In the five years between Joan Baez’s debut and her third studio album (entitled 5, on account of the 2.5 live albums also released) something strange happened in the landscape of popular music: it became marketable.

The folk movement that began as a protest against commercialism and the status quo was bought and boxed and put on the shelves, sapped of its virility and its claws clipped. Even Ms. Baez herself had her venom sacks removed, and while she still bites down a few times, there’s no damage done. Her righteous feminine anger is stripped away and replaced with a safe air of mystery (which manifests itself in a couple of classical Spanish pieces, one played with full orchestration–an odd fit in an otherwise acoustic-only album). Her debut was a grandmother of Riot Grrl punk. 5 is the godmother of Nelly Furtado (early). Other than that, there are a couple nice songs on here, like her covers of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me and Johnny Cash’s I Still Miss Someone. After all: you can’t expect to sell records without some prettiness, and 5 certainly delivers prettiness.