Holly Near – Hang in There (Originally released in 1973 on LP)

Holly Near’s debut album contained songs she had written for and in the wake of the 1971 anti-Vietnam War FTA tour of U.S. military bases and the Indochina Peace Campaign tour that shadowed the presidential campaign of 1972, both spearheaded by Jane Fonda. As such, it was a concept record that provided a snapshot of the American anti-war movement in its later days. There was here none of the initial anger and the heady exuberance found in the work of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton in the 1960s. By now, the protests against the war had gone on for years, just as the war had, and in 1972, as Near put it in “Oh America,” “Peace lost the election ….” These are, then, songs of frustration as well as extremism, several of them, including the title track, addressed to the people of Vietnam. All of this made the album a historical curiosity within a few years of its release. But it is also notable for introducing Near, probably the first protest singer equally interested in folk music and show music, clearly influenced by Judy Collins (the warmth) and Joan Baez (the stridency), yet already an individual voice. And in “It’s More Important to Me,” Near began to explore female empowerment, an important theme of her subsequent work.      AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann