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Emmylou Harris Album: “Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways”
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Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways |
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Release Date:2005-07-19
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Type:Unknown
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Genre:Country, Folk, Beatles Legacy
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Label:Warner Bros.
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Explicit Lyrics:No
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UPC:603497071760
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Review - :
{$Emmylou Harris} is an artist whose body of work is so consistently strong one could almost pull 20 songs at random from her catalog, string them together, and end up with a pretty listenable disc -- which suggests that the real choices in putting together a "best of {$Emmylou}" album has as much to do with what not to include as what should be on hand. {$Harris} herself helped compile {^The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways}, and while the album certainly doesn't avoid {$Harris}' chart successes, she seems less interested in creating a definitive hits collection than in tracing her journey from the sweet, sad-voiced girl who sang with {$Gram Parsons} to the gifted and thoughtful artist who has lately crafted such mid-career masterpieces as {^Wrecking Ball} and {^Red Dirt Girl}. While the album isn't sequenced in a strictly chronological fashion, the results faithfully trace {$Harris}' subtle but clear stylistic evolution while also offering plenty of evidence that she's perhaps the most naturally gifted song stylist to emerge in {\country} music since the 1970s, able to swing from the {\honky tonk} spirit of {&"Two More Bottles of Wine"} to the rueful losers tale of {&"Pancho and Lefty"} to the {\gospel} passion of {&"Calling My Children Home"} without missing a step. Her superb taste in collaborative musicians, songwriters, and duet partners is also clearly evident throughout, and while the surfaces of later tracks such as {&"Orphan Girl"} and {&"Michelangelo"} may have a different feel, the depth and clarity of {$Harris}' voice and the singular beauty of her creative vision lend this material all the commonality one could need. (And the album's one new track, {&"The Connection,"} suggests there's plenty more where all this came from.) If you're looking for an introduction to {$Emmylou Harris}' broad and remarkable body of work, {^The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways} is a strong starting point, and if you simply want to hear 75 minutes of superb music, this fills the bill on that score as well. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
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