Emmylou Harris

Wrecking Ball

breaking out of the paradigm box

Review Score:

(10/10)
imagine that this album had come out prior to 1987 instead. a third of all negative comments would have become unneccesary. which proves that a lot of what you've read that are negative are really comments made by fans who think ms harris' working with lanois, is a sell out.

take heart. some of the best albums ever recorded have irked fans totally & in some cases, critics too. consider lou reed's 'berlin', then think 'pet sounds' by the beach boys. what you must remember is this: that recording the same album over & again takes no great effort. in which case, 'wrecking ball' is on many levels a great classic album. only when you decide to break out of the paradigm box, & do something so completely different from what you've done does it require brilliance & immense talent. only when you put yourself to the test, risking everything when you have no reason to, can you know how far you've run.

what also marks this album out from a slew of other albums out there with covers is the remarkable inclusion of songs that are, for the most part, lesser known. you would have thought a dylan song like 'lay lady lay' or 'forever young' would be obvious choices for an album like this, but emmylou instead picked a lesser known 'every grain of sand', & there must be a thousand neil young songs out there she could have covered, she chose instead to cover 'wrecking ball'. a thinly veiled but appropriate allusion, but which describes this effort completely. how could anyone not know this?

variously, some people have described emmylou harris like she's some brain washed robot in the hands of an evil maniacal producer. what everyone seems to have forgotten is the participation of the original songwriters & singers of the songs she had chosen to cover. on practically every track, with the exception of dylan, welch & hendrix of course, lucinda williams, steve earle, the mcgarrigles & young were there & they participated. it's almost like a singer's second chance with a song they had sung years before, but which they can now sing again - only much better this time, & with ms harris on lead vocals too.

on the two songs she actually wrote, the sublime 'walk across texas tonight' but especially on 'deeper well', she shows us a maturity & like no other songwriter had since dylan & a very young lou reed. with a voice, almost pagan like, that positively evokes a sense of urgency & immediate danger. this is a song like no other person can sing it, & the words seem to roll from those thespian lips like as if she hardly took a breath; as if they were pushed out from her lips with an intensely personal emotional pressure instead.

this is a great album because it works on so many levels. ms emmylou harris, godmother of alternative country music, just recorded one of the best albums of the nineties, got millions of people around the world who couldn't relate to country, sit up & listen, & many more people wondering if they had been wrong about country music all this time & she gets lynched for everything from an uninspired horrid album cover, to every country music evil there can possibly be.

i say only this. that an album which correctly educates us all who have deviated, that all genres of rock music, grew out of country music; an album that quietly reminds us that every master of rock music, from young, to dylan, to elvis & the beatles owe everything that they've learnt & know to this music form & an album that is responsible for a hundred new country music converts year after year, bears the mark of a great classic album. this then, is the power that is this milestone 1995 album.

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