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Joe Henry, born in North Carolina, raised in Michigan and become a singer
songwriter in
New York before relocating to Los Angeles, boasted the nasal register of
Bob Dylan, a narrative talent that excels at realistic stories of provincial
life, and, last but not least,
an eclectic style that allows his songs to span the entire arc of USA tradition.
Henry debuted with Talk Of Heaven (Profile, 1986), but had to wait till
A Murder Of Crows (A&M, 1989 - Mammoth, 1993) before critics noticed him.
He wore the clothes of the intellectual for
Shuffletown (Coyote, 1990), that boasted much more sophisticate
arrangements:
the backing band featured guitarist
T-Bone Burnett,
jazz musicians Don Cherry (trumpet), Cecil McBee (bass) and Phil Kelly (piano)
and
veteran country musicians David Mansfield (mandolin) and Michael Blair (drums).
The album has several souls.
Latin guitar and tiptoeing percussion propel the anthemic
Don McLean-ian
refrain of Helena by the Avenue.
This is the loose and exotic soul, also on display in the
syncopated Easter.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the
austere and elegant soul that manifests itself in the
neoclassical waltz Spent It All,
in Ben Turpin In The Army, basically a chamber lied for guitar and violin,
in Drowning in the River Half Laughing, a hymn for piano, violin and contrabass.
Psychology and choreography go hand in hand in the
songs that exude a sense of loneliness and emptiness, notably the
agonizing elegy Shuffletown,
which is lively compared with the spartan drum-less Land,
with a peak of tender pathos in the
gospel-ish shout of Date for Church, a call whose response is
a spectral trumpet.
Thanks to the Jayhawks (that play the role
the Band played with Dylan) and to
Dan Murphy of
Soul Asylum on guitar,
Short Man's Room (Mammoth, 1992)
moved towards a sunnier sound.
The outcome is generally closer to Dylan's folk-rock of the mid 1960s (Good Fortune, Sault Sainte Marie)
and to the calm gospel-rock of the Band
(Stations)
than to the intellectual style of the previous album.
Reckless Child, the breezy Best to Believe
and especially the anthemic King's Highway
are permeated by a more traditional and sincere country feeling.
The intimate singalongs of Last One Out and
A Friend To You too subscribe to a rural aesthetic.
At the same time the severe tales of
Short Man's Room and One Shoe On
(a dying man's soliloquy)
acquire the depth of philosophical parables.
The mellow country sound of
Kindness Of The World (Mammoth, 1993)
concealed a bleak human panorama.
One Day When the Weather Is Warm,
Third Reel,
I Flew over Our House Last Night
and the seven-minute rhapsody Buck Dancer's Choice
compose a monotonous parade of existential tragedies, with
peaks of tender intimacy in She Always Goes and Kindness Of The World.
The music is left in the background,
extroverted only in the waltzing This Close To You,
in the Dylan-ian Fireman's Wedding,
and in the raw and loud Dead To The World,
a sudden tribute to Neil Young's neurosis.
Trampoline (Mammoth, 1996) changed course again, adopting a poppy sound
and a hard-rocking guitar for stories hijacked by surreal humor.
Hence the vibrant Bob & Ray and
Go with God,
which are the exact opposite of the monotonous country litanies of the
previous album.
This new stance yields the hypnotic shuffle Ohio Air Show Plane Crash,
the distorted cacophonous blues-rock jam Let Me Have It All,
and Trampoline (with melody and vibrato a` la Crimson And Clover).
The new face of Henry's music is also epitomized by the
bizarre arrangements of Flower Girl (cello, noise, mellotron, sample of opera singers)
and
Medicine (electronics, funereal horns, dissonance, guitar feedback)
The plaintive ballad I Was a Playboy even indulges in strings and horns.
This eclectic poutpourri of ideas definitely abandoned the stereotypes of
folk and country music.
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Joe Henry, nato in North Carolina, cresciuto nel Michigan e avviato alla
carriera di cantautore a New York, prima di trasferirsi a Los Angeles, vanta il
registro nasale di Bob Dylan, un talento narrativo che si esprime in scenette
realistiche di vita provinciale, un eclettismo che lo porta a spaziare lungo
tutto l'arco della tradizione americana.
Esordisce con Talk Of Heaven (Profile, 1986), ma deve attendere
A Murder Of Crows (A&M, 1989 - Mammoth, 1993) perche' la critica si
accorga di lui.
L'anno successivo Shuffletown (Coyote, 1990)
lo vede nei panni del cantautore intellettuale
sulle tracce del folk-jazz di Van Morrison (persino Don Cherry fra gli
accompagnatori e una Ben Turpin In The Army che e` praticamente un lied da
camera per chitarra e violino).
Short Man's Room (Mammoth, 1992), grazie anche agli Jayhawks (che
gli fanno da Band) e a Dan Murphy dei Soul Asylum (alla chitarra), ripiega
su uno stile piu` ruspante, ispirato al gospel della Band
(Stations) e al folk di Dylan (Good Fortune).
