Review: Cristina Vane ‘Hear My Call’

Review: Cristina Vane ‘Hear My Call’

By Hal Horowitz

Any artist born at the foothills of Italy’s Alps, raised between England, Italy and France and who currently resides in Nashville is going to bring a vibrant and eclectic set of influences to her music. Add time busking on the Venice Beach, CA boardwalk, a proficiency in fingerstyle/slide guitar along with classic clawhammer banjo work, and substantial touring experience for someone whose colorful background prepares her for success in the Americana trenches.

Meet Cristina Vane.

On her third album, the spellbinding ‘Hear My Call,’ she touches on, and often combines, bluegrass, folk, pop, Delta blues and a bit of rockabilly for a succulent smorgasbord of roots music. That concoction is topped with a gorgeous vocal tone, part Alison Krauss/part Neko Case, that rings out with sweet yet potent beauty reflecting the music’s diversity. It’s a flawless and innovative amalgamation of every aspect of Americana, rolled into one talented whole.

Vane’s recorded career includes an album of covers from iconic bluesmen like Son House, Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and Charlie Patton for 2020s ‘Old Played New.’ By 2022s ‘Make Myself Me Again’ she incorporated mountain music and country and now, on 2025s follow-up (her third studio set), intertwines threads of organic music further developing and refining her already expansive musical boundaries.

On “Coming in Hot,” she incorporates bluesy fingerpicking with backwoods country, singing about her transient life, “Got to get to someplace before I die.” The song starts out coasting, yet by its conclusion is careening down the road with a momentum referenced in the title. There are hints of Larkin Poe’s blues-rock in “Little Girl from Nowhere,” which also builds steam. Those bottleneck lines again take control with a sturdy 4/4 rock beat and sassy singing “Got some demons at my heels, got some blisters I can’t feel, and I’m looking for the strength to come on.” Tough, tight and tensile.

The temperature lowers for “Getting High in Motel Rooms,” a likely autobiographical bittersweet folk/soul ballad, with “I tried to keep the dream alive/But I’m only human too/Singing to an empty room.” She sounds both broken and determined as the music reflects a steadfast promise to keep moving. Vane’s expert banjo skills are featured on “Storm Brewing” where she combines bluegrass licks with country twang and a bluesy undercurrent.

“Shake It Babe,” goes rocking boogie for a song she wanted to “flesh out in the style of Jesse Mae Hemphill. There’s a sense of confidence in Jesse Mae’s music that I wanted to channel,” she says in the promotional notes. That self-assurance is evident in every track on this 13 song set. It’s also palpable on the waltz-time “Whims of Good Men,” a country weeper that again displays Vane’s determination as she sings that she’s tired, more like fed up, with the impulses in the song’s title.

The closing “Lost You in the Mountains” brings dusky swamp, as Vane’s creeping bottleneck generates raw heat while drums and bass slither and boil until the thunderous end.

On ‘Hear My Call,’ Cristina Vane fuses disparate influences into an Americana classic sure to provide the genre visibility she deserves. We receive her loud and clear.

Listen to “Shake It Babe” here

Pre-Save the album here