Joe Henry has a love/hate relationship with traditional American music. He started his career as an alt-country troubadour, akin to his cohorts the Jayhawks, but turned away from the movement just as it was gaining steam. While countless other artists began exploring their inner twang, Henry started releasing strange and atmospheric albums like Trampoline and Fuse, discs more likely to nod to Sly Stone than bow at the throne of Gram Parsons. Before getting the boot from his longtime major label home, he even managed to lure no less than Ornette Coleman in for a cameo, appropriate enough for a songwriter whose music has as much in common with jazz as it does with rock or folk.
Yet at the same time, Henry's love of traditional American music seemed to flourish. Between producing records for peers such as Aimee Mann and Ani DiFranco, Henry helmed comeback discs for Solomon Burke and Bettye LaVette, splitting the difference with Elvis Costello's The River in Reverse, which featured Costello paired with Allen Toussaint (himself a vet of the soul supergroup Henry assembled for 2005's I Believe to My Soul). Around the time Henry released his 2003 disc Tiny Voices, he told me one of his dream collaborators was Dr. Dre.
It's four years later, so where does Joe Henry fit today? Apparently in a kind of introspective, back-to-basics frame of mind. There are no horns and few outré flourishes on Civilians, not that Henry's all alone, left to deal with those ghosts and demons alone. He's surrounded himself with a cadre of capable studio hands, including such usual unusual suspects as guitarist Bill Frisell and Van Dyke Parks as well as old friends Patrick Warren, Greg Leisz and drummer Jay Bellerose. The result is Henry's most "traditional" album in years, at least in the words-and-music-come-first sense. It's also, unfortunately, a bit dull, like a cross between current Tom Waits and Bob Dylan without that ineffable quality that makes even their clichés so compelling.
That's not to say Henry hasn't left some room to play with that relationship between words and music. "Loose lips, desperation and convenient morality might make for tense dinner conversation, but put them in waltz time and even the young people lay down their assault rifles and start crowding up next to the stage," he writes in the notes, and he makes a good point. Lyrically, Civilians finds Joe Henry at his poetic best, his words the stuff of hardboiled fiction, the Beats, and the heart. Stick with them, and he takes you on an evocative trip down (bad) memory lane.
"Every truth carries blame/ And every light reveals some shame/ Progress rides with thieves and whores/ The stowaways of civil war," he sings in "Civil War", an oblique take on domestic conflict (and indeed a sort-of waltz). "God is in the details/ Of the smoke in the air/ The devil, he's a pauper prince/ Nesting in your hair," goes another bit in "Parker's Mood".
Indeed, God is in the details, literally, as the Almighty makes at least a passing appearance in just about every Civilians track. But God in this context is little more than a cipher, a passive presence. It's something else that seems to be compelling Henry to create in the face of the hopelessness that surrounds around him. "I turn my face from all the rage/ Playing on the grim, dark stage/ But you've shown me an open page," he sings in "I Will Write My Book", and while he could be singing about divine intervention as inspiration, it sounds more like Henry is singing about a connection made with an actual corporeal human being when all the forces of the world are conspiring to draw us apart.
It's on this note that Civilians falters. The sound is as warm and rich as could be expected from a craftsman of this caliber-- David Piltch's upright bass tone alone should be bottled and sold to the highest bidder-- but musically and melodically Civilians falls short of making much of a connection itself. There's real weight (and when need be, weightlessness) to Henry's lyrics, but wait as you might for some force to back it up, the disc never dislodges from its doggedly midtempo (and slower) groove and oppressively dour vibe. It's all sparks, shooting up and out into the night sky, but no fire.
