By Elysa Gardner, Brian Mansfield, Jerry Shriver, Steve Jones and Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
Emmylou Harris' 'Hard Bargain' pays off. Plus: Steve Earle, Todd Rundgren, Bootsy Collins.
By Jack Spencer
Emmylou Harris' Hard Bargain pays off handsomely with its warmth and poignancy.
By Jack Spencer
Emmylou Harris' Hard Bargain pays off handsomely with its warmth and poignancy.
Emmylou Harris, Hard Bargain
**** ROOTS-POP
There are times when it's easy to take the unmannered beauty and grace of Emmylou Harris' singing and songwriting for granted. Then there's the first time you hear Nobody from her exquisite new album. Over a rhythm that pulses as gently and steadily as a healthy heartbeat, Harris traces a once-carefree girl's journey through a lonely, searching young adulthood to wisdom and self-acceptance with a poignancy that makes your throat burn.
Hard Bargain is full of such moments. As the title suggests, the beautifully produced (by Jay Joyce) songs resonate with sacrifice and regret, hard-earned survival and hard-hitting loss. The album is full of ghosts, from the subject of the haunting My Name Is Emmett Tillto Harris' departed partner Gram Parsons and friend Kate McGarrigle, who inspired the chiming The Road and the sweetly elegiac Darlin' Kate.
Yet Harris never comes across as morose or self-pitying. Her unmistakable soprano, at once grainy and ethereal, still wraps itself around a lyric with an angel's delicate warmth. "You fell from the heavens/Right into this sad place," she sings on Goodnight Old World; and Harris' enduring purity and dignity provide a similar balm for many a weary music fan. ? Elysa Gardner
> Download:�previously mentioned songs, title track, Lonely Girl
OTHER NOTABLE RELEASES:
Steve Earle, I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
* * * � FOLK
In Earle's novel of the same title due next month, the ghost of Hank Williams haunts the main character. The Drifter also makes his presence felt in the pointed eloquence of Earle's reflections on mortality, as do the spirits of Woody Guthrie, Blind Willie Johnson and others more ancient. The T Bone Burnett-produced album includes Treme song This City and Heaven or Hell, a duet with wife Allison Moorer. ? Brian Mansfield
> Download:God Is God, This City, Every Part of Me
Todd Rundgren, Todd Rundgren's Johnson
* * * BLUES-ROCK
The pop-rock wizard always has been a shape-shifter, and here he adopts a blues-guitar gunslinger guise to honor the late, legendary bluesman Robert Johnson during the centennial of his birth. Rundgren turbocharges the dozen covers with stinging guitar riffs, and impassioned vocals (he performed and produced everything, except some bass parts), creating the effect that he's leading a really good metal-loving bar band. ? Jerry Shriver
> Download:Stop Breaking Down, Walking Blues
Bootsy Collins, Tha Funk Capitol of the World
* * * FUNK
Bootsy loves to party down, and the first album in nine years from the legendary bassist is a grand celebration with homages to funk originators (James Brown, Jimi Hendrix) and lost friends (P-funkers Gary Shider and his brother "Catfish" Collins). Invitees include Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Chuck D, Al Sharpton and Samuel L. Jackson. Though standing on the verge of 60, he's still youthful enough to be player of the year. ? Steve Jones
> Download:�Hip Hop@Funk U, Mirror Tell Lies, Freedumb
Glee: The Music Presents The Warblers
* * POP
The Dalton Academy Warblers, introduced as rivals to New Directions on Fox's musical comedy drama, are full of brio and flair, though the formulaic cheer of this male a cappella choir quickly grows tedious. The group sparkles on Katy Perry's Teenage Dream and a stirring remake of Train's Hey, Soul Sister. But did the world need another version after the annoying original overstayed its welcome? ? Edna Gundersen
> Download:�Teenage Dream, Bills, Bills, Bills
Lacey Chabert Mary Elizabeth Winstead Vogue Missi Pyle Tami Donaldson
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