Barnes & Noble
For 30 years and counting, Emmylou Harris has drawn on the whole of popular music a source of inspiration. At once an innovator and a traditionalist, she has an uncanny gift for translating what she hears into contemporary country terms. The 45 tracks here chart an assured artist's course -- Harris has always sounded like she knows exactly what she wants to do -- and are as smart as they are, often, unconventional. But her choices -- aided and abetted by her beautiful crystalline voice -- always aim to make the human connection between artist and listener rather than show off her good and catholic taste. Several acknowledged Harris classics are in this compelling collection: "Boulder to Birmingham," "Blue Kentucky Girl," and the haunting version of "To Know Him Is to Love Him," with fellow Trio conspirators Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. No less powerful, though, are Harris's countrified interpretations of Lennon-McCartney ("Here, There and Everywhere"), Chuck Berry ("(You Never Can Tell) C'est La Vie"), and Paul Simon ("The Boxer"), as well as her linkage of country to R&B ("Pledging My Love") and to the Latin-tinged urban pop of Pomus-Shuman ("Save the Last Dance for Me"). Harris scholars will be delighted to know that several tracks show up on CD in the U.S. for the first time: "Fools Thin Air" and her take on Rodney Crowell's powerful "Precious Love," both of which were B-sides; "Driving Wheel" and "Pledging My Love" from the White Shoes album; and "White Line," "Rhythm Guitar," and "Timberline" from The Ballad of Sally Rose. Warner has about three times this amount of choice Emmylou material in its vaults, but for now, this taste is fine. David McGee
All Music Guide
Rhino's double-disc Anthology concentrates on Emmylou Harris' Reprise recordings, which is a blessing. Once she left Reprise, she started to delve into "experimental," "atmospheric" recordings a bit too heavily, certainly more than her prior recordings would justify, and it almost obscured her purest talents -- that of a singer that carried on the tradition of, say, Patsy Cline, becoming the greatest country singer of her generation. Since her generation was the rock generation, her path crossed multiple times with singers that weren't strictly country, most notably at the beginning of her career, when she sung backing and harmony vocals for the incomparable Gram Parsons. This gave her exposure, and she capitalized upon it by turning in recordings that simultaneously appealed to rock and country artists, finding herself as a tremendous interpretive singer, somebody that perfectly balanced the divide between classic and contemporary. Rhino's double-disc Anthology perfectly captures that balance and if it has any faults, it's that it illustrates her career a little too well, finding that her classicist approach was as modern as it was reverent. So, there are moments here that seem a little too studied to be true, but that's an accurate representation of her career, illustrating how she walked the tightrope between genuine country and a scholarly interpretation of it. This will appeal to both factions, as it captures both sides of her personality equally well. That means it might not be the perfect choice to convert doubters, yet it still winds up representing Harris' career remarkably well, perhaps being the one disc for casual fans. Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Blender
Few artists have voices that so beautifully express emotional fortitude without ever resorting to pyrotechnics.
Keith Harris