jack's soul & rock corner

JOE HENRY


Dead to the World & 3 Additional Selections from the Forthcoming "Kindness of the World" & Other All-Time Best-Loved Campfire Favorites (1993)
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A promo cd which could be considered as a best of Joe Henry's early career. The songs are from three different albums, Kindness of the World (1993), Short Man's Room (1992) & Shuffletown (1990). Those three albums were released on the Mammoth label and display quality country folk music from one of the most talented and, sadly, ignored songwriter to be heading from the USA. Do give it a try!

1. Dead to the World
2. Short Man's Room
3. She Always Goes
4. Ben Turpin in the Army
5. Fireman's Wedding
6. Diving Bell
7. John Ranging
8. Spent it all
9. Good Fortune
10. Last One Out
11. Some Champions


Trampoline (1996)
224

After six albums on which he constantly moved back and forth between classic folk and country traditions, Joe Henry really hit his artistic stride on the brilliant Trampoline. While the album finds him occasionally drifting toward both of those familiar modes, Trampoline also introduces us to Joe Henry, the pop-rock experimentalist. From the exotic guitar strum that opens the album on "Bob and Ray," through a feedback-drenched cover of a Sly Stone obscurity ("Let Me Have It All"), to the dark funeral organ that drives the Blue Oyster Cult-ish "Medicine," to a track featuring a female opera singer ("Flower Girl"), the album allows Henry to use all sorts of musical eccentricities. This certainly both confused and delighted longtime fans, and set the stage for Fuse and the future. Lyrically, Henry seems to be in a pretty dark place--might or might not be about the end of a relationship. And "Flower Girl" may be the most beautiful song Henry's ever written. You could compare Trampoline to that moment when Tom Waits moved from the more traditional sound of his early albums to the Beefheartish experimentations of Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs--that's how great both the change and growth appear to be here.

1. Bob & Ray
2. Ohio Air Show Plane Crash
3. Trampoline
4. Flower Girl
5. Let Me Have It All
6. Medicine
7. Go With God (Topless Shoeshine)
8. I Was A Playboy
9. Parade

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