(liner notes) Malvina Reynolds... Sings the Truth

Conscientious refusenik within the belly of the U.S. monster, Malvina Reynolds sometimes puts me in mind of Lillian Gish’s character in Night of the Hunter. Adoptive Mother to a fragile human flotsam set adrift by the “Great" Depression, her home the concluding and compassionate refuge to a raggedy Hansel and Gretel’s down-river transit through the heart of Amerikan darkness; modest in resource, but steadfast in her principles – she’s warm, if a little awkward, and possessed both of a great affection for her fellow humans and a respect for the bounties of nature. And for all of this, she does not retreat from an absolutely feistiness in defence of what she takes to be sacred.

Reynolds, the Unitarian atheist, seeks for & recovers the dignity and divinity of all living things. Born in the first year of a century of total war, she testifies to the best and worst of human behaviour. A keen intellect lends her work a playful quality and its occasional sharp, acerbic humour. An instinctive socialist, she proceeds from that honourable antimonian tradition of left-wing Jewish émigrés - now largely eclipsed and forgotten - to which the progressive strands of North American civic life owe so much.

(etc)

now available from the Omni Recording Corporation