Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Joe Henry is back!

Joe Henry has a new album out, Civilians. I've been liking it a lot. "Our Song" is a great track from it, starts out spotting Willy Mays in a Home Depot. Genuinely moving.

For some of Joe's older stuff, I love the albums Fuse and Short Man's Room. (You may have heard these in heavy rotation on my cd changer at Mac or on Madison.) "Monkey" and "Angels" are the first two songs from Fuse. He took his music sound in a totally different direction on this disc from where it'd been on his earlier records.

Short Man's Room is much more alt-country sounding; "Good Fortune" and "King's Highway" sound like The Jayhawks circa Hollywood Town Hall or Blue Earth. And they lyrics of the title track - well, the guy knows how to write.

More Joe factoids: he's been busy producing like a madman, and he's quite an excellent producer - see his Wikipedia entry for a partial discography (including Aimee Mann, Allan Touissant and Elvis Costello, and Loudon Wainwright III).

And his sister-in-law's surname is Ciccone. Yeah, she's even recorded one of his songs.

Click to listen on Rhapsody....

1. Our Song - Joe Henry
2. Monkey - Joe Henry
3. Angels - Joe Henry
4. Good Fortune - Joe Henry
5. Short Man's Room - Joe Henry
6. King's Highway - Joe Henry
7. Don't Tell Me - Madonna
8. Two Angels - The Jayhawks

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