Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt: Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions auf CD

Emmylou Harris once said of her four-shows-a-night salad days that she refused to sing anything on the hit parade, opting only for "bizarre, left-field songs" that "made it hard to make a living." Decades later, Harris still spends a lot of time in left field, and it's those offbeat, haunting gems--more than the classics here from Leonard Cohen or Jackson Browne--that make Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, her duet album with Linda Ronstadt, so memorable. That, and her exquisitely pained soprano--reminiscent of "cracked crystal," as Linda puts it--nestled up against Ronstadt's thicker, corduroy harmonies. With arrangements that meet somewhere between Harris's Wrecking Ball and Ronstadt's Hasten Down the Wind, the two explore a mood of morose dreaminess, but profound beauty. Ghosts gather here, to the sounds of rattling bones--in songs of abandoned love, of musical giants now gone silent, and of World War I soldiers, who parade from the arms of prostitutes to the arms of death. Left field, dotted with the wreckage of heartache and regret, never sounded better. --Alanna Nash (emmylouharris. com)

Rezensionen

ME/Sounds 9/99: "Die zwei großen, alten Damen des ge- pflegten Country-Rock-Pop-Songs in trauter Zweisamkeit: Linda Ronstadt und Emmylou Harris trafen sich diesmal ohne Busenfreudin Dolly Parton im Herbst 1998 mit Pro- duzentenlegende Glyn Johns in Tucson, Arizona, um 13 Songs von mehr oder minder zeitloser Güte zu einem feinen Album zusammenzufügen.​"