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New York Observer
September 25, 2000

Hiatt, Harris: Muddy Good

The cover of John Hiatt's new album shows him holding a tambourine in front of his face. Another photo depicts the singer-songwriter's intertwined hands, framed by part of his right arm and leg. They are fitting images for a man who has spent most of his three-decade career loping in and out of shadows, penning songs that have been made into hits by other performers such as Bonnie Raitt ("Thing Called Love") and, most recently, Eric Clapton and B.B. King ("Riding With the King").

On his own, Mr. Hiatt always seemed less cocksure. Earlier in his career, his bouts with alcoholism, rehabs and personal tragedies -- his second wife committed suicide in 1985 -- threatened to doom him to a Townes Van Zandtian life. Musically, he veered between genres and styles. In the 70's and early 80's, he dabbled in new wave, bubblegum pop and three-chord rock before settling on an amalgam of folk, blues and old-school rock 'n' roll that drove his hallmark album, 1987's churning, soulful and personal Bring the Family.

Now, with Crossing Muddy Waters (Vanguard), Mr. Hiatt has finally made another album that lives up to his promise. It's all there: great songwriting, greasy musicianship and gritty harmonies.

Building on the spare ballads of Bring the Family, Crossing Muddy Waters is the singer's first entirely acoustic effort; Hiatt plays guitar and dobro, Cracker's Davey Faragher plays bass, "foot stomping" and "metal folding chair," and David Immergluck handles the assorted mandolins and electric slide.

The album starts with its strongest track, "Lincoln Town," a swaggering number in which Hiatt, whose distinctive voice can go both husky and high, says he feels like a freight train churning down the track to claim his lady: "When you hear me blow / Honey, babe, you know I'm near." Hiatt's trio sounds like at least twice as many people, with overflowing guitar runs filling every available space.

The rest of this slight masterpiece -- the entire disc clocks in at under 40 minutes -- trades in the delicious bravado of "Lincoln Town" for mourning and regret; indeed, much of Crossing Muddy Waters deals with the death of love. On the indelible "What Do We Do Now," Mr. Hiatt examines a failed marriage and a wasted life over a slowly unfurling guitar. Building on nuanced repetitions of the song's title, his voice conveys the acute pain of loss with verses like "Do we call the kids / Or call the cops / Can you hold me till / This howling stops."

While Hiatt forged his recording career on the backs of other artists' renditions of his work, Emmylou Harris has, for the most part, used her sparkling voice to interpret the work of other songwriters. With Red Dirt Girl (Nonesuch), Ms. Harris' first studio release since her stunning Wrecking Ball, the platinum-haired beauty showcases her own craft: She wrote or co-wrote 11 of the album's 12 songs. And if there's any justice, the lone exception, Patty Griffin's "One Big Love," will bring attention to a shamefully overlooked singer-songwriter.

With shimmering waves of reverb and thick washes of electric guitar, Red Dirt Girl is startling in its beauty, and it makes me wonder why Ms. Harris has released only one other album of her own compositions, 1985's The Ballad of Sally Rose.

Though not produced by Daniel Lanois, the album has Mr. Lanois' Acadian influence tattooed into its reflective skin and takes full advantage of the saturated yet understated sound Mr. Lanois used to great effect on Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind and Willie Nelson's Teatro, to say nothing of Wrecking Ball itself. Unlike Mr. Hiatt, who writes songs from a kind of everyman's perspective, Ms. Harris' compositions are deeply personal and often obscure. "Our path is worn, our feet are poorly shod," she sings on "The Pearl." "We lift our prayer up against the odds / And fear the silence is the voice of God / And we cry Allelujah." On "I Don't Want to Talk About it Now," an eerily threatening tale of sexual obsession, Ms. Harris moans, "I'd be drawn and quartered / If I could keep you in my bed."

The rest of the album's subject matter is just as rich. The title track, inspired by the movie Boys Don't Cry, paints a novelistic picture of a young woman trapped in her dead-end life; the dirge-like "Bang the Drum Slowly" tells of Ms. Harris' unfulfilled wishes for her relationship with her father.

Red Dirt Girl's only misstep is an odd little duet with Dave Matthews on "My Antonia." I'm willing to believe that Mr. Matthews is great on his own and that his concerts are rife with inspired improvisations. But vocally, he sounds pale and lacking next to Ms. Harris' rich voice -- a voice that can convey a range of emotions in a single syllable.

Ms. Harris finishes a three-night run at Joe's Pub on Sept. 20; then, on Oct. 19, she plays the Beacon. Mr. Hiatt plays the Bottom Line on Oct. 11 and 12. Both of these artists should be playing larger halls and getting longer runs. If you don't catch the shows, listen to the albums: both Crossing Muddy Waters and Red Dirt Girl are satisfying works from two artists who know their way around life's many quagmires.