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Spyboy
Most pop musicians in their 50s spend their stage time reflecting on past accomplishments. Emmylou Harris, on the other hand, is still moving forward, seeking new challenges and pushing into new musical territory. Always artistically restless, Harris has offered nearly a quarter century of interesting ideas. However, at age 51, she's creating some of the most lasting and moving music of her life. Fronting a band featuring the New Orleans rhythm section of drummer Brady Blade and bassist Darryl Johnson, and with alternative-country hero Buddy Miller on guitar, Harris presents daring music that is both dark in tone yet spiritually openhearted. In doing so, she's managed to combine the progressive, provocative tension of 1996's Wrecking Ball with the tradition-based music of her earlier work. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Step Inside This House
The most mercurial of Texas singer/songwriters, Lyle Lovett has assembled a two-disc homage to mentors and fellow travelers--a homecoming of mixed emotions and uneven meditations on Texas land and soul. The first disc is the most spacious--including songs by Vince Bell, Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, and Michael Martin Murphy--while the second concentrates on Walter Hyatt and Townes Van Zandt (who died in 1996 and 1997 respectively). The meticulous and mostly acoustic layering of dobro, steel guitar, and piano sonically celebrates Lovett's Lone Star roots; his band even jaunts into western swing on Walter Hyatt's "Teach Me About Love." And Lovett's voice sounds warmly weathered with the respect and affection he has for the material. But the material is perplexing. Eric Taylor's "Memphis Midnight/Memphis Morning" never drives home its lonely impressions; selections from David Rodriguez and Willis Allen Ramsey never draw from the depth of those writers' imaginations (at least "Sleepwalking" is a rarity in Ramsey's small but legendary catalogue); and Steve Fromholz's "Texas Trilogy" never transcends aimless local color. But the two traditional pieces, "More Pretty Girls Than One" and "Texas River Song," number among the album's finest surprises. A similar grace and clarity animates both the title track--one of Guy Clark's most lambent but unrecorded compositions--and two of Van Zandt's greatest mysteries: "Highway Kind" and "Flying Shoes." Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Teatro
The first words from Willie Nelson's lips, "The sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all / the sky was never blue," warn the listener something is happening here. In a converted Mexican movie theater, producer Daniel Lanois surrounds the 65-year-old Nelson with the most startling and assured musical vision of his career: lush, rippling guitars, and swelling, splashing drum tracks, doubled and tripled over, sometimes in a Latin mood. Lanois allows Nelson freedom to solo in and around his sonic dreamwork, and with the presence of longtime fellow travelers Mickey Raphael, Emmylou Harris, and sister Bobbie, the record clearly smacks of Nelson's style and lyrical vision. The original material is decades old, but little known, and generally as haunting as Lanois's arrangements. (Only one song should have remained in the vaults: the emotionally-curdled "I Just Can't Let You Say Good-Bye.") So much could have gone wrong on this pairing. It's a thrill to hear how much truly goes right. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Wide Open Spaces
The major-label debut from this Texas trio proves their instrumental abilities, blending more traditional twang with slow melodic blues, foot-tapping rockabilly, and bluegrass-inspired pop harmonies. From the opener, "I Can Love You Better," the Chicks let their love of music and genuine joy shine through while the energy on this album reminds one of Carlene Carter. Solid musicianship, topnotch vocal performances, and infectious pop hooks make this a stellar project. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Trio
"Appalachia circa 1907" is the way they described it in the postgame interviews. It wasn't, of course, but it was as close as you could come in 1987 and still hope to sell the million copies that this ended up selling. The "Three Tenors" of country music juggle leads, complement each other to often haunting effect, and subjugate their egos to a greater cause. The songs run the gamut from primordial country favorites like "Rosewood Casket" and "Hobo's Meditation," to '50s pop (a rather anomalous "To Know Him Is to Love Him"), and mainstream country. The instrumentation is restrained, the vocals are unfailingly lovely, and the result is a trio that is more than the sum of its parts. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Trio II
This long-awaited, highly anticipated follow-up to 1987's much-loved initial Trio offering doesn't disappoint. On Trio II, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton weave a spell that's equal parts traditional and contemporary, country and folk, vision and voice. It's their seamless musical blend of these counterpoints--as in the sweet, sweeping harmonies on Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" or the instrumentally spare acoustic presentation of the Carter Family's "Lover's Return"--that makes these songs such treasures. When individual voices soar and fuse together to create distinct new voices, when instinct leads the way for artistry to follow, the result is perfect harmony, pure magic. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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The Woman In Me
Shania Twain comes full circle on this album, co-writing 11 out of 12 cuts and proving that she can do more than sing. Once again she crosses over into pop/rock territory with this multi-platinum affair, bringing legions of new fans into the country camp. Peppered with hits such as "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" and "Any Man of Mine," Twain's sophomore effort features crisp and clear vocals and country-flavored pop arrangements. Husband and co-writer "Mutt" Lange, known for his production work with hard hitters Def Leppard, has produced a fresh sound for country, enhancing the traditional with a more gritty, gutsy sound; even the more delicate tunes resemble those power-pop tunes from the 1980s. This is music for all occasions: danceable, romantic, and powerful. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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The Key
Over a decade of amiable and entertaining hits, Vince Gill has occasionally emitted flashes of greatness. On The Key, he finally opens up and taps his full artistic potential with a complete collection of stunningly powerful songs. Using spare instrumentation, and working amid a foundation of bluegrass and barroom country sounds, the recently divorced Gill concentrates on simply stated yet deeply felt songs about betrayal, loss, and the prospects of opening a bruised heart to another lover. Working with a variety of female harmony partners--including Patty Loveless, Alison Krauss, Shelby Lynne, and Sara Evans--Gill brings out the aching beauty of his tenor by settling into gorgeous melodies laid out with unadorned authority. By daring to bare his innermost feelings, he's achieved the greatness he's hinted at through the years. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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Where Your Road Leads
Trisha Yearwood , like her better half in the Mavericks, is becoming more and more country-pop (and less pop-country) with each release. Her latest leads her further down the road into 1970s Linda Rondstadt territory than ever before. It's a land where great pipes and stellar playing are frequently put to the service of treacly ballads and anemic rockers but also a destination guaranteed to provide at least a couple of stunning moments. "There Goes My Baby," about a woman who didn't know how good she had it, is twangy, unpretentious pop, rock-solid and catchy as all get out, and the steel-guitar-driven, Cali country-rock of "Bring Me All Your Lovin'" is as sonically stunning a moment as Nashville's produced in years. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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The Mountain
Even if it does begin with a jokey incantation of the Mickey Mouse theme song ("M-I-C-K-E-Y..."), The Mountain is Steve Earle's most traditional album, pairing country rock's most notorious miscreant with the best working band in bluegrass. Earle was inspired by a chance meeting with the late bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, and this is his self-declared stab at musical immortality. It is easy to imagine these 14 songs sounding as good 40 years from now as they do today. The mood varies widely from triple-time breakdowns to bluesy shuffles to meditative waltzes, but there's not a missed note or strained chorus anywhere. As Earle states at the outset, "If you want to be in the band, you have to put your hat on," and the one he's wearing, at least figuratively, is 10 gallon-plus. Click here for more information or to order this CD.
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