Rating: Yes

Fuse

Mammoth

Moody and poetic and always in love, North Carolina-native Joe Henry is rarely understated or ignored in this dreamy, steamy AOR classic. Produced by Daniel Lanois and T-bone Burnett, two old hats at creating AOR albums that can be played on the soft-rock stations and still sound cool. Fans of Lanois' past productions, which include work with Bob Dylan, Robby Robertson and U2, as well as his own remarkable work, will immediately recognize his fingerprints all over the knobs, creating his trademark shimmering, cloudy, echo-filled and altogether bog-like sound. Henry has been around since the beginning of the decade, originally pegged as some sort of country-folk country-rock guy, complete with John Hiatt twang. There's none of that here. In fact, at times Fuse is dominated by funky, trip-hop rhythms (Fat, Angels, Curt Flood), that take it about as far away from C&W as you can go in this genre. If anyone else were singing it, there'd be no comparison, but Henry's most obvious characteristic is his nasal, Dylanesque voice, which sounds more Jakob than Bob to me.  Like some of the best tracks off Robertson's Storyville,  every track seems slightly overshadowed with a piece of remorse, regret  or bad memory. You feel his pain or confusion when it's over.  The title track opens like a Roxy Music underwater love song, with Henry singing "There go your knees/And there she goes/She's haulin' Cane/Like it was gold." I'm not sure what it means but it sure sounds nice. The lyrics are poetic and lose me most of the time, but you won't notice because you'll be lost in the dense sound. Nothing  so far this year has had the beauty of "Beautiful Hat," Backed by a mournful-sounding Dirty Dozen brass band, Henry sings "When I was beginning to learn how to climb/Thinking myself could be doing just fine/Reaching your knees when just finding mine/Reaching your knees while living on mine," followed by one of the most beautiful brass lines I've heard in a long, long time. It'll leave a lump in your throat, like the rest of this lovely CD.

-- Tim McMahan

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Printed in The Reader April 22, 1999.

Copyright © 1999 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.