My reviewing tasks here usually see me casting lines into the tumbling waters of the up-and-coming and the languid pools of the otherwise overlooked, hoping for a prize catch to champion and share with the world. It's as much a voyage of discovery for me as anyone else. What to do then when instead of tiddlers and rusty bits of shopping trolley, I reel in a legend: a veritable coelacanth of country and Americana music; Ms Emmylou Harris. She's one of the God-like beings long ago granted residence of my personal artistic pantheon - which is a pretty small and exclusive club I can tell you. In fact we’re on first name terms. OK, it’s a rather one-way arrangement, but it’s handily going to save me some typing too. Objectivity is going to be a struggle when you feel committed to an artist hook, line, and sinker - plus I can already see the rabid mob from the Emmylou online forum approaching with pitchforks and flaming torches: "coelacanth of country" indeed. So, let me try and save my sorry ass and crack on, and enough with the angling references already.Firstly, let’s clear up that misunderstanding. I've twice seen Emmylou minus stage glad rags and hairspray, and a mighty fine lady she is too. Let's see what Madonna looks like when she gets her free bus pass. But it's really all about that astonishing voice. The kaleidescopic myriad colouring of pitch and timbre; the sparklingly pure; the trembling damaged fragility; the spine-tingling tipping point between the two (one of the things that has always attracted me to country music is the croak ”“ that peculiar choking mid-word mini-yodel). As friend Linda Ronstadt once said ”“ Emmylou’s voice is like of "cracked crystal". It was Ronstadt who rehabilitated the emotionally distraught Harris with live work and a record deal after the death of Emmylou's' country mentor and musical soul mate Gram Parsons. His almost mythical path to untimely self-destruction left behind a small cache of recordings that veer between untouchable and unlistenable, but above all his lasting legacy was to bring the spirit of "three chords and the truth" back to a new generation of artists ranging from Harris to Keith Richards, and so many more since. Emmylou has continued to champion that cause over the past thirty five years.Through the seventies she enjoyed great crossover success with a series of country-rock albums, but refused to pander to the record executives by continuing in similar vein and produced later albums exploring roots country, bluegrass and gospel; even enduring hard-times after the commerical flop of her semi-autobiographical concept album The Ballad of Sally Rose. Incredulously, radio play dropped off during the desolation of the Garth Brooks years and only the huge success of the Trio album with Ronstadt and Dolly Parton (listen to the harmonies: ignore the hair) in the late eighties kept the wolf from the door.When Americana emerged in the early 90's, Harris was revitalised - inspiring and collaborating with a host of new artists from Jay Farrah through Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams to Gillian Welch (not to mention all the established ones from Elvis Costello to Neil Young). The acoustic line-up used periodically for touring since the wonderful back to the roots 'Live at the Ryman' album is the best showcase for her voice, but those TLOBF regulars needing a guaranteed winning first introduction should probably start with the artistic leap into the dark that was 1995's landmark Wrecking Ball. Producer Daniel Lanois updated her sound with his eerie U2-esque stylings and the doors were opened to a whole new audience. The breakthrough Lanois had fostered left a problem: what to do next? But having bloomed again he had also given Emmylou the confidence to return to her own song writing as a new angle. Red Dirt Girl and Stumble Into Grace continued the journey into the fuller alternative rock, vaguely new age earth-mother, sound that saw her firmly established on the eclectic Nonesuch roster. Then nothing for the past five years, although in Emmylou's case nothing means a host of appearances on other albums, a truly worthwhile boxed retrospective plus rarities collection last year, her (overly smooth to my taste) All The Road Running collaboration with Mark Knopfler, a lot of charity and humanitarian work, finally making it into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and squeezed in between all the touring: a series of sessions over four years that have resulted in this current release.Original seventies producer and one of three former husbands Brian Ahern produces, and perhaps most notable amongst the array of contributing friends and contacts is keys veteran Glenn D. Hardin - of Elvis' TCB band, Parsons' The Fallen Angels, and Emmylou's early famous Hot Band (start updating your rock family trees now). Emmylou mixes a handful of originals, some co-written with long-time friends Kate and Anna McGarrigle, with her usual unerringly deft choice of covers - a skill present throughout her career. Obscure songs are refreshed and more familiar ones made her own.The first trio of tracks have the feel of All The Road Running and Stumble Into Grace ”“ threatening to be tainted by the overly-rich syrup of production (big drums, intrusive backing singers) that clings to and attempts to stifle Emmylou's voice. It's easy to tune it out and concentrate on that