All My Friends

A little more than a century after the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution secured American women the right to vote, Aoife O’Donovan is releasing All My Friends, a collection of eight original songs and one cover focused on the fight for female suffrage, along with broader topics and questions, such as, ‘What is the democracy for which the world is battling ?’ That’s the opening line from O’Donovan’s ‘America, Come’, which, like much of All My Friends, is inspired by the public life, writings and speeches of Carrie Chapman Catt. During a roughly three decade span at the turn of the 20th century, Catt played a leading role in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and other organizations in a crusade to convince the requisite number of 36 of 48 state legislatures to ratify the 19th Amendment, which was accomplished in August 1920.

In musical terms, ‘America, Come’ is a profoundly anthemic song featuring O’Donovan on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, and piano, The Westerlies (an avant-brass quartet), The Knights (a chamber orchestra conducted by O’Donovan’s husband Eric Jacobsen) and the San Francisco Girls Chorus; with all and sundry arranged by Tanner Porter. The song launches with a rocking rhythm before seguing into a swelling brass/chamber passage, which heightens the dramatic impact of the lyrical incantations (‘Suffrage is coming – you know it’).

‘Over the Finish Line’ offers a warning about the current socio-political milieu, which poses a grave danger to progressive democracy (‘Once in a lifetime / The power is ours / But we’d rather stare at our phones’). The mindful lyrics are enhanced by Anaïs Mitchell’s softly elegant harmony singing and a simple arrangement of piano, bass, keys and pedal steel. Supported by a defiant, liberation-minded San Francisco Girls Chorus, ‘Daughters’ decries the female anti-suffragists who fought against their own best interests in Catt’s day, a subset of the body politic that frustratingly persists in 2024.

All My Friends concludes with the songstress’ interpretation of Bob Dylan’s anti-racist ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. In 1963, Carroll, a 51-year-old mother working as a barmaid at a Baltimore hotel, was wantonly assaulted by William Zantzinger, the son of a Maryland plantation owner. Carroll died after Zantzinger struck her with his cane. The perpetrator’s second-degree murder charge was reduced to manslaughter, which carried a six-month prison sentence. O’Donovan’s rendering of ‘Hattie’ begins with a familiar instrumental refrain from ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, altered to sound like an old radio programme. O’Donovan hums along with the tune before delivering a wrenchingly beautiful take on Dylan’s indictment of systemic racism and inequitable justice in America.