Various: Note of Hope – review

2012's Woody Guthrie centenary opens early with this outstanding tribute to the great American troubadour. Bassist-cum-producer Rob Wasserman provides crisp, jazzy settings for extracts from Guthrie's journal, while the array of voices includes a sultry Madeleine Peyroux, an in-form Jackson Browne, rapper Michael Franti with an ode to sticky sex and the late Studs Terkel narrating an encounter with a stock market profiteer. It's an evocative, intimate portrait of both Woody and postwar America, and shifts the view of Guthrie from dust bowl balladeer to Orwellesque commentator and chronicler.