't be much simpler, but every new element adds something to it.
"Step Away Blues" gets down in the dirt. It's a slow, swampy blues, and Giddens' clear, pure voice sitting on top of that grimy groove creates another great contrast. Better still are the moments when she changes her delivery and starts sounding tougher, more aggressive and even slightly threatening. Goosebumps.
"Wish in Vain" is one of the album's loveliest moments, a gentle ballad that recalls "She Could Fly" both musically and lyrically. Written by Giddens and Dirk Powell, it imagines the experience of being torn away from home and the people you love. Powell joins her on vocals, his rougher tone sitting beautifully alongside hers. Giddens sounds almost weightless at times, her voice fluttering above the music like a nightingale.
Then comes "Carolina Rain", which may be the closest thing here to an anthem. It's still unmistakably a folk song, but there's a sweep to the melody that makes you wonder whether this could, or should, become a hit. By the end Giddens starts roughing up that immaculate voice, slipping into some gritty soul phrasing and showing yet another side of it.
"High on a Mountain", written by North Carolina folk musician Ola Belle Reed, begins with Giddens' voice dry and right up front before turning into an old-time dance tune. That leads to Elizabeth Cotten's "Freight Train", one of the great standards of American folk music. Giddens has visited Cotten's songbook before, recording "Shake Sugaree" on Tomorrow Is My Turn, and this time there's almost nothing between her and the song, just voice and guitar. Two great Black women from North Carolina, making music more than half a century apart, connected by the same tune.
"Walk with Me" strips things back even further. There are no instruments at all, just voices. Giddens sings the traditional gospel tune with her sister Lalenja Harrington, and the harmonies are gorgeous, luminous at first and increasingly impassioned as the song develops.
"Cluck Old Hen" is something else entirely. Loose, playful and mischievous, it initially feels like a late-night jam that happened to be caught on tape. Then it starts picking up speed. The fiddle drives the final stretch into something frantic and hypnotic, and suddenly the whole thing feels ready to fly off the rails. It's tremendous fun, and live, this should have people dancing and sweating.
It also flows beautifully into "Going Home", which brings the album back down into a slow blues. Slide guitar curls around the vocal while the musicians leave plenty of room for one another. You can hear them listening and responding in real time, which makes sense once you know how the record was made.
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers was recorded at The Cypress House in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, during a series of sessions between May 2024 and August 2025. Giddens and longtime collaborator Dirk Powell produced it, with Powell also handling the engineering and mixing. Most of the music was recorded live with very few overdubs, and they deliberately left in some of the incidental sounds of people making music together. Giddens' foot stomping, voices between takes, the sound of the room itself, they're all part of the record. You can feel that looseness throughout.
As usual with Giddens, a lot of stylistic territory gets covered. Blues, gospel, country, folk and old-time string music all rub shoulders, and yet the album never feels like a collection of exercises in different genres. These styles belong together, and Giddens understands the connections between them better than most. You could also call this a dance record, although probably not in the way that phrase is usually understood. There are square dances here, slow dances, old-time reels and rhythms made for wooden floors. The music is physical. It was made to be played by people in a room and enjoyed by other people in a room.
But with Giddens, playing this music is also a form of transmission. She has spent much of her career tracing where American music came from, who played it, who was forgotten and how apparently separate traditions grew out of one another. The important thing is that she doesn't preserve those traditions by putting them behind glass. She plays them. She sings them. She dances with them. That's how this music survives.
There isn't a weak track on Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. Nothing feels unnecessary and there is no point where the quality dips. The arrangements are thoughtful without getting in the songs' way, the recording is warm and immediate, and the musicians play with the familiarity of people who know when to step forward and when to leave space. Above everything else is Giddens' voice, technically formidable, but always used in the service of emotion rather than display. It's an album full of old music that doesn't feel old. That's the trick, and Rhiannon Giddens makes it sound completely natural.
GENRE: Folk/Americana
RELEASE DATE: September 18, 2026
PRODUCED BY: Rhiannon Giddens & Dirk Powell
LABEL: Nonesuch Records
RATING: 9/10
