Very goodI liked this album a lot. It starts off strong and gets better through to the two songs at the end, which for me were the highlights. Beautiful lyrics, beautiful voice, beautiful music, beautifully produced. A melancholy album pretty much through and through I felt, and that would be my only criticism. Nothing pacey and upbeat to help mix it up a bit. Four stars from me.
Just BeautifulTakes a couple of listenings, but after that it just blows you away. Several standout songs, particularly "How she could sing The Wildwood flower" (which I took to be a reference to an earlier generation of the Carter Family rather than June Cater and Johnny Cash) "Gold" is just beautiful, but particularly the magnificent "Sailing Round the Room". Anybody remember the last poor, or even average, album Emmylou made?
Touching The SublimeThe title : a fanfare, a declaration and a manifesto.
This collection of thirteen new recordings brings us
to some kind of pinnacle in Ms Harris's long career.
She must know this to be true. The evidence is there for us to hear.
After the dry, rasping austerity of 'Red Dirt Girl' (2000);
the warm, reassuring classicism of 'Stumble Into Grace' (2003)
and the uncomfortably eneven collaboration with Mr Knopfler,
'All The Road Running' (2006); 'All I Intended To Be' is a
trancendent epiphany. A true and perfect wonder.
Maturity of voice and musical vision; finely honed interpretive insight
and the ability to create a sense of intense gravitas from the simplest
ingredients are all marks of an artist functioning at the very
height of her remarkable powers.
A track by track deconstruction would seem somehow ignoble given
material of such consumate beauty.
Suffice to say that with the song 'All That You Have Is Your Soul'
the world seems to turn to face the sun. Music to warm the coldest spirit.
Either side of it twelve more wonderful examples of songs to raise
your hopes and break your heart.
Quintessential.
Inimitable.
Sublime.
A disappointmentNot rubbish. How could any Emmy Lou Harris album ever be, but be returning to producer Brian Ahern, she has effectively gone back to the sound if her 1976 album "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town", and that's one step too far back to the future. After the progressive nature of her last three albums, Emmylou has obviously decided she doesn't want her rock fans any more, and to say the same thing again,she's gone backwards.
Make no mistake though, this album is beautifully played and exquisitely sung (who would have expected anything else) but after a few listens, I can't remember any of the songs.
A huge disappointment, and if in any doubt buy "Quarter Moon", it's fabulous.
They say there's ne progress in this kind of music, and here's the proof
ExceptionalRapidly shaping up to be one of the best of 2008, this is probably Emmylou Harris's best record since Spyboy, although stylistically it is closer to Wrecking Ball, and I have to add that there was nothing at all wrong with the intervening works.
It was a well-placed, curiosity-pricking ad for Spyboy, Harris's 1998 live album, that got me started. Until then I'd only had a vague regard for the "country" genre. After, I was hooked, and was amazed at her ubiquity, finding her making appearances with Lucinda Williams, Nanci Griffith, Rodney Crowell, Sheryl Crow, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, as well as being the driving force behind the Gram Parsons tribute The Return Of The Grievous Angel (Brilliant. I don't care what the reviewers say).
And they return the compliment, with Dolly here joining Harris on Gold, their voices intertwining perfectly.
Emmylou Harris is not, of course, just about country. The rhythm section she brought to London in the wake of Spyboy would not, on the evidence of their jamming mid-concert, have looked out of place with Herbie Hancock. Ricky Skaggs, at one time part of Harris's band, remarked rather petulantly of her more recent music that it was "not country", but all of it, country and otherwise, shares a cabinet with Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and The Clash in my world. The label is everything and nothing.
But though country is, I guess, what this latest offering is closer to, what counts is that the songs, music and production add up to an exceptional experience.
Songs first. Some great originals; some superb covers. Standouts in the latter category are Merle Haggard's Kern River; Billy Joe Shaver's Old Five And Dimers Like Me; and a totally stunning version of Tracy Chapman's All That You Have Is Your Soul, which comes about closest to a political statement here, and has a trace of Lovin' You Again, from Cowgirl's Prayer, just as the rendition of Crowley and Routh's Beyond The Great Divide has a fade reminiscent of Gone, Long Gone from Trio II. Almost inevitably there is also a song cowritten by Harris with the McGarrigles, How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower. Also inevitable is that the sisters joined in on the recording.
Musically there is a stellar array of contributors, armed with an arsenal of instrumentation from mandolin, through accordion, banjo and fiddle, together with the obligatory guitars, Dobro and steel and some exotica such as mandocello and baritone electric guitar. Musicians include old standbys such as Buddy Miller (the only thing a girl needs, as she described him when they appeared on Jools Holland's show) and John Starling.
Finally, the production, and the tribute to that element is that, although this collection has taken several years in gestation it sounds, as Bob Harris observed when Emmylou appeared on his radio programme, of one time.
Two closing notes. First, listening this gave me an even greater appetite to listen to Harris's back catalogue. And second, it is very seldom that I will play a record two times in succession: this is one of the exceptions.
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