Now playing the star: Joe Henry
Joel Reese * 03/12/99
Chicago Daily Herald
(Copyright 1999)
Joe Henry is done with the earnest singer-songwriter acoustic
guitar thing.
Done, finished, finito. Close the book.
Henry, the guy who recorded two albums with The Jayhawks as his
backup band and has long been one of music's best-kept secrets, is
now ready to hit the big time - complete with dapper suit and well-
coiffed hair.
He'll soon appear on "The Late Show with David Letterman," "The
Rosie O'Donnell Show," and the pages of Newsweek. His new album
"Fuse" (Mammoth Records) was mixed by T-Bone Burnett and Daniel
Lanois, and boasts cameos by Jakob Dylan and guitar wunderkind Chris
Whitley.
"Fuse" also has a cool multimedia segment, with a droll interview
with Billy Bob Thornton (posing as Henry) and footage of Henry in
concert.
And all of this is good. It's a good thing when people such as
Henry become popular.
The prevalence of The Backstreet Boys and Matchbox 20 merely
proves that too many people don't know Shania from shine-ola. But
when someone deserving such as Joe Henry makes it big, it's a victory
for "our side."
After all, he's one of the best songwriters around, with a Raymond
Carver-like ability to capture heartbreaking loneliness and
restlessness with a few lines. And his whiskey-rough croon is
nothing short of a treasure.
So this big media blitz is good, right?
Well, kind of.
There's just one problem: "Fuse," Henry's big breakthrough, isn't
that great (. * * 1/2).
Run, runaway
In a recent interview from his home in Los Angeles, Henry says he
intentionally moved away from his country-rockish past.
"We call that running away," Henry says with a chuckle. But, as
he notes, he recorded past albums mostly live in the studio "because
I didn't know how to do anything else. That served my purpose for a
brief time, but musically, ultimately, I found it very limiting."
His 1996 near-masterpiece, "Trampoline," was a gigantic step in a
new direction. Helmet axman Page Hamilton provided the guitarwork,
and the songs bristled with a newfound intensity.
"By the time I was ready to make 'Trampoline,' " Henry says, "I
had decided to myself: if I can't find a new way to do this, if I
can't find a new musical world to inhabit, I'd just rather not."
He hadn't decided what he would do if his new album didn't speak a
new musical language: "I was kinda thinking maybe a UPS man," Henry
says with a slight hint of his native North Carolina drawl. "Because
people are always delighted to see you coming."
After "Trampoline" met with universal critical acclaim, Henry has
continued his progress away from the alt.country sound with "Fuse."
The star treatment
As for his new media presence, Henry says he doesn't mind the big
marketing push he's getting from his record company.
"Believe me, nobody does this by accident," he says. "There are
plenty of people who do it and like to complain about it. They say,
'Hey, I just do what I do, man, I don't care if anybody digs it or
not.' I don't happen to subscribe to that way of thinking. There's
nothing more vain than standing up there on the mountain and
pretending to be un-vain."
Henry realizes that the album's glitzy marketing and slick sound
may lead some to accuse him of ditching his principles. And he has
no problem with that.
"People have a tendency to treat an acoustic guitar like it's the
basket that floated the infant Moses down the river," he says.
"There's nothing pure or natural about any of this, I don't care who
you are. This idea that doing things with acoustic instruments is
somehow more pure and more real - I don't have any interest in that
as a notion."
Musically, Henry describes his new record as "decidedly
fragmented. I didn't want to make it do anything that sounded like a
band. I'm a big fan of the collage approach of recordmaking. I like
the disembodied sensation."
And therein lies the rub. "Fuse" feels too fragmented, too
cobbled together. Much of it, like the lackluster track "Fat," feels
like studio trickery for its own sake.
On this overproduced tune, a hip-hop beat and Henry's echoed
singing backs a noodling electric piano. The fact that the song has
too much going on - to little resulting effect - isn't the worst sin;
that's making Henry's subtly soulful voice sound like it's sung into
the business end of a tuba.
The jazz-inflected "Want Too Much," mixed by studio maven Daniel
Lanois, has a lonely trumpet wailing behind a wah-wah guitar and a
dense wave of keyboards. Yet despite its busyness, the tune falls
curiously flat.
The single "Skin and Teeth" underuses backing vocalist Dylan, who
is essentially invisible until just before the end of the forgettable
song.
Yet despite these downfalls, the album isn't a complete failure.
The first song, "Monkey," perfectly melds Henry's studio dexterity
with his elliptical lyrics. The track opens with heavily reverbed
percussion that sounds like it's lifted straight from a Lanois-
produced album. And when Henry wails the chorus, his voice is
treated like it's coming from a cheap radio: "And maybe someday,
someday, maybe someday you'll come back to me," he sings.
This compelling vocal manipulation doesn't distract from the song,
a poignant tale of a loser who hopes a busted relationship will save
him from dissolution.
"Beautiful Hat" is a touching, mournful paean over dirge-like
horns (courtesy of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band). Henry warbles
plaintively "When I was beginning to learn how to climb, thinking
myself to be doing just fine/ Reaching your knees when just finding
mine, reaching your knees while living on mine."
What went wrong?
It's not that Henry shouldn't be applauded for pushing his own
musical envelope on "Fuse." There's nothing wrong with moving on
from the confining alt.country scene. This movement is known for its
zealous fans, quick to accuse a band of selling out if it doesn't
meet their exacting purist standards. (Just ask The Jayhawks and
* Wilco, which have both evolved from their country-rock roots.)
The problem is just that Henry's album, as a whole, just doesn't
work. From the slick packaging, which in one inexplicable image
shows Henry in a dapper suit goofing on a wooden table, to the pallid
instrumental "Curt Flood," or the campy waltzing closer "We'll Meet
Again," there's a certain organic feeling that's missing here.
The multimedia glimpse of Henry in concert gives some clues: The
live versions of "Like She was a Hammer" and "Great Lakes" have a
liveliness and energy that the studio versions lack. Henry's
dedication to a non-band sound robbed "Fuse" of its vitality, leaving
a lackluster album with strong lyrics but a disjointed, nondescript
sound.
It's not likely Henry will go back to his lo-fi roots, which is
fine. But as time passes, maybe he'll re-integrate the band concept
and realize that's not such a dirty word, and that cutting and
pasting sounds for their own sake doesn't always work.
But while this album isn't a complete success, the thing to
remember is: a Joe Henry album is like pizza (or sex). Even so-so
pizza (or sex, or Joe Henry album) is better a than most of the
Matchbox 20 or Backstreet Boys drivel out there.
