CD Review: The Conversation, Texas

My review of Texas's new album, The Conversation, is up at PopMatters. You can read it here. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/172273-texas-the-conversation/

CD Review: Ragged Kingdom (June Tabor and Oysterband)

Not content with having delivered one of the year’s finest albums in the magnificent Ashore [review and interview here and here], June Tabor now returns with her second record of 2011, re-teaming with Oysterband for a highly enjoyable (and long-anticipated) sequel to their 1990 collaboration album Freedom and Rain. Placing Tabor’s unique voice - mostly associated with stark, or indeed a cappella musical settings - in the context of Oysterband’s lively, brawny brand of folk-rock, Freedom and Rain expanded the musical horizons of both singer and band, offering covers of songs by artists as diverse as Billy Bragg, The Velvet Underground, Shane McGowan and Richard Thompson alongside a smattering of traditional material.

Twenty-one years on, the set-up remains much the same on Ragged Kingdom, although the ratio of old-to-new material is more balanced here, the new album’s twelve tracks comprising seven traditional numbers and five contemporary songs, seamlessly sequenced. Benefiting from the many years of musical exploration undertaken individually by Tabor and the Oysters, the new record also boasts a wider tonal range than its predecessor, as well as a fuller, richer, more organic sound; play Freedom and Rain straight after listening to this and the older album sounds just a tad “tinny” by comparison.

Proceedings open in fine style with a rollicking take on “Bonny Bunch of Roses,” the venerable broadside that presents an imagined conversation between Napoleon’s second wife, the Empress Marie Louise, and their war-mongering young son. The band settle into an imperturbable gait and Tabor tears into the lyrics with gusto, ensuring that the song’s cautionary vision of “Moscow … a-blazing” is fully communicated to the listener. Her awesome dramatic power is put to equally good use on a brooding, full-blooded version of The Wicker Man-evoking Somerset carol “Judas (Was A Red-Headed Man),” with sublime fiddle work from Ian Telfer and Alan Prosser, while other highlights on the trad. side include fresh, spirited interpretations of “Son David” (another mother/son duologue), “If My Love Loves Me,” and “Fountains Flowing.”

“We have long been fascinated by the mystery, magic and mayhem in traditional song,” note Tabor and the band in the liner notes. “But the impulse to tell strange stories never goes away.” War and the travails of love remain two of the primary thematic concerns on Ragged Kingdom and provide a bridge from the oldest to the newest tracks. The taut take on PJ Harvey’s and John Parish’s “That Was My Veil” packs a fiercer punch than the muted original, and Tabor’s emphatic delivery of the final “Lies!” is prodigious. As on Freedom and Rain the band don’t swamp Tabor’s genius for nuance when at their noisiest, except perhaps on the slightly clunky version of Bob Dylan’s “Seven Curses” that’s included here, a reading that somehow fails to really tap in to the song’s tragic narrative.

It’s ultimately the album’s quieter moments that resonate most profoundly, though. Tabor’s and John Jones’s gloriously dolorous duet cover of Joy Division’s immortal “Love Will Tear Us Apart” has been a highlight of their live shows for several years now, and it fully retains its impact on record, while Shel Silverstein’s and Jim Friedman’s Civil War saga “The Hills of Shiloh” gets a marvellously spare and spectral acoustic guitar-led treatment that’s reminiscent of some of Tabor’s work with Martin Simpson.

And the a cappella “(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen” is the most haunting thing here - a moving tale from the perspective of a young mother who warns against submitting to the desires of “the plough-boys in the gloaming.” Chips Moman's and Dan Penn’s illicit-lovers staple “The Dark End of the Street” may seem a lightweight choice of finale by comparison, but Tabor and Jones offer an elegant, understated reading that tips its hat to Richard and Linda Thompson’s version of the song while also carving out its own distinctive niche.

In sum, Ragged Kingdom is a most welcome addition to both Tabor and Oysterband’s catalogues, a stirring offering that succeeds in bringing “strange stories,” old and new alike, to vivid, compelling life.

