There's something just the slightest bit comic about calling an
Emmylou Harris
album
Stumble into Grace
. While
Harris
has always sounded as if both earthly and spiritual grace were created with her in mind, when she sings, it seems she can no more stumble than a dolphin can be taught to walk on dry land.
finds
following in the same creative path she began to pursue with
Wrecking Ball
and
Red Dirt Girl
, which is to say that the influence of her
country
-influenced material is more felt than heard as she dips her toes into the spectral and atmospheric accents of
folk
,
indie pop
, and
world
music. While
has long been just as interested in nuance and blank spaces as the notes of her songs, producer
Malcolm Burn
(who also collaborated with her on
) knows what to make of the purposefully spare surfaces of these new songs (which, again, like
, were, for the most part, written by
herself), and the results are splendid. Part of the revelation of
was hearing
moving in a startling new direction, and while
seems less novel in the context of its immediate predecessors, the bitter clarity of
"Time in Babylon,"
the gentle but energetic textures of
"Little Bird,"
and the funky shuffle of
"Jupiter Rising"
confirm that she hasn't run out of new avenues to explore. After three decades as a world-class talent, what's most heartening is that
is not only making some of the finest music of her career at a time when many artists would be treading water, but she's delightfully confounding expectations at the same time.
shows she's still playing at the top of her game. ~ Mark Deming