Despite having spent the last 20 years building a career in country music,

Emmylou Harris

has always had a rock & roll heart. A country girl whose roots led her to

pursue

traditional styles, she has nonetheless played a central part in the

evolution of country

away from the formulaic sounds of the Nashville's Main Row establishment to

the adult alternative and

sophisticated pop styles of today's country. From her early days singing

with Gram Parson's

band The Fallen Angels, to her contributions to artists as diverse as Tammy

Wynette, Neil Young,

Leo Kottke, or Little Feat, Emmylou has always pursued a rebel's course.

She's never allowed the mainstream

forces that attempt to narrowly define and maintain the purity of country to

constrain her

artistically. And she has payed the price in terms of lost radio airplay for

all but her most

traditional work. Despite this, she has helped preside over the

transformation of country,

receiving numerous awards including 6 Grammys for country & western and

contemporary folk categories.

Her 1988 collaboration with Dolly Parton and Linda Rondstadt, Trios,

was the most popular

country album of the decade, making it to the pop charts¹ Top 10. And in

seeming recognition of just

how far country has come in 20 years, Emmylou won her latest Grammy for an

album that seriously

pushes the limits of what country means: last year's collaboration with

producer Daniel Lanois,

Wrecking Ball.

Recorded late in 1995, Wrecking Ball blends a dozen dark and

heart-felt songs and

guest appearances by artists like Steve Earle, Neil Young, Rodney Crowell,

U2's Larry Mullens, and

Lucinda Williams, with the deep atmospheric soundscapes that are Daniel

Lanois' trademark.

Recorded at Lanois' Kingsway studio in New Orleans, Lanois acts more as

musical partner than

producer by contributing several songs and by adding his signature guitar

and mandolin sounds

throughout. Wrecking Ball combines Emmylou's high, reedy soprano with

Lanois'

heavily processed and densely layered guitar into a wonderfully penetrating

mix of vulnerability

and sentiment. The toll that many years of touring has taken on her voice is

evident, but rather than

employing studio tricks to smooth it out, Lanois uses its thin slightly

ragged quality to accentuate

the emotional dimension of the material. Where once she might have

overpowered some of these

songs, the slight waver in her voice curls around the melodies like smoke,

lending an

overwhelming sense of resolution and weariness.

Wrecking Ball opens with a beautiful

Daniel Lanois composition "Where Will I Be", which lays the emotional

groundwork for what

will follow. With its poignant story of love taken to a place beyond

desire, beyond the

reaper's grin, the song title's repeated question seems to have no happy

answer. Lanois' haunting

guitar and mandolin work echo the song's bitter angst perfectly. And if

there was any doubt about

the outcome, the unrelenting message of Steve Earle's self-loathing

"Goodbye" removes it. A

remorseful ballad about a lost and undeserved love, "Goodbye" seems like the

painful answer to

to "Where Will I Be"'s "heart open wide like it's never seen love",

admission that "addiction

stays on tight like a glove". The protagonist of "Goodbye" can remember all

too well the love

they've lost, but like some junkie dream where "maybe I was off somewhere or

just too high"

they can't even remember if they ever said goodbye to their lover. And

rather than drowning

in sentiment, "All My Tears" which follows suggests that it might be better

just to end it all.

The building sense of despair and abandon is turned towards a more positive

resolution with the title tune

"Wrecking Ball", a Neil Young song from Freedom. Malcolm Burns who

plays piano on

Wrecking Ball, and who selected the song for the album claims that

every Neil Young album

contains a hidden gem of a song and it's hard to argue with his premise or

selection. Few

songs I've heard better convey the gut-wrenching hopefulness of love bravely

facing

overwhelming obstacles. Lanois' shadowy echoes and bell-tones reverberate

throughout

the song like a dying circus calliope. Another story of surviving the

changes life brings comes

with Anna McGarrigle's defiant "Goin' Back to Harlan". But the emotional

capper is a powerful

song "Deeper Well" written by Emmylou, Daniel Lanois, and David Olney which

seems to regard

life's misfortunes as the inevitable consequences of seeking and wanting too

much. It would

be anti-climax to dull this emotional peak with another lesser blast of

sadness, a mistake

Wrecking Ball avoids. After all the previous moodiness, Bob Dylan's

"Every Grain of Sand" sounds

downright cheerful. As does Lucinda Williams¹ ballad about a suicide "Sweet

Old World"

strangely enough. Done with such bittersweet delicacy, it seems more

appropriate to feel at

peace with the sad outcome than to break down in tears.

Without dissolving into platitudes about love conquering all, the rest of

Wrecking Ball

does lead hesitantly down that path. And leads right up to my favorite tune

on the album and

one of Wrecking Ball¹s biggest surprises: a cover of Jimi Hendrix's

"May This Be Love".

Done with a suitably twisted combination of psychedelic shimmer and gospel

vocal intensity

it is a brilliant version of one of Hendrix's finest love songs. Lanois

sense of the original

version by Hendrix is keen and manages to capture both the song's inside-out

looped rhythm

perfectly while still taking the vocals totally in a country-harmony

direction. Gillian Welch's

"Orphan Girl", a traditional ballad, gets a reasonably straight treatment.

As does Daniel Lanois' "Blackhawk", a striking tale of love and infidelity where the price

of true love is high but well worth the price. The finale, Rodney Crowell's "Waltz Across

Texas Tonight" a stately country waltz is handled with grace and warmth, buoyed by the

ambient chiming of Lanois' guitar.

One criticism I've heard of Wrecking Ball and Daniel Lanois'

production is that it is too heavy-handed, tending to smother and obscure the talents of the

artists he produces. It may seem hard at times figuring out where Lanois' creative

contributions to an artist begin and end, but no one listening to his work with U2, Bob

Dylan or Peter Gabriel would seriously argue that these artists were overshadowed by his

production. And in truth, neither is Emmylou, whose musical persona shines prominently

through the mix. Rather than being overwhelmed, Emmylou seems to have found a musical

collaborator worthy of her talents. It is fair to say however that if you don't like Daniel

Lanois, Wrecking Ball will probably be lost on you. In fact, country purists

and radio music programmers will whine and have a tough time accepting Wrecking

Ball as a country album at all, but it's every bit as much a country albums as George or

Tammy's latest, or anything by those guys with the big cowboy hats. And just as

Emmylou's earlier work helped jump-start the careers of alternative country artists like

Albert Lee, Rodney Crowell and

Ricky Scaggs, Wrecking Ball¹s iconoclasm will help pave the way for

further digressions from the mainstream by tomorrow's alternative country acts, who

will likely continue where today's cutting-edge country groups like Wilco, Son Volt, or

Southern Culture on the Skids leave off.