Joe Henry’s Odetta, from the new album Reverie. Superior songwriting to start the winter time.
Oct 102011
Oct 102011
We usually don’t start with our Album of the Week but this one is an event, a ceremony, a baptism. Joe Henry’s magnificent new album is released this week. Take a day off and listen, listen seriously… listen. Reverie (Anti records) is a gem of exactitude, poetry and songwriting in its most noble form.
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Far from Lead Belly’s drinkhouses of the deep south, there is a delicate, fragile and graceful band called Haunted Stereo. The British band is our Artist of the Week, for their subtle sense of melody, the freshness of their sound and the contrast they create with our usual Fox Favourites!
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And speaking of Fox Favourites, we went for our favourite Gospel band in the world, and many share our opinion (fact.): The Blind Boys of Alabama and their ecclectic, fantastic, hypnotic Spirit of the Century. The Boys cover equally great musicians and give life to songs that have marked both southern and international culture (what we mean is that The Boys version of Way Down In The Hole has first been recorded for this particular album). What has Gospel to do with Waits and The Rolling Stones? Everything. (fact.)
Of course, you can double check all of that on this week’s Spotify playlist. Just click here to listen…
Oct 102011
Joe Henry – Reverie (Anti Records.2011)
You have to be Joe Henry to record your new album all windows open but the multi Grammy winning producer and artist knows his recording. And if the all acoustic opus finds its richness in its apparent simplicity, Reverie is a collection of typical Henryesque tracks where subtlety and refinement meet poetry.
“I knew it should be stripped and lean but not demur, sonically speaking; in black and white, but not without red blood in its veins.” says the musician.
Henry’s music has always been about contemplation and introspection. Not to be put in every hand, his work is one of craftsmanship and intellectualism and Reverie is no
exception to the rule.
“This album speaks about time. The great river that reminds us we are buoyant after all, as its moving current lifts us by the chin and just off of the balls of our feet, while we strain to dig our toes into the sandy ground. I am not convinced that any song exists without some knowing nod in its direction. And so with Reverie I am nodding, then –to time, but also to all the love, hope, despair, and revelation that stands naked inside its weather” says Henry.
Like a dark epic river, Reverie enjoys coherence and continuity. Starting with the piano ballad Heaven’s Escape the sound flows down to The World And All I Know in an almost geometrical way as it would not be an exaggeration to say that Reverie possess its own dreamlike architecture.
Impossible to categorize in a genre, as usual, the songs on Reverie speak about humanity, its doubts, its beauty and its limits. Odetta might be one of the best
examples of this problematic. After The War, Tomorrow Is October, Piano Furnace and Deathbed Version are typically hypnotic, beautiful and desperate Henry signature tracks. And if some songs stand out for their more approachable melodies (Sticks And Stones, Strung), the general impression of the release is one of opacity and curiosity. The listener will need to dig deep into the lyrics and arrangements of this Reverie (nb ‘Dreaming’, in French) for its true meaning to reveal itself. Joe Henry proves once again to be one of America’s greatest songwriters.