Joe Henry

August 22 - 29, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Joe Henry

TRAMPOLINE

(Mammoth)
Give Joe Henry credit for one thing: he's not afraid to buck trends, even if he helped create them in the first place. Although bands like Son Volt are making a few dollars from the kind of earnest country rock that Henry did to perfection on 1992's Short Man's Room, and to a lesser extent its follow-up, Kindness of the World, he leaves his fiddle at home for Trampoline, his sixth album, a moody, restless album that favors stripped-down, funky grooves and an eclectic palette of ambient sound effects, including string arrangements, trombones, and zithers.
Henry has pared down his typically enigmatic lyrics, and his characteristic dark humor has given way to more disquieting imagery. The hymnal-like "Flower Girl" begins: "Because there was no gold mine/I freed the dogs/And burned their sled/And I killed the guide/Asleep in bed." With a wheezing pump organ and an eerie operatic vocal hanging in the background like a ghost, it's reminiscent of Tom Waits. What hasn't changed is the quality of Henry's songs, which are served by the sonic trimmings rather than upstaged by them.
-- Chris Erikson