Joe Henry’s lyrics make review writing feel futile. These aren’t songs; they’re 14 novels in verse. Reverie, the latest from the (don’t call me a) singer-songwriter, takes the form of unpolished manuscripts. Recorded in his usual space, his basement studio, this time welcoming all that you’re supposed to banish from such a setting; windows were opened and the world came in to jam. The recording is loose, messy. A dog barks, cars drive by, the din of an entire world unaware of and unconcerned with microphones and isolation all bleed in, strangers wedging their points of view into a private conversation. It feels like it could fall apart at any moment. You wait for the screech of tires, a crash of thunder or a phone’s braying to interrupt the atmosphere. Reverie is the sound of important conversation held together with collective inebriation; any tick or tumble will lose thought’s train, the point ultimately lost. Somehow it stays together, tenuous though it may be. Reverie is life itself.
This article appears in November 1, 2011.