Won’t be Long Now

On her first album in seven years, one of the most truthful voices in music remains powerful and unyielding, no more so than on the opening song ‘Love’s for Babies and Fools’, a ballad accompanied by the guitar of her ex-husband Richard. It’s one of several of her own compositions featured among the 11 songs here. ‘Never Put to Sea Boys’ is a collaboration with guitarist John Doyle, and the lovely ‘If I Were a Blackbird’ was co-written by Ron Sexsmith. It’s an extended-family affair, with daughter Kami Thompson taking the lead on the full-band folk rock of ‘As Fast as My Feet Can Carry Me’, son Teddy on guitar, and grandson Zak on electric guitar. But it’s an album filled with old friends too – Gerry Conway, Eliza and Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, and John Kirkpatrick being among them.

There’s a beautiful setting of Charles Causley’s ‘Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience’, with Martin Carthy on guitar and Garo Yellin on cello, while the two traditional songs – ‘Paddy’s Lamentation’ and ‘Blue Bleezin Blind Drunk’, sung unaccompanied by Linda – are as great as anything she’s put down on tape.