Album: Buffy Sainte-Marie, Running for the Drum (Cooking Vinyl)

Andy Gill
Friday 03 July 2009 00:00 BST
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Buffy Sainte-Marie's first album in 17 years finds her spirit as undiluted as her charm, still making persuasive, engaging arguments for Native American attitudes, and using the establishment's devices against itself – as in a version of "America the Beautiful" that features the rarely performed line, "Till selfish gain no longer stain the banner of the free."

As before, she employs samples of native chants on "Cho Cho Fire" and "No No Keshagesh" ("No No Greedyguts"), a surging anti- developer protest driven by a pow-wow groove and didge-style drone, while she casts another dubious eye over "America the Beautiful": "Talk about your beautiful for spacious skies/It's about uranium, it's about the water rights." Alongside political tracks and her denunciation of CIA spooks, "Workin' for the Government", there are personal songs eulogising hospice carers ("Easy Like the Snow Falls Down"), an Elvis tribute in early Sun Studio style ("Blue Sunday"), and an acknowledgement of the interrelatedness of events both small and large ("Little Wheel Spin and Spin"), all delivered with passion and engagement.

Download this: 'No No Keshagesh', 'Cho Cho Fire', 'Workin' for the Government', 'Little Wheel Spin and Spin', 'Blue Sunday'

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