Album Review: Reverie by Joe Henry

Songwriter Joe Henry has recorded five albums in the 21st century; he’s also become a Grammy-winning producer. These more recent records (of 12) offer a mature view of an artist at his most musically ambitious and lyrically cagey. Reverie, as its title implies, contains 14 songs that seemingly center on the concept of time: the random glinting of memory as it perceives love, loss, spirituality, history, and culture refracted through the gaze of the human heart.

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"Acoustic" isn't the first word that comes to mind upon hearing Grammy-winning producer, songwriter and guitarist Joe Henry's 12th album. Yet it is acoustic, if loose and experimentally so, with piano and bass drum in a percussive dialogue, threatening to rip apart some of the rougher songs on which Henry sings rueful, yearning blues - the stuff of dark dreams and recollections. While recording, he left the windows open.

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Reverie is, in Henry’s own words, a “raw and raucous and messy affair,” recorded in his home studio during live takes with the windows purposely left open. The resulting street sounds of fire engines, dogs barking and traffic moving become as much a part of the fabric of these acoustic but far from laid back sessions as the music itself. On his twelfth album, Henry reconvenes the core band that made his eleventh such a revelation.

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