Joe Henry Scar CD

This is an Enhanced audio CD which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel includes: Joe Henry, Brad Mehldau, Ornette Coleman, Me'shell Ndegeocello, Marc Ribot, Brian Blade, Abe Laboriel, Jr., Bobby Malach, David Pilch.
Recorded at The Sound Factory, Hollywood, California on September 7-10, 2000.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Joe Henry (vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion); Marc Ribot (guitar); Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone); Brian Blade (drums, percussion).
Audio Mixer: S. "Husky" Hoskulds.
Recording information: Sear Sound Studios, New York, NY (09/07/2000-09/29/2000); The Sound Factory, Los Angeles, CA (09/07/2000-09/29/2000).
Photographers: Melanie Nissen; Henry Diltz.
For the last five years, Joe Henry has gradually taken his songwriting into hidden areas, exploring the different textures of shadow with occasional forays into the twilight of the human heart. Longing has been painted upon the smoky backdrop of every song he's written. His protagonists have been mixtures of Oliver Gant from Thomas Wolfe, the man whose passion was just beyond his reach, never quenching his thirst, to working cats that Raymond Carver has illustrated well -- men who've noticed the lack in their soul cavities when it comes to love, often realizing too late that it, and it alone, is the only thing humans have. And Henry, despite the increasing psychological and emotional depth of his lyrical character studies and an increasingly angular method of his storytelling, has always been able to put these varying literary tropes into love songs that register without a lot of fuss. They tell it, though it doesn't really matter exactly what, because the person who needs to hear them does. On Scar, his eighth album, Henry follows his other obsession down the rabbit hole: the myriad ways in which sound and texture can become musical instruments themselves in order to paint a song properly. Scar, his highly textured sonic meditation on love and its twisted redemptive power, features a list of highly visible musicians that help make this the album Henry's been trying to make his entire adult life. Producing and contributing to four soundtracks hasn't hurt Henry a bit in his quest to make his music finish the story his lyrics sketch out. With the help of producer Craig Street, Henry moves the bell further down the wire of soulful yet accessible pop music.
The opener, "Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation," slips its smoky way into being with a whining guitar by Marc Ribot, a vibraphone by Brian Blade, and Henry's cigarette-stained vocal: "Sometimes I think I've almost fooled myself/Spreading out my wings above us like a tree/Laughing now out loud/Almost like I was free/I look at you as the thing I wanted most/You look at me and it's like you see a ghost/I wear the face all of this has cost/Everything you tried to keep away from me/Everything I took from you and lost." It's a blues tune, where steel guitar is trumped by Ornette Coleman's alto blowing his deepest soul-blues. He thins the lyric yet digs its knife in deeper. By the tune's nadir, the protagonist has shrunk to the vanishing point and disappears in a wisp of smoke. From here the disc moves into a broken, slippery Cuban mambo driven by Brad Mehldau and Blade. Ribot chimes the lyric through and the love song asserts itself in earnest: "Don't tell me to stop/Tell the rain not to drop/Tell the wind not to blow 'cause you say so/ Tell me love isn't true/It's just something we do/Tell me everything I'm not/But don't tell me to stop." Ribot rings through the rhythm section, filling it with droning melodic lines that knot themselves around Henry's vocal. The string sounds give the impression of a son band from time immemorial winding their way into the mix. Despite Ribot's seductive riffing and Blade's New Orleans' double-time rhythm, "Mean Flower" is a ballad comingSpin (6/01, pp.145-6) - 8 out of 10 - "...Henry's been nurturing his rhythms and his peculiarities, crooning arcane menace and thwarted passion from a position somewhere between Bryan Ferry and a novelist like Peter Carey....SCAR fleshes out the plasticity with the jamming cabaret band of his dreams..."
Q (10/01, p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Exceptional...Bone-dry storytelling by a younger, less ruined Tom Waits..."
Uncut (11/01, p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...This is a brave and accomplished stylistic leap into tense troubled funk and darkly eruptive jazz textures....SCAR is a lucidand compelling examination of troubled souls and a divided nation..."
Alternative Press (7/01, p.71) - 8 out of 10 - "...Folk-jazz-soul....it's always 3 a.m., and Henry's always walking the rain-slick pavement..."
CMJ (4/30/01, p.5) - "...Some of his most graceful, sophisticated tunes to date..."
No Depression (5-6/01, pp.126-7) - "...A truly ravishing work..."
Mojo (Publisher) (10/01, p.128) - "...Deft writing, fine singing, bold musical schemes..."