Emmylou Harris "Wrecking Ball": C/D?

Finally picked up the reissue on vinyl - can’t think what took me so long to buy it for $60 when I’d have snapped up the no doubt inferior sounding original for twice that if I ever spotted it in the wild - & immersed myself in it last night. Christ, i’d forgotten how fucking deep this record is. Wept like a baby through half of it: how that steel guitar sings like a church organ while EH is transformed by the magic of folk music: “and if you were Willie Moore and I was Barbara Allen - or Fair Ellender, all sad at the cabin door, weepin’ and a-pinin’ for love” - “Sweet Old World” - “Blackhawk” - & that numinous take on “Every Grain of Sand”, where she turns Dylan’s bitterness into something humble and human - honestly one of the best records ever made, I think. The only tune that left me cold at all - strangely, because I recall it fondly - was “Orphan Girl”, which came across as kind of rote or predetermined or something - never transcended its setting, & I don’t feel like Emmylou brought as much emotion to her reading of it as Gillian Welch later did to hers. A super-important track though, historically, because Welch/Rawlings probably wouldn’t have had anything like the career they did if that song hadn’t been on this record.

I like the first two sides of outtakes too, mostly - the unproduced take of “Where Will I Be” is a highlight, and it was great to hear her do “Still Water”, though I don’t think she quite caught the magic that Lanois’ own version did. “Stranger Song” was good. The Richard Thompson number was pretty unremarkable.

Now I have to track down a copy of that documentary - you mean I’m gonna have to buy this album AGAIN? - it was released with the CD version of the rerelease.