For this week's Favorite Album Friday selection, I've chosen the album Trampoline by singer/songwriter Joe Henry.
Never heard of Joe Henry? That's too bad. He's a gem, and he might be one of the most overlooked singer/songwriters of his generation. If there's a word to describe Joe Henry's career, it would be eclectic. His catalog veers from straight ahead rock to folk to alt-country to jazz to trip hop to Tin Pan Alley, and even when you think he's going far beyond his range he somehow manages to pull it off. In a way, his career reminds me of Tom Waits, who started off as a balladeer before venturing into more avante-garde territory. Trampoline, released in 1996, is an album that seems to mark Henry's transition into more varied and experimental territory, both musically and lyrically.
From the opening strains of "Bob and Ray," Trampoline is an album of whispers and sighs, distant voices and dreams, dark and smoky songs driven by sinister guitar lines and snapping drums. Its songs are tales of plane crashes, murder, dreams, and lost love. But mostly it's an album about ghosts, with the word itself appearing in several songs. We all, Henry seems to be saying, are haunted by some kind of ghost. "I kept your ghost, but I don't know how to give it back to you," Henry sings over a mournful steel guitar in the song "Parade." It's a pretty dark album, but not overwhelmingly so. Pump organ, strings, horns, mellotron, and samples of an opera singers add to the sonic layers of the album, creating a dreamlike quality to the music. And amidst the darkness there is the improbably sunny, mandolin-driven "Go With God," a song in which Henry channels Paul Simon.
Ultimately, as I'm finding, Trampoline is an album that's hard to capture in words and defies categorization, so best to just go and listen to it yourself. Here's a taste:
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