看到女王的妹夫的專輯高掛在
Wall Of Sound 年終前 25 名的第四名,
所以來轉貼一下
Joe Henry
Fuse
Label: Mammoth
File Under: Lighting up his life
Rating: 85
During the past 13 years, Joe Henry has quietly been one of America's boldest a
nd most accomplished songwriters, a guy with a knack for drawing detailed chara
cters and then putting the listeners in their heads — aural virtual reality, i
f you will. He's been equally adventurous as a composer, too, stepping from the
straightforward singer-songwriter path of his earliest work to the country tin
ges of his early '90s efforts to the amped-up noise of his last album, 1996's T
rampoline. The news hook may be that Henry is Madonna's brother-in-law, but the real news has always been his fearless artistic acuity.
And that's amply intact on his seventh release, Fuse, which signals another dar
ing new direction — this one kind of midnight noir, a non-electronic ambience
that's marked by touches of jazz, blues, and traditional pop. Henry dubs this h
ypnotic brew "the rapture of song and story" in Fuse's hushed, rhythmic opener
"Monkey," and that's an apt appraisal of the 10 songs that follow. Gentle, jazz
y guitar chords push the title track along, while spectral vocal snippets and r
inging electric piano breaks give "Fat" a macabre quality. "Skin and Teeth" is
the album's pop hit, with a sturdy melody that sounds like a Cure song and a ch
orus bolstered by guest vocals by Jakob Dylan (whose bandmate, keyboardist Rami
Jaffee, also helps on the album). With its (sampled) muted trumpet, "Want Too
Much" combines John Barryish drama with the soulful elegance of early '70s Marv
in Gaye, while a jagged guitar solo provides an electrifying jolt to "Like She Was a Hammer."
Lyrically, Fuse is Henry's love suite, with the arrangements leaving plenty of
room for him to sing as he delivers an emotionally broad treatise about obsessi
on ("Want Too Much," "Skin and Teeth"), fear ("Great Lake"), loss ("We'll Meet
Again"), and desperation — unless the offer to babysit a wayward lover's monke
y is altruistic, which is unlikely in the context of these songs. But the real
magic of the album is the way Henry keeps the tension at just the right dynamic
level; Fuse burns but it never blows, maintaining a gripping prettiness that never wears thin. — Gary Graff
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