Ragged Kingdom is released on 19th September, through Topic. Tabor and the band are undertaking an extensive tour in support of the album, and I’ll be reviewing their show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tomorrow night. Further details on tour dates and venues here.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

CD Review: In Your Dreams by Stevie Nicks

The songs written by Stevie Nicks always stood out as the most soulful and original in the Fleetwood Mac repertoire; they’ve also proved to be among the most enduring and certainly the most frequently covered by other artists. While operating within the limits of instantly accessible mainstream pop/rock, Nicks’s wonderfully melodic compositions for the band retained a mystery and a depth that took them onto another level. Enhanced by the blurry intimacy of her distinctive vocal delivery, songs like “Dreams,” “Landslide” and “Rhiannon” have become classics that still speak to the listener very personally, sounding fresh and revealing each and every time you hear them.

The trajectory of Nicks’s solo career has been a somewhat chequered one, but her status as inspiration for a range of younger artists was affirmed on her last album, 2001’s Trouble in Shangri-La, a record which found her collaborating with Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow and Macy Gray. Following the Unleashed reunion tour with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks now returns with a new solo album, In Your Dreams. Produced by Glen Ballard and Dave Stewart, the record can’t be said to take Nicks in many new directions musically: the sound is slick AOR, and occasionally a little too polished for its own good. But the album’s best tracks are memorable and accomplished, and fit snugly into Nicks’s body-of-work.

Indeed, proceedings get off to a superb start with three songs that are as strong as any Nicks has penned. The opening track and first single “Secret Love” isn’t the Doris Day cover the title might lead you to expect, but rather a bright, mature and well-crafted pop song that Nicks originally wrote for Rumours but that didn’t make the cut; here, it serves as a warmly inviting welcome to the album. Spacy synths and the sound of a chiming streetcar-bell then usher in “For What It’s Worth,” a delightfully brisk folk-pop strum that finds Nicks nostalgically recalling an illicit romance. The ringing, propulsive title track - one of several songs that Nicks has co-written with Stewart for the album - is equally good.

After this dynamic start, In Your Dreams loses momentum a little, its songs satisfying more fitfully. Best of the bunch is the vampires-and-Anne-Rice-referencing “New Orleans,” a lyrically clichéd but melodically irresistible paean to The Crescent City; the supple, tender pop song “Everybody Loves You”; and the punchy rocker “Ghosts Are Gone.” “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a riff on the Jean Rhys novel, starts out tentatively, but builds to a good fiery finish. And a couple of tracks that, by rights, shouldn’t work actually prove beguiling. An adaptation of Poe’s “Annabel Lee” set to soft-rock accompaniment sounds like a fairly grisly prospect but an artful arrangement and a strong vocal from Nicks combine to make the piece quite effective. And “Italian Summer” is such an unabashed slice of romantic melodrama that all the listener can do is swoon contentedly in submission.

At the less successful end of the album is “Soldier’s Angel” an over-wrought and somewhat hokey duet for Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, and “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” a song suggested by Nicks’s viewing of one of the Twilight films, that ends up as bland and colourless as its inspiration. And in an unfortunate bit of sequencing Nicks saves the very worst track for last: “Cheaper Than Freer” is an embarrassment, a clunky chunk of country-rock that finds Nicks and Stewart trading some excruciating lyrics (“More exciting than high fashion? High passion!”). Such dips in quality control mean that In Your Dreams sadly skirts greatness. But there’s enough strong material here to make this a most enjoyable release overall, and a worthy new addition to Nicks’s catalogue.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

CD Review: Director's Cut by Kate Bush

The appearance of any new music by Kate Bush is such a rare event that the excitement-bordering-on-hysteria that accompanies the release of a new album from her is understandable, perhaps. In the case of Bush’s last record, the 12-years-in-gestation Aerial (2005) [review here], the hype and hullabaloo seemed entirely justified. The record was a gorgeous, elemental, engrossing opus that matched the very best of Bush’s work for wit, whimsy, weirdness and wonder. Beautifully sequenced, the album’s two discs flowed thrillingly from the domestic to the epic, producing a record that worked to sharpen the listener’s perceptions, changing the way we see a sunset, how we hear bird-song. Predictably enough, Bush has laid low since Aerial’s release, emerging with only one new song in the intervening six years, the decidedly underwhelming “Lyra” for The Golden Compass soundtrack. Still, Aerial was proof enough that, after so many years of silence, Bush certainly wasn’t an artist to be written off.

