Wrecking Ball

1	Where Will I Be 4:15
2	Goodbye 4:53
3	All My Tears (Be Washed Away) 3:42
4	Wrecking Ball 4:49
5	Going Back to Harlan 4:51
6	Deeper Well 4:19
7	Every Grain of Sand 3:56
8	Sweet Old World 5:06
9	May This Be Love 4:45
10	Orphan Girl 3:15
11	Blackhawk 4:28
12	Waltz Across Texas Tonight 4:46

Barnes & Noble

In the mid-1980s Emmylou Harris -- first on the strength of her work a decade earlier with Gram Parsons and then on her ensuing solo albums -- was the godmother of the New Traditionalist movement. Now, as the millennium nears, she's become the queen mother of alternative country-No Depression-Americana-whatever-it's-called-today, yet another return to the traditional roots of country music. Wrecking Ball is a sharp left turn, though, featuring challenging song selection and a broad sonic palette courtesy of producer Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan). Broad washes of ambient sounds and reverb-laden guitars mix with New Orleans-style rhythms and Harris's own aching soprano voice (here sounding rough and urgent) to take songs such as Dylan's "Every Grain of Sand," Lucinda Williams's "Sweet Old World," Neil Young's title track, and even a Jimi Hendrix tune, "May This Be Love," into bold, new territory. After more than 20 years of making music, Harris's impulses are still outside the mainstream but nonetheless compelling. Daniel Durchholz

All Music Guide

Wrecking Ball is a leftfield masterpiece, the most wide-ranging, innovative, and daring record in a career built on such notions. Rich in atmosphere and haunting in its dark complexity, much of the due credit belongs to producer Daniel Lanois; best known for his work with pop superstars like U2 and Peter Gabriel, on Wrecking Ball Lanois taps into the very essence of what makes Harris tick -- the gossamer vocals, the flawless phrasing -- while also opening up innumerable new avenues for her talents to explore. The songs shimmer and swirl, given life through Lanois' trademark ringing guitar textures and the almost primal drumming of U2's Larry Mullen, Jr. The fixed point remains Harris' voice, which leaps into each and every one of these diverse compositions -- culled from the pens of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, and others -- with utter fearlessness, as if this were the album she'd been waiting her entire life to make. Maybe it is. Jason Ankeny