Inventively produced by Daniel Lanois and featuring Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young and Brian Blade among others, Emmylou Harris' atmospheric 1995 masterwork Wrecking Ball won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and was highly praised by critics worldwide. Equally meditative and otherworldly, Harris offers up moving versions of songs written by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Gillian Welch amidst the richly textured and ghostly backdrops of Lanois.
Familiar with Lanois from his work with U2 and Peter Gabriel, Harris actually sought ought the iconoclastic sonic craftsman more for her fondness of his revered 1989 album Acadie and Dylan's comeback record Oh Mercy. "It was stunning," Harris recalled to the Los Angeles Times on the first sessions with Lanois at Woodland Studio in Nashville. "From the very first song, ‘All My Tears,' the sound of what was being played around me, all of a sudden I came to life. It was almost as if I'd been sleeping and I woke up. Dan's turbulent rhythms and the sounds that came from a very small group of musicians in that small room at Woodland, I knew something magical was happening. All I had to do was sing."
The album is "one of the crowning achievements of both of their careers, one of the finest albums by anyone in the past two decades," exclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle's Joel Selvin: "a rich, evocative collection of gem-like songs swimming in carefully layered sonic textures, framed by dreamlike settings in pastels and shadows that drew far more from the worlds of folk, rock and even Cajun music than conventional country music ... Harris and Lanois made a classic."
Track Listing
Where Will I Be
Goodbye
All My Tears
Wrecking Ball
Goin' Back to Harlan
0Deeper Well
Every Grain of Sand
Sweet Old World
May This Be Love
Orphan Girl
Blackhawk
Waltz Across Texas Tonight