By Nate Chinen The New York Times
June 8, 2008
Emmylou Harris has always embraced the urge to excavate. She has a folk singer’s air of resourceful humility and no compunctions about approaching other people’s songs. Shaping her own music, she can be graceful and evocative. But like the best of her fellow inductees in the Country Music Hall of Fame — she joined their ranks just a couple of months ago — she doesn’t bestow strict privilege on originality.
Ms. Harris confirmed that point last year with “Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems” (Rhino), a boxed set spanning the breadth of her career, with plenty of borrowed songs. Now she’s releasing “All I Intended to Be” (Nonesuch), which features just five originals, two of which were written with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The other songs are largely the work of contemporary artists like Tracy Chapman and Patty Griffin, and Ms. Harris sings them just as lovingly.
The material seems to have been chosen for its precision of image and ease of melody, and perhaps for some inherent ruminative languor. Ms. Harris, rarely singing more than two notches above a murmur, settles into a realm of sweet sorrow, contemplating life and death and several strains of disillusioned love. This isn’t a lighthearted romp of an album.
Instead, it urges introspection, musically as well as lyrically. Ms. Harris recorded “All I Intended to Be” in bits and pieces over the past three years. She enlisted her old producer, Brian Ahern, who also plays some guitar parts; among those contributing background vocals are the McGarrigles, Buddy Miller and Dolly Parton. Karen Brooks lends not only her voice but also her old backing track for a Jack Wesley Routh tune, “Shores of White Sand.”
That Ms. Harris chose to open the album with that recycled track, which Mr. Ahern originally produced more than 25 years ago, speaks volumes for her instincts as a scavenger. It also attests to her quiet but steely confidence as a singer, which is still extremely well placed. Ms. Harris is scheduled to perform at Town Hall on June 18 and 19, and it’s a safe bet that she’ll make every song feel personal, whatever its pedigree.
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