Emmylou Harris
Album: Wrecking Ball (Expanded Reissue)
Label: Nonesuch
Tracks: 12+13
Website: http://www.emmylouharris.com

Although this landmark album was greeted with a slightly mixed reception when it first appeared in the mid-90s, especially within the Nashville "establishment" (oh, but how times have changed!), it has since become almost unanimously regarded as both a career highpoint for Emmylou and a harbinger of - and blueprint for - a direction that modern country music was then about to take. Primarily in terms of production (nature and values), with Daniel Lanois' endeavours in this department conjuring a special dark, mildly hazy (on occasion almost phantasmal) atmosphere that for a major-artist country album was considered unorthodox and something not a little hors-de-concours.

Wrecking Ball still figures as one of my favourite Emmylou albums, and the sheer quality of the plethora of previously unreleased material on the second disc of this deluxe expanded edition only goes to reinforce how darned good the sessions were. Let's consider the stats first: of the original album's 12 tracks, seven songs recur on the "deeper well" of the second disc - two of these (Where Will I Be? and Deeper Well itself) come in radically different, altogether looser and funkier outtakes. The remaining tracks on this disc include exceptional covers of Richard Thompson's How Will I Ever Be Simple Again? and Leonard Cohen's Stranger Song - and these aren't to be considered mere outtakes, not by any stretch of the imagination!… Five of the original album cuts (including the innovative treatments of Gillian Welch's Orphan Girl, Steve Earle's Goodbye and Dylan's Every Grain Of Sand) are covers of songs that appear only on that original issue, which for this special new edition has been remastered and sounds even better than ever. The album featured an array of guest artists including some of the songs' writers (particularly gorgeous were the McGarrigle sisters' backing vocals, needless to say!), and Emmylou's breathtakingly glorious singing was but one of the many factors which put the disc streets ahead of the competition in that otherwise relatively unremarkable year.

With hindsight, we can see that Emmylou took the experience of Wrecking Ball as a catalyst for kickstarting her songwriting, which subsequently entered a golden phase from which (in the opinions of many of her fans) she's still not yet emerged. Oh, and finally, by the way, the two audio CDs of the set come complete with a DVD of behind-the-scenes footage; unfortunately, that wasn't sent with my review promo copy, but I feel sure it will prove worth having.

David Kidman