Al tempo stesso le storie di King's Highway e della title-track
acquistano lo spessore di apologhi filosofici, e culminano
nel soliloquio del moribondo di One Shoe On.
Last One Out,
A Friend To You, Best To Believe sono
invece composizioni intimiste che concedono poco alla musica.
E` l'anticamera del tetro panorama umano di
Kindness Of The World (Mammoth, 1993),
album suonato in uno stile di country soffice ma le cui canzoni (dalla
title-track al valzer di This Close To You,
da Dead To The World a Fireman's Wedding, da
Kindness Of The World all'apice di She Always Goes)
piu` che narrazioni sono meditazioni sulla condizione umana. Il singolo
Fireman's Wedding aumenta la somiglianza con Dylan.
Lo humour surreale di Trampoline (Mammoth, 1996), un album molto meno
country e molto piu` pop,
arriva un po' a sorpresa, accentuato da
effetti di chitarra (persino Page Hamilton degli Helmet) e ritmi hip hop.
L'energia di Flower Girl e la bizzarria di
Ohio Air Show Plane Crash (forse il suo capolavoro) e Medicine
aprono un nuovo corso, forse nel solco tracciato da Randy Newman.
Canzoni come
Trampoline (con un riff che assomiglia a Crimson And Clover)
sono soprattutto storie, e Henry appartiene alla grande scuola Americana
di storyteller.
Con questo album inizia la carriera maggiore di Henry, ormai completamente
emancipato dagli stereotipi folk e lanciato verso un'eclettica arte di vignette
atmosferiche.
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Fuse (Mammoth, 1998) merely completed the transformation begun with
Trampoline. A new Joe Henry delivered smoky, nocturnal, depressed songs
arranged with an arsenal of electronica, programmed drumming, tape
manipulation and sampling, and varnished with a sleek production.
A funk-jazz flavor is suddenly prominent, especially in the lounge
shuffle Angels, in the languid elegy Fat
and in the easy-listening instrumental Curt Flood.
Henry's is now an art of metaphorical (rather than literal) storytelling,
that continuously reinvents itself.
The calm neurosis of Monkey,
the solemn apathy of Fuse,
the funereal tenderness of Beautiful Hat
and especially the erotic suspense of Like She Was a Hammer (in a sophisticated soul-rock style)
are all different and all the same.
Even the unabashed pop sellout of Skin and Teeth and
the baroque ballad Want Too Much (with sax and strings)
show the uncanny skill of saying more than the words and the notes would grant.
Scar (Mammoth, 2001) continues along the same trajectory, further
enriching Henry's sound with subtle instrumental passages and charging his
voice with existential angst.
The stories are now mere pretexts for intriguing musical pastiches.
Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation is a
dejected Tom Waits-ian blues with chamber orchestra,
wailing guitar and delirious saxophone.
Waits' spectre also hovers over the nocturnal elegy of Lock And Key
(with a drunken piano paraphrasing the Beatles' Yesterday).
The cha-cha steps that propel Stop
(the one that his sister-in-law Madonna sang as Don't Tell Me)
are sabotaged by western twang and gypsy violin.
Strings float around the tender whine of Struck, and,
despite the synthetic beat, lend it a funereal feeling
(enhanced by a mournful Spanish guitar).
Even simplicity can be misleading: the "simple" lament of
Cold Enough To Cross relies on a sprightly piano tinkling and
humble horns worthy of a Salvation Army band.
The closing Scar is a solemn hymn paced by banging drums and
gospel keyboards.
The variety of styles, from the swinging
Rough And Tumble (sung in a Bob Marley-ish register) to
the trivial pop-jazz of Mean Flower
is unmatched since the times of Randy Newman.
On these songs, Henry's songwriting skills are negligible: what matters
are the sounds.
Each song is a complex sonic artefact/artifice (rarely clocking at less than
four minutes) that explores the psychology of surreal characters.
Henry's attention to detail and atmosphere is improving over the years.
The lush arrangements had been progressively moving the center of mass away
from the words and towards the sounds.
The backing band (drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarist Chris Bruce, saxophonist/clarinetist Don Byron, bassist Jennifer Condos, trumpeter Ron Miles, pianists Dave Palmer and Patrick Warren)
stole the show on Tiny Voices (Anti, 2003), his jazziest album yet.
The sprightly Latin-funk-jazz fusion of This Afternoon is the
launching pad, but most of the album sinks in swamps of
tenderly atmospheric blues, soul and jazz shuffles:
Animal Skin, Sold,
Flesh And Blood, and Loves You Madly, all the way to the
sleepy piano-based Widows Of The Revolution.
The formula is not exactly galvanizing, even when twisted into the
almost erotic crescendo of Lighthouse, or when employed to
enhance the old Dylan-ian verve in Dirty Magazine.
In some cases it decays into
almost abstract soundscaping (Flag and Tiny Voices).
It does soar in the closer, the
seven-minute orchestral gospel Your Side Of My World, proving that
there are emotions behind the anemic sounds.