Unfortunately, it’s that weight of expectation that makes Bush’s new release, Director’s Cut, such a disappointing experience overall. The album comprises 11 re-worked tracks from Bush’s two pre-Aerial albums, 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes, all of which have been re-recorded by Bush with new drums and vocals and the addition of a few other elements. "For some time I have wanted to revisit tracks from those albums," Bush has said. "I thought they could benefit from having new life breathed into them. Lots of work went into the originals, but the songs now have another layer woven into their fabric." Although this might seem a slightly perverse, possibly even desperate project for a songwriter who has produced so little new work in the last 20 years, the impulse can be viewed as worthy enough. Bush is, after all, an artist who doesn’t tour, thereby depriving fans of the opportunity to hear fresh versions of older songs in concert. So an album of reworked tracks can be seen to have a place in her catalogue.

In addition, there’s an honourable tradition to such tinkering with past work. Joni Mitchell’s reworking of her songs with an orchestra on Travelogue (2003), for example, resulted in a stunning album that was at once a wide-ranging summation of Mitchell’s catalogue and a distinctive reinvigoration of it. But whereas Travelogue drew on material from across Mitchell’s body-of-work, placing older and newer songs into a dynamic dialogue, Director’s Cut’s focus on selected tracks from just two Bush albums destructively limits its scope, and neither are the changes made quite substantial or interesting enough throughout. And so, sadly, a project that could have been a vital and exciting addition to Bush’s catalogue ends up seeming, despite some worthwhile moments, scrappy, ill-structured, and insufficiently thought through.

For the most part, Bush’s approach here is to de-clutter the songs but in a few cases she adds and introduces new elements. Apparently unmotivated by any particular governing aesthetic, the changes end up feeling haphazard and random. Proceedings do get off to a decent enough start with “Flower of the Mountain” a re-christened and reworked take on the title track from The Sensual World, Bush’s adaptation of Molly Bloom’s final soliloquy in Ulysses. From the lovely opening peal of church bells onwards, the arrangement and instrumentation remains pretty much intact. What’s changed are the lyrics and the vocals, for Bush has finally been granted permission from the James Joyce estate to use the text from the novel as the basis for the song, as she originally intended. This means that we now get to hear her declaiming Joyce’s rapturous, erotic prose-poetry, in her new, earthier tones: “shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall…and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes.” Whether this improves the song as much as might be imagined is debatable but the interplay of Joyce’s words and the music certainly makes for an interesting comparison to the original version. And if by the end Bush overdoes the breathy cooing a tad, the song nonetheless retains its seductive warmth and allure.

The re-workings of the other tracks from The Sensual World yield decidedly mixed results. The best of the bunch is “Never Be Mine,” the slightly murky original benefiting from a more organic and spontaneous approach here, with lovely piano and guitar work, and a great new vocal from Bush that pitches the song beautifully between eager anticipation and mature resignation. Elsewhere, though, the addition of twinkling electric keyboard and a final glacial synthesised soundscape to the classic “This Woman’s Work” can’t compete with the beautiful delicacy and chilling background wails of the original; the new version is lugubrious, its impact muted. And despite some fine jazzy and electronic noodling at the close, the maligned first single “Deeper Understanding” doesn’t hold up much better in context either; the replacing of the dramatic harmonising of the Trio Bulgarka with the computerised, Auto-tuned vocals of Bush’s son Bertie remains one of the album’s several errors in judgement.

Bush tackles seven of the strongest songs from the underrated The Red Shoes, but with a couple of exceptions the reworked versions don’t serve to enhance or improve the tracks in any significant way. Both the wonderful “Song of Solomon” and “And So Is Love” feel like cut-and-paste jobs, made up of insufficiently integrated elements. The latter, in particular, boasts some horribly woozy vocals on the “Live your life for love,” section and comes complete with a fairly nonsensical lyric change, with “Now we see that life is sad/And so is love” becoming “Now we see that life is sweet…” Stripped of the cinematic sweep of Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement, shorn of some (pretty pivotal) lyrics, and now boasting solemn choral interludes, the "Coral Room"-ish take on “Moments of Pleasure” slows to a crawl, missing the bittersweet charm of the original. A chugging, slowed “Lily” also lacks momentum, and though Bush almost breaks through the inert arrangement at the end, with some fine screeching on the added “Who’s on the left? Who’s on the right?” freak-out, it comes as too little too late.

Rather better is the spruced-up title track, and a decent reworking of “Top of the City.” But for listeners who’ve lived with these songs for many years, there’s little to get stuck into here once the game of compare and contrast is up. And stripped of its springy exuberance, with Bush now muttering the lyrics as through she’s embarrassed by them, the revisioning of “Rubberband Girl” as a Stones-ish barroom rocker is a sad mistake, and ends the album on a particularly lacklustre note.

