Track Listing

1. Where Will I Be
2. Goodbye
3. All My Tears
4. Wrecking Ball
5. Goin' Back To Harlan
6. Deeper Well
7. Every Grain Of Sand
8. Sweet Old World
9. May This Be Love
10. Orphan Girl
11. Blackhawk
12. Waltz Across Texas Tonight

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45559 in Music
• Released on: 1995-09-28
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Emmylou Harris's formula has been to match a crack crew of left-of-centre country players with an assortment of tasteful tunes and head into the studio with a non-intrusive producer. Now and then (most notably the 1980 bluegrass collection Roses in the Snow), she tampers with her basic blueprint and comes up with something exceptional. Wrecking Ball is one of those. Daniel Lanois's radiant production no longer seems as fresh as it did on albums by U2, Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan, but here its hum enfolds Harris like an electric blanket. Lanois's usual recruits, including U2 drummer Larry Mullen, Jr, and New Orleans regulars Malcolm Burn, Brian Blade, and Daryl Johnson, lay down a solid base for Harris's weary vocals and Lanois's buzzing guitar. At its core, Wrecking Ball seems almost too finely calculated. Hot producer plus sought-after songwriters plus venerated performer frequently totals on deadly bore. Here, however, all that calculation adds up to something. --Steven Stolder

CD Description
Not many modern country legends have traveled through theircareers with the wherewithal, grace and vision of Emmylou Harris. More than twenty years after helping Gram Parsons reinvent country with so-called "Cosmic American music", Harrisis still tinkering with the genre's songwriting conventionsand the sounds she uses to illustrate the words she sings. Enter Daniel Lanois: erstwhile protege of Brian Eno, producer to U2, Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson, and a visionary artist in his own right who mixes the Louisiana music of his Acadian ancestry with the ambient settings of his modernist mentor. On WRECKING BALL, he is the perfect foil for Harris' spiritual explorations, casting her in a light that has little in common with Nashville's neon glow.
Lanois' reverb-soaked recording technique and odd instrumentation decisions give WRECKING BALL its aura, wrapping the album in a mysticalveil. They also free Harris to dive deeper into the lyricalideas of the songs, and emerge with clear spiritual conveyances. Steve Earle's "Goodbye" is a rhythmically sprawling reopening of an old wound, as Earle himself sits in on the proceedings, gently fingerpicking the melody in front of Lanois' electric-guitar washes. "Deeper Well" is Harris and Lanois' idiosyncratic take on gospel bluegrass--U2's Larry Mullen,Jr. pounds a rolling north African beat over a gray din, while acoustic guitars, piano progressions and irreverent vocal snippets echo around Harris' search for "a holier grail".
WRECKING BALL's move away from traditional foundations ismost apparent in a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love". Instead of taking a storyteller's approach, Harris and Lanois treat the song as a declaration--a duet between their voices and multiple guitar tracks, with Mullen adding a faint rhythm. The singers give themselves over to the upliftmentand blind trust the lyrics describe, as the prickly distortions and loops that accompany them supply the reality check of their drab modern surroundings.

Customer Reviews

Stone Cold Classic
Emmylou Harris has always had a voice to melt even the coldest hearts, but seldom has it been treated with such respect and given such a wondrous backing. To call this album country music misses the point entirely, this is ambient heart wrenching music of the soul, which transcends genres and crosses all boundaries. For those of you who thought Harris had a great voice but was a bit too country for you this is the album to change your mind. If you can make it through her version of the title track (originally a Neil Young number) without feeling a lump in the throat shame on you you heartless charlatans!!

nothing compares
I remember my mum listening to emmy on a sunday morning and the sound of her voice ringing through the house, it has taken a few years to realise the importance of this voice and that fateful day I was in a record store in Reading and stood at the listening post and placed the earphones on and fell instantly in love with this album....... I have no doubt that this is one of the most powerful albums ever.

A pivotal album in my life
I was recommended this album by Amazon today - it is 2006 and over ten years since this extraordinary album's release. I came to read the reviews and was stunned to see only eight! ONLY eight for this, the most important album that I ever bought. My musical life breaks down cleanly into pre-WB and post-WB, where WB stands for this album. I first bought this because of a four line review in the Daily Mail, where the reviewer said if you buy one album this year, please let it be this one. So I did - as I wanted to see why one man would go out on a limb so far in some populist rag. I'm not saying this is Emmy's best - for that I humbly suggest Red Dirt Girl - but this album led me on to Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Malcolm Burn, Gram Parsons, Grand Drive, Jayhawks, Sinead Lohan, the Byrds... you get the idea.

Goodbye is the stand out track. It will break your heart. But the rest of the album is equally stunning. For me, this album sits alongside The Velvet Underground, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Roxy Music, Grand Prix, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It is the sort of album that people who make their own music adore - because it oozes inspiration. Emmylou Harris had the bravery to do this, even if she is not the primary creative force.

Buy this album. It might be over ten years old, but it still sounds revolutionary.