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Lion Reviews Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris -- Wrecking Ball
1995

Don't let the "genre" of this CD fool you. Upon loading the tracks from this CD onto my computer, I was informed by my CD playing utility that the genre encoded on this CD is Country. I must disagree. The genre, to me is Daniel Lanois. Okay, okay. The Lanois genre is not as popular as Country, but the sound on this CD owes its magic to its producer, Daniel Lanois. He is to the new sound of Emmylou Harris what the Edge is to U2. His guitar adds definition a haunting character to CD. I cannot imagine what these tracks would sound like without his input, perhaps Country.

Emmylou's singing is convincing. I don't feel there is much excitement in her singing here, but that may be by choice. The songs are chosen to be a serious, perhaps morose? The CD begins with the words "The streets are cracked / And there's glass everywhere" and in most of the tracks she seems to be pondering the suffering of people who chose to make tough decisions in life, decisions that sometimes cause loneliness and pain.

Wrecking Ball is named after the dance bar in the fourth track on the CD. In Neil Young's "Wrecking Ball", a singer laments that he (she if Emmylou sings it) cannot begin a relationship with someone he wants to desperately dance with. Fear keeps the singer from intimacy. I wouldn't name a CD after this thesis, but then again, I don't have a multi-million dollar recording contract. For the "Country" genre, I suppose this thesis is appropriate.

Emmylou Harris -- Red Dirt Girl
2000

Red Dirt Girt owes its sound to Daniel Lanois, although it was produced by Malcom Burn. Emmylou Harris wrote most all the tracks on the album, except for one borrowed from Patty Griffin. My first problem with this CD is that the Lanois genre (discussed in my review of Wrecking Ball) is now being used as a formula. If this were my first introduction to the guitar picking and reverb of this genre, I probably wouldn't mind, but instead I am left with 12 songs that sound perhaps too much like her work with Daniel Lanois.

That said, the music is interesting and her singing is extremely clear as she demonstrates the ability to use her voice as an instrument without drawing attention to it. One characteristic I notice that I overlooked in Wrecking Ball is that Burn, like Lanois, mixed in the sound of each breath she takes while she prepares for the notes. What was supposed to be a unnoticed trait is now for me foreground, at least when I listen to her music on my headphones. After several listens to the album, I do not feel it deserves the accolades I would give Wrecking Ball. This is decent music, done decently.

The name of the CD is derived from the title track, "Red Dirt Girl", a song about two girls who grew up as friends in a red dirt town, but when "her daddy turned mean and her momma leaned hard", and after her brother never returned from Vietnam, she mothered a child and moved to a nearby town with a man she didn't love. The song sounds like a fable when I hear it, and there are several other story songs on the CD, but I do not have a clear understanding why she chose to name the CD Red Dirt Girl, except for my belief that this song is a beautiful poem that she appreciated and wanted to draw our attention to.