Civilians (2007), adding
Bill Frisell on guitar and
VanDyke Parks on piano
to the combo, added a couple of tunes
(Civilians, I Will Write My Book)
in that blues-jazz vein with an even stronger
vintage accent but mostly turned to
solemn monotonous tales that rely too much on words
(Civil War,
You Can't Fail Me Now,
Scare Me to Death,
God Only Knows,
and the slightly more effective Wave).
The noir jumping Time Is a Lion comes as sighs of relief.
The longer meditations (Shut Me Up and the mournful Our Song)
do not fare much better.
Despite the ever more ambitious lineups, Henry's music was progressively losing
(not gaining) depth and pathos.
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(Translation by/ Tradotto da Federico Morganti)
Fuse (Mammoth, 1998) non fa che completare la trasformazione iniziata con Trampoline. Un rinnovato Joe Henry partorisce fosche, notturne e deprimenti canzoni arrangiate con un arsenale di elettronica, batterie programmate, manipolazione di nastri e sampling e riverniciata con una produzione elegante. Un retrogusto jazz è d’improvviso predominante, specie in Angels (con il sassofono come protagonista) e nella strumentale Curt Flood, occasionalmente segnata da accenti funk, così come Fat. La sua è oramai l’arte di un cantastorie d’atmosfera che reinventa perennemente se stesso. Fuse, Monkey, Want Too Much e Beautiful Hat sono al contempo identiche e diverse. Like She Was a Hammer segna probabilmente il picco di quest’arte. Persino il disinvolto e svenduto pop di Skin and Teeth mostra l’insolita abilità di dire più di quanto le parole e le note non facciano.
Scar (Mammoth, 2001) prosegue lungo la medesima traiettoria, arricchendo il sound di Henry con sottili passaggi strumentali e caricando la sua voce di un’angoscia esistenziale. Le storie sono ora meri pretesti per i suoi intriganti pastiche musicali. Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation è un avvilito blues in stile Tom Waits con orchestra da camera, chitarra lamentosa e delirante sassofono. Lo spettro di Waits aleggia inoltre sull’elegia notturna di Lock And Key (con un piano alticcio che parafrasa Yesterday dei Beatles). I passi cha-cha che introducono Stop (che la cognata Madonna aveva cantato come Don’t Tell Me) sono sabotati da un vibrante suono western e un violino gitano.
Gli archi avvolgono il tenero gemito di Struck, e, a dispetto del beat sintetico, le conferiscono un sentimento funereo (accresciuto da una chitarra spagnola a lutto).
Perfino la semplicità è fuorviante: il "semplice" lamento di Cold Enough To Cross si erge su un piano che tintinna con brio e su dimessi fiati degni della banda dell’Esercito della Salvezza. La conclusiva Scar è un solenne inno percorso da martellanti percussioni e tastiere gospel.
La varietà di stili, dalla swingante Rough And Tumble (cantata in un registro alla Bob Marley) al triviale pop-jazz di Mean Flower, non ha paragoni sin dai tempi di Randy Newman.
In queste canzoni, le abilità compositive di Henry sono trascurabili: ciò che conta sono le sonorità. Ciascuna canzone è un complesso artefatto/artificio sonico (di rado inferiore ai quattro minuti) che esplora la psicologia di personaggi surreali. L’attenzione di Henry a dettagli e atmosfere è migliorata nel tempo.
La band di supporto (Jay Bellerose alla batteria, Chris Bruce alla chitarra, Don Byron al sax e clarinetto, Jennifer Condos al basso, Ron Miles alla tromba, Dave Palmer e Patrick Warren al piano) gli ruba la scena su Tiny Voices (Anti-, 2003), il suo album più jazz di sempre.
Civilians (2007), che al gruppo aggiunge Bill Frisell alla chitarra e VanDyke Parks al piano, include le dirette Parker's Mood, Scare Me to Death, God Only Knows e I Will Write My Book, e le più lunghe Shut Me Up e Our Song.
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Blood From Stars (2009) marked a return to music, not just storytelling.
The Man I Keep Hid toys with blues and ragtime, halfway between
Randy Newman and
Tom Waits.
Stars evokes his favorite ghosts Bob Dylan and Van Morrison but in a context of melodramatic pop crooning.
Progress Of Love echoes Broadway showtunes,
and This Is My Favorite Cage is a chamber lied,
while
Suit On A Frame blends syncopated electronic beats and African piano.
Both the singing and the playing are creative enough to make each song
a model of semantic interplay.
The blues and jazz obsession of previous albums is here channeled in the
demented blues-rock Death To The Storm
in the bleak, haunting All Blues Hail Mary,
and in the majestic marching-band hymn Bellwether.
The dominant mode of Reverie (2011) is the
swinging blues (Heaven's Escape, Sticks and Stones), the style
that best displays the counterpoint of Henry and his crew
(drummer Jay Bellerose, pianist Keefus Ciancia, and bassist David Piltch).
This sort of tribute to Great Depression-era music is a recurring
pathology of USA's rock music
(Ry Cooder,
Randy Newman), so it is hardly original.
Joe Henry fails to inject anything other than an elegant delivery.
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(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx)
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