Director’s Cut is of course an album that Bush fans will want to own (it’s also available in a boxset with the remastered The Sensual World and The Red Shoes), and many of those who’ve heard it already profess to be enchanted with it. But though boasting scattered worthwhile moments, the album doesn’t hold together, and is a particular disappointment coming from an artist we know to be capable of so very much more. Even at its best, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the time invested here by Bush would have been better spent in the composition of new material. Happily, Bush is apparently developing some new songs; here’s hoping that she approaches them with more dynamism and drive than that manifested on this intermittently enjoyable but ultimately uninspiring stopgap release.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

CD Review: Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 by Tindersticks

Shortly after completing my entry for the Favourite Movie Music meme, which included one song by Tindersticks and two songs used in Claire Denis films, I was excited to hear about the imminent release of Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009, a collection which brings together the six soundtracks that members of Tindersticks have produced for Denis over the past fifteen years. The collaboration between the French director and the British band has proved to be one of the most fruitful in contemporary cinema, resulting in some extraordinary fusions of sound and image. The partnership began when Denis approached the group about working on the soundtrack to Nénette et Boni in 1996, after listening to their second album while scripting the film. Tindersticks have gone on to provide scores for Trouble Every Day (2001), 35 Rhums (35 Shots of Rum) (2008) and White Material (2009), while Stuart Staples and Dickon Hinchliffe have worked solo on the scores for L’Intrus (The Intruder) (2004) and Vendredi Soir (Friday Night) (2002). This deluxe box set features over three hours of music from the films, while the lavishly presented booklet includes colour film stills and an essay by Michael Hill that assesses the collaboration in depth. It’s an absolute must for fans of the band, fans of Denis and, indeed, for anyone interested in the art of the soundtrack.

“Approaching each film has always asked us to step into the unknown, to stretch ourselves and do things we didn’t think we were able,” Staples has said. “And in the end we always feel changed in some way.” Interestingly, that description pretty much sums up the experience of watching Denis’s cinema, which similarly requires viewers to stretch themselves and, often, to step into the unknown. Elliptical, fragmentary, sometimes opaque to the point of obscurity, Denis’s films have the resonance and mystery of dreams. Focusing upon issues of otherness, displacement and post-colonial anxiety, her films are endlessly re-watchable, works that yield up fresh possible meanings with every viewing, and that thrive on sensation, tactility, mood and atmosphere. In their attention to pace, ambience and rhythm, her films feel like music already, just as Tindersticks’s atmospheric, brooding compositions have very often had a cinematic dimension.

Listening to the soundtracks, it quickly becomes apparent just how integral a part of the overwhelming sensory experience of Denis’s cinema Tindersticks’s music has been. What’s also remarkable is the sheer diversity of the band’s approaches to these scores. Always sensitive to the different qualities of the films’ narratives, their music dynamically and unpredictably fuses elements of jazz and blues, soul, rock, folk and chamber music, and moves from intimacy to expansiveness with the fluidity with which the films themselves move from close-up to long-shot.

Thus the exquisite jazzy shuffle of “Rumba” from Nénette et Boni and the inviting gentle melodicas of “Opening” from 35 Shots of Rum perfectly capture the warmth and intimacy of these family-centred domestic dramas, just as the dissonant, twitchy electric guitar work and woozy trumpet of Staples’s score for The Intruder suit the highly abstract contours of a film in which, as Denis states, “everything is broken,” from the narrative structure to the protagonist’s heart.

It’s precisely this diversity of approach that makes Claire Denis Film Scores such a rich and engrossing experience. Listeners will of course have their own favourite moments across the five discs but worth highlighting is Hinchliffe’s stunning work for Vendredi Soir, all plucked strings and floating cadences, and the wonderfully seductive and portentous sweep of “Trouble Every Day,” the opening song to Denis’s idiosyncratic horror film, which is, rather regrettably, one of just two songs on the collection that showcase Staples’s commanding vocals. Best of all, perhaps, is the band’s haunting score for Denis’s most recent film White Material which employs harmonium, electric guitar, flute, violin and drums to devastating effect.

