Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons

1	She / Emmylou Harris 4:51
2	Ooh Las Vegas / Cowboy Junkies 5:21
3	Sin City / Beck 4:01
4	$1000 Wedding / Evan Dando 3:07
5	Hot Burrito #1 / The Mavericks 3:54
6	High Fashion Queen / Chris Hillman 3:06
7	Juanita / Sheryl Crow 2:42
8	Sleepless Nights / Elvis Costello 2:57
9	Return of the Grievous Angel / Lucinda Williams 4:19
10	One Hundred Years From Now / Wilco 2:53
11	A Song for You / Whiskeytown 6:40
12	Hickory Wind / Gillian Welch 4:38
13	In My Hour of Darkness / Rolling Creekdippers 4:47

Barnes & Noble

Singing country with a rock attitude, giving folk a vocabulary of contemporary issues and ideas, and doing it all in a ragged tenor that came straight from the heart - this was Gram Parsons. Though he burned out on drugs and alcohol at the age of 26 almost a quarter century ago, Parsons's legacy continues to unfold in the music of artists such as Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Whiskeytown, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch. They all appear on this album (which Harris, Parsons's duet partner at the twilight of his career and the dawn of her own, coproduced), along with less expected contributors. The Pretenders offer a blues-rock version of "She," and the Cowboy Junkies provide a spooky interpretation of "Ooh Las Vegas." Beck duets with Harris on "Sin City"; Linda Ronstadt provides backing vocals. All these tracks hail from Parsons's days with the Flying Burrito Brothers, as part of the Byrds, and, in the case of the title track, from his fruitful period with Harris, when Parsons's frayed tenor and Harris's fragile soprano combined to create a new voice. These moving songs, and the excellent interpretations herein, impart a measure of Gram Parsons's continuing power. Kerry Dexter

All Music Guide

Although he's not as well known outside music circles as Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain, the early death of Gram Parsons was arguably just as great a loss. Parsons' country-rock hybrid became a touchstone for artists from the Rolling Stones to Elvis Costello to the '90s "alternative country" giants Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks. In addition to his importance as a songwriter, Parsons gave Emmylou Harris her big break. Now, Harris and co-executive producer Paul Kremen have handpicked an all-star list of artists, including Costello as well as Tupelo and Jayhawks descendants Wilco and the Rolling Creekdippers, for Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons. The songs, culled from Parsons' early days with the Byrds through his posthumously released solo album, Grievous Angel, are uniformly excellent, or better. The best covers, like Lucinda Williams and David Crosby's "Return of the Grievous Angel" and the Rolling Creekdippers' "In My Hour of Darkness," feature the soaring, intertwined harmonies Parsons and Harris turned into magic on the originals. Harris herself joins the Pretenders ("She"), Beck ("Sin City"), and Sheryl Crow ("Juanita") for songs Parsons did before he began recording with her. The resulting duets evoke why the original Grievous Angel, featuring Harris, was so stunning. ~ Mark Morgenstein, All Music Guide