by Kjetil Wold
translated by Atle Lone
The CD got a 8 out of 10 score.
Emmylou Harris has spent the last years
reinventing herself.
She has worked out new sound-images, new ways of
expression, and worked herself away from the more "straight"
country-expression.
Last year's "Wrecking Ball" produced by
Daniel
Lanois, was the final confirmation of this "escape". An escape that
was needed.
Not because the 50year old Emmylou Harris was about to become
less appealing, but because she has so much more to offer within a musical
expression much wider .
"Spyboy" is a live album recorded at the
end of her 1997 tour. It's a live album way above average.
Emmylou is in
shape. She's tender and soft, wild and intense. On her own "prayer i open
D" we meet the beautiful singing Emmylou,
on "Deeper well"
the
roaring one , on "Where will I be" the searching one and on Chris
Hillman/Gram Parsons "Wheels" the down-to-earth and mildly
countryrocking Emmylou Harris.
In this respect is "Spyboy" also
becoming a tour inside the lady's musical universe.
In the mid-seventies
she
was the wild countryrocker Gram Parsons girlfriend and the hottest babe of
countryrock. Today she's
somewhat more relaxed, but nevertheless still one
of
the great voices on the borderline of country, modern folk and "emotional
rock".
Emmylou Harris is the Queen.
And the queen refuses to step
down.