The primary question about soundtrack albums, of course, is whether the music is strong enough to survive on its own, without the images for which it was created. The answer, in this case, is an emphatic yes. Music in Denis’s films is much more than accompaniment: it’s protagonist, presence, even scene-stealer at times. And as deeply interwoven into the fabric of her films as Tindersticks’s work is, it's more than strong enough to stand alone, providing an intense and immersive emotional experience in its own right. To listen to these CDs, in short, is to be carried back into the landscapes of each of these extraordinary films - and far beyond. Magnifique.

The box set is avaliable through Constellation Records.

Reviewed for PopMatters.

CD Review: Walk by Israel Cannan (Poet's Corner)

Walk (2010) is an extremely assured and consistently engaging first album from Australian singer-songwriter Israel Cannan. The record evolved from Cannan’s travels across Australia, where he drove through every state, writing songs, busking, and otherwise developing and promoting his music. “Concept album” feels like too grandiose a term for the resulting, fairly modest record, but it’s certainly true that Walk holds together very well as a song cycle; its 13 tracks are carefully sequenced and paced, arranged, I would suggest, to convey the rhythms of a journey, from urgent stride to measured stroll, with moments of quiet contemplation. Cannan wrote, produced, and recorded the album solo, and plays all the instruments himself, with most of the songs centred around his (acoustic and electric) guitar-playing, and augmented by drums, harmonica, and piano. The album combines folky intimacy and rock attitude, with even its gentlest songs anchored by strong hooks. Vocally, there’s a suggestion of Eddie Vedder to Cannan’s delivery, and he variously croons, whispers, rasps and bellows with dexterity. The urgent strum of the opening track “Set Me Free” places its protagonist on the cusp of departure with no clear destination in mind, Cannan inviting the listener into the album with the repeated inquiry : “Where do you want to go/While the day‘s still young?” From there, the songs go on to develop as little bulletins focusing on different aspects of travel: arriving, waiting, departing, getting lost. Appropriately enough Cannan’s melodies don’t always take the expected route, either; the strongest tracks here move in sometimes surprising directions. “The Final Day,” for example, opens, with a Pixies-ish bass riff while “On My Way” starts out uncannily like Holly Throsby before picking up pace and urgency in the infectious choruses. Turbulent percussion intrudes effectively into the jaunty “Let It Rain,” while the ringing “To The Left” is constructed inside out, with driving, propulsive verses and slowed choruses. “Forever This Time” is a quiet anthem, with delicate harmony vocals and squeaky guitar-strings. And the lovely “Letting Go” shifts brilliantly from tentativeness to exuberance, as its repeated title becomes a mantra of affirmation, rather than an admission of surrender or defeat.

Walk suffers a little bit from singer-songwriter earnestness: some of the lyrical imagery is rather familiar and a touch of humour wouldn’t go amiss. But otherwise this mature, soulful and generous-spirited record is a highly accomplished debut.

Cannan tours the UK next month. Further details here

CD Review: Hard Bargain by Emmylou Harris (Nonesuch)

On her superb new album Hard Bargain, Emmylou Harris continues to blend elements of rock, country, folk and gospel with inimitable elegance and style - as well as a spirit of experimentation and adventure that leaves some younger talents looking a little bit staid. (Yes, step forward Alison Krauss and Union Station.) The album, which is Harris’s 22nd solo studio release, is a beauty, its freshness possibly attributable to the fact that it teams Harris with a new producer, Jay Joyce (helmer of Patty Griffin’s Flaming Red [1998], on which Harris cameoed), and finds the artist taking a somewhat atypical approach to recording.

Harris can generally be relied upon to enlist a number of guest musicians and duet partners for a project; this is, after all, the woman who got Bruce Springsteen to chip in on just a couple of lines on “Tragedy” on her 2000 album Red Dirt Girl. Hard Bargain, though, was recorded in Nashville in one month with just two other musicians - producer Joyce, and Giles Reeves - with Harris taking care of all vocals and harmonies. But the record is far from sparse or stripped-down as you might expect from such a set-up. Rather, Joyce and Reeves operate an arsenal of instruments between them, including pianos, Omnichord, marimbula, vibraphone, djembe, organ, synths, shaker and a whole lotta guitars. The resulting sound contrasts sharply with the more traditional, back-to-basics aesthetic of Harris’s last album, All I Intended to Be (2008), and instead edges at times towards the rockier, ambient textures of Wrecking Ball (1995) and Red Dirt Girl. If the album doesn’t, ultimately, quite scale the heights of those two masterpieces, it’s still a deeply rewarding and affecting piece of work, and one that finds Harris singing as captivatingly as ever.

