Spotlight Album Review: Lucy Kaplansky "Last Days of Summer"

Lucy Kaplansky has always seemed like one of folk’s most approachable and down-to-earth, as well as gifted, musicians, with a pure, unaffected voice as a singer and songwriter. Her new album, Last Days of Summer, her ninth as a solo artist, is one of her most personal, earning kudos from Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday (check out their wonderful interview) and is a treat from start to finish.

Last Days of Summer starts with the title track, which expresses a mother’s worries about her child going off to college. It contains memories of her growing up and the inexorability of change, both of which Lucy experienced as her daughter Molly (a proficient musician herself) went off to NYU. Molly has been present in Lucy’s music going back to 2004, when she was adopted from China, something that must have resonated with Scott Simon, a fellow adoptive parent. The song, co-written like all the originals by her husband Rick Litvin, has the ring of truth to it.

Other originals touch, at least tangentially, on current events. “Mary’s Window” is about a small-town older woman’s fears about the divisiveness in America approaching the 2020 election. She finds hope in the results (“the sound of kindness just keeps on”). “Song of the Exiled” is set in Lucy’s hometown, New York City, where she encounters cab drivers from overseas who see the U.S. in a different light and “make the city run again.” The closing track, “Elmhurst Queens Mother’s Day,” takes place during the pandemic. As she watches from afar (presumably Cale Cod, where Lucy and Rick have a vacation house), she admires the courage of the healthcare workers who are “the infantry” of the pandemic, keeping safe “my city, my home.”    

The spirit of the #MeToo movement suffuses much of Last Days of Summer. The original song “Independence Day” uses a couple of holiday gatherings to express a woman’s anger at a powerful man, much the way Lucy’s old partner Shawn Colvin did in “Sunny Came Home,” down to a reference to a burning house. “This is where it ends,” Lucy sings, “Not setting foot in this house again.”

Among the four covers on the album, two have a feminist spirit. Nanci Griffith’s “Econoline Van” concerns a Mormon wife and mother trying to escape an unhappy marriage. Lucy told Scott Simon that it reminds her of her own determination to follow her dream as a folksinger. The classic ‘60s feminist anthem, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” gets a rocking treatment, driven by Duke Levine’s reverb-heavy guitar.

The other two covers are “Gold Watch and Chain,” which finds Lucy comfortable in A.P. Carter territory, and “These Days,” which Jackson Browne famously composed at the age of 15. Lucy has said that Congressman Jamie Raskin, a prominent part of the House Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection, requested that she sing “These Days” at a gathering. With Lucy now over 60, the commitment to “live the life I’ve made in song” shows her staying power, and the line “things are bound to be improving” testifies to her innate optimism.

Last Days of Summer is the work of a confident musician. Although Lucy is credited as the producer, she relied on longtime colleagues as arrangers: in addition to Duke Levine, Mike Rivard on bass and Ben Wittman (a producer of several of her albums) on drums, plus her old pals and collaborators John Gorka and Richard Shindell on harmony vocals. She also trusted in her fan base to find the album exclusively on her website. It’s well worth the trip, not just for the summer but year-round.