voice, but it's a problem I have at times with those two albums, and possibly these tracks are a hangover from that approach. Why even consider obscuring the single outstanding ‘instrument’ in the sound palate? Opener 'Shores of White Sand' is a celtic-country number that has the warm 'Local Hero' guitar sound of Knopfler (without it being him) and the pipes, the pipes. These songs have a maturity and grace; Emmylou is peerless. They are pleasant but they do not move me. It's almost as though she has forgotten her own words once: "I think over the years we've all gotten a little too technical, a little too hung up on getting things perfect. We've lost the living room. The living room has gone out of the music, but today I feel like we got it back."Well, the living room is back with 'Broken Man's Lament' and from there on in things take off with a sparser acoustic sound and grittier sentiments. Trucker-poet Michael Germino's narrative could have been written by 'Nebraska' vintage Springsteen and Emmylou's phrasing is clear and uninhibited over an acoustic guitar for the most part. One to add to the list of classics. If anything her voice has got better in the latter part of her career - that extra wisp of husky dryness adding texture to the rounded delivery of her youth - which is why her performances with bluegrass backing bank Carolina Star in the last few of years have been such a joy. Emmylou penned 'Gold', a similarly affecting tale of continual rejection. Dolly Parton's warbled harmonies are nicely restrained, but somehow it still suffers slightly from an uninspired ‘dum-de-dum’ rhythm section backing and the 'more is less' syndome when compared to the demo of the song that leaked from the 'Red Dirt Girl' sessions. I am being very picky. The McGarrigle sisters help out with the following 'How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower'. There's a nice doffing of the hat in the chorus refrain to the famous song by early country stalwarts the Carter Family, and it presumably describes the love between A.P. Carter and his wife Sara in the West Virginian hills. Bluegrass and sweet as you would expect. The McGarrigles also co-wrote and added harmonies to 'Sailing Round the Room' - perhaps a bittersweet expression of contentment with life at home with simple pleasures, that is, touring aside, more or less how Emmylou chooses to live these days - with her mother and devoted to her dogs. Tracy Chapman's 'All That You Have is Your Soul' is the best known cover, and is given a masterfully heartfelt re-tread that eradicated all memory of the original. There’s a regular country duet when Emmylou is joined by Billy Joe Shaver to re-record his ‘Old Five And Dimers’, and the interpretation of the Merle Haggard song 'Kern River' is literally drowning in sorrow.Top of the pile though is 'Not Enough' - achingly emotional. Astonishingly expressive in her treatment, Emmylou makes it an instant classic in her songbook. When you hear lines like "I still have your memory / One or two pictures of you and me" and “When you love someone life’s not long enough” it may be inevitable if perhaps too easy that thoughts turn to Gram Parsons - such was his impact on her life. With 'Take That Ride' and 'Beyond the Great Divide' it's one of a trio of songs which leave a veil of melancholia settling over the album. There's a resignation, a submission to and acceptance of ultimate sadness, even to approaching death - with hope of some enduring existence thereafter. Even the gentler ‘Sailing Round The Room’ speaks of waiting for “No flesh and bone to hold me”. It's a common enough thread in country/bluegrass music and Emmylou has sung such songs before, but the tone seems new, more deeply felt, and unsettling; like a chill entering a previously cosy room. As a would-be teenage folk singer obsessed with Joan Baez, Emmylou wrote to Pete Seeger expressing her fear that her conventional upbringing meant she had not lived and suffered enough to express herself properly. His reply was along the lines of: don't worry, you will. Her experience and hard earned wisdom now inhabits these songs, and maybe even subconsciously she is reflecting on her own mortality. Apparently smooth waters are running deep here. The emotional power that has surfaced has now swept away the comfort and easy familiarity of the first few tracks. I scanned the Emmylou collection on my mp3 player of choice. Almost all albums have been cut down (as I said, I am picky). This one won’t get pruned as drastically. That can only be a good sign.To be honest, this album is not likely to win new fans previously unaware of the musical treasure that is Emmylou Harris. It's not a Rick Rubin makeover (see the aforementioned 'Wrecking Ball' - maybe she started the trend?) and it does not set out to win new admirers with the energetic burst of a new passion. It offers more the lingering contented cuddle of an ongoing long term relationship; a smile, a squeeze of the hand, and the certainty of enduring love until the end. That's another one-sided part to our relationship. She still doesn't send me a Valentine's card. Ungrateful cow. OK: coelacanth and cow. I'm going straight to hillbilly hell. At least the music there should be good. 86%Gram and Emmylou - a mini history lesson [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dTyf2kUdcQ&NR=1[/youtube]Links Emmylou Harris [myspace] [official site]