Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris continues to justify her recent home on the forward-thinking Nonesuch label with an album that knows no musical boundaries, even if it's heart is still as country as can be. On her latest album All I Intended to Be, nearly every instrument that could be connected with roots music makes an appearance on one song or another—from banjo, to fiddle, to mandolin. What's most impressive is how artfully they're mingled with cutting-edge techniques like the computer-processing and glitching that rises out of the accordion-and-mandolin breakdown on "Moon Song" or the slow stereo panning of organ and steel guitar drones on the Merle Haggard cover, "Kern River." More often celebrated for her singing and selection of material than her songwriting, Harris's own compositions provide many of the best moments in this almost uniformly strong set, especially "Take That Ride," with its lovesick lyrics reaching toward a gospel-like resolution, and glorious interplay between bluesy slide guitar and keening pedal steel.

"Sailing Around the Moon," her collaboration with '70s folk-rock icons the McGarrigle sisters, is another song on which everything clicks just right. However, the best measure of Harris's authority may be the fact that she’s the kind of vocalist who can sing "baby" in such a way that it totally makes a song. Tasteful, innovative, and heartfelt all at once, All I Intended To Be towers over the contemporary country scene, while managing to outdo many ostensibly hipper albums made by artists half—or a third—her age, in any genre you care to name.

—Nate Cunningham
06.30.08