Henry’s new album is average Joe
Joe Henry turned out to be one of the most daring stylists to emerge from the alt.country camp, abandoning the folksy rock of his early albums to venture into darker, wilder territory on 1996’s Trampoline. His work since has imagined and re-imagined the crossroads of disparate American musical traditions, finding the exact point where smoky torch songs, rambunctious free jazz, moody art rock, and mournful Dixieland funeral marches all make sense together. Blood From Stars is ostensibly his blues excursion: “Bellwether” and “The Man I Keep Hid” mimic the structure and repetition of the genre, but only as a jumping-off point for Henry’s hazy hybrid sounds. This is a classy, well-crafted record, but it hits the same marks as Tiny Voices and Civilians, conjuring the same midnight moods and the same smoky ambience. “Suit on a Frame,” bustling with boisterous percussion,...
Joe Henry turned out to be one of the most daring stylists to emerge from the alt.country camp, abandoning the folksy rock of his early albums to venture into darker, wilder territory on 1996’s Trampoline. His work since has imagined and re-imagined the crossroads of disparate American musical traditions, finding the exact point where smoky torch songs, rambunctious free jazz, moody art rock, and mournful Dixieland funeral marches all make sense together. Blood From Stars is ostensibly his blues excursion: “Bellwether” and “The Man I Keep Hid” mimic the structure and repetition of the genre, but only as a jumping-off point for Henry’s hazy hybrid sounds. This is a classy, well-crafted record, but it hits the same marks as Tiny Voices and Civilians, conjuring the same midnight moods and the same smoky ambience. “Suit on a Frame,” bustling with boisterous percussion,...
- 8/19/2009
- Pastemagazine.com
Joe Henry is a world-weary romantic; too jaded by false claims and hyped hopes to swallow the vapid Hallmark Card cliches, too cognizant of the tiny miracles of everyday existence to write off the promise and redemptive power of love. That's the uneasy conundrum that informs every song on Blood From Stars, his eleventh album in an ongoing series of dispatches from the war-ravaged front lines of a life.
When we last heard from Henry on 2007's Civilians, he was warily surveying the eroding legacy of America, a big, blustering nation that seemed to have lost its way. But the weighty themes were wedded to some of the starkest, most minimal music of his career, as if he didn't want the lyrical urgency to be drowned out by the sonic whirlwind. In contrast, Blood From Stars shows off Henry's most personal, intimate songwriting, but this time out he's backed by...
When we last heard from Henry on 2007's Civilians, he was warily surveying the eroding legacy of America, a big, blustering nation that seemed to have lost its way. But the weighty themes were wedded to some of the starkest, most minimal music of his career, as if he didn't want the lyrical urgency to be drowned out by the sonic whirlwind. In contrast, Blood From Stars shows off Henry's most personal, intimate songwriting, but this time out he's backed by...
- 8/17/2009
- Pastemagazine.com
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