Despite her noted forays into original composition in recent years, Harris still remains more celebrated as a song interpreter than a song-writer. All I Intended to Be was mostly covers but Hard Bargain marks a sustained return to original composition for her, comprising eleven new songs and just two cover versions. For the most part, the new songs take a more direct and straightforward lyrical approach than many of Harris’s previous compositions, which have sometimes tended to cloak their revelations in figurative language.

The bracing opening song, “The Road,” is a case in point. It’s a track that has already attracted considerable attention, as it’s another of Harris’s songs about Gram Parsons, and a very moving one at that. If “Boulder to Birmingham” was the raw, notes-from-the-front reaction to Parsons’s passing and The Ballad of Sally Rose (1985) a complex fictionalisation of their collaboration in concept album form, then “The Road” is a mature, reflective meditation on Parsons's legacy, as Harris looks back on the partnership that changed the direction of her artistic life, the song taking the form of a direct address to the deceased. Musically, the song is grounded by sturdy, thwacked drums and assertive electric guitar work that underpins even the soaring ethereal choruses, while Harris’s vocal deftly transforms lyrics that read like clichés (“People come and people go/And nothing ever lasts”) into statements of emotional profundity, culminating in a declaration that grabs the heart in its simplicity and directness: “On this road I’m glad I came to know you, my old friend.”

The road, of course, is one of the most iconic of country music symbols, and it’s the focus of the next song as well, the hobo’s refrain “Home Sweet Home” on which Harris sings from the point-of-view of one of “God’s children…/out there looking for a home.” Though the subject matter might suggest otherwise, the ringing instrumentation and an infectious rhythm mean that the track isn’t depressing. That goes for most of the songs here which, while dealing with habitual Harris subject matter - loss, loneliness, grief, regret - don’t wallow for too long in despair, instead finding redemption in unexpected places, as well as through the liveliness and energy of the musicianship. The punchy “New Orleans,” for example, is a stirring survivor’s anthem, infused with both guitar grit and gospel spirit. And the lighter moments are nicely achieved, from the languid, Elite Hotel-worthy honky tonk of “Six White Cadillacs” to the clumpy percussion and twangy guitar of “Big Black Dog,” a heartfelt yet goofy ode to canine companionship that may well find its way into RSPCA ads very soon.

There are gentler moments too. “The Ship On His Arm,” a tale of two lovers separated by war, flirts with schmaltz but Harris’s shimmering vocal gives the piece emotional weight. “Darlin’ Kate,” meanwhile, is as touching a tribute to Harris’s great friend and collaborator Kate McGarrigle as you would imagine. Again, it’s lyrically straightforward but what’s remarkable is the way that the arrangement and Harris’s vocal delivery combine to conjure Kate’s spirit in the song, so that a track about loss and absence makes its subject palpably present. Two songs tackle the issue of “third age” loneliness head-on, firstly the tremulous “Lonely Girl” and then the lyrically more interesting and ambitious “Nobody,” which traces a trajectory from childhood hope to adult disillusionment, concluding with a moving redemptive flourish that brilliantly brings the song full circle.

The weakest moment, for me, is “My Name Is Emmet Till,” a song about the African-American teenager who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for flirting with a white woman and became a martyr for the Civil Rights movement, as well the subject of one of Bob Dylan’s most didactic songs. Unlike Dylan, Harris sings the song from Till’s perspective, and while her delivery is discreet and poignant the track doesn’t quite work, feeling, overall, like too self-conscious an effort to construct a first-person narrative in the Nebraska-era Springsteen or Steve Earle mould. But the two covers that Harris has included are real album highlights, and ones that blend seamlessly with the original material. Her faithful take on Ron Sexsmith’s “Hard Bargain” twangs and twinkles captivatingly, with Harris’s voice transitioning from breathy highs to grainy lows, while the Joyce composition “Cross Yourself,” all warm, chiming guitars and chugging percussion, closes the album on a truly lovely note of optimism and emotional openness. “There’s no day like today,” Harris affirms. “Everything that’s meant to be, come to me.”

“It’s important to push the envelope of what we call country music without ever losing sight of the most important element, the soul,” Harris has been quoted as saying. Harris has been pushing that particular envelope for almost forty years now and Hard Bargain demonstrates again her uncanny ability to draw on the past and come up with something vital and fresh. This is another masterful release from her, a record of encompassing warmth and emotional insight, grit and timeless grace.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.