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It took a trip to China to rouse the singer/songwriter in Abigail Washburn, but thank the good lord it did. Armed with a banjo and a voice that raises the hairs on the back of your neck, Washburn attacks the world’s cluttered complexity with her simple compositions. Her banjo gallops right up to you and invites you along on Red & Blazing, rattling the soul along the way. Siren songs like The Lost Lamb, sung in Chinese, summon you to ancient, foreign places. Call it emotional gloom and doom made gorgeous in its presentation, but for a singer who bridges Chinese and American folk traditions as if there were no gap, Song Of The Traveling Daughter is a stunning debut.
