Review Summary: "I'm only goin' over home"
There have been many iconic pairings in country music and about half of them involve Emmylou Harris. Gram and Emmylou. Willie and Emmylou. Skaggs and Emmylou. Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou. The list could go on through a litany of country greats and each one would probably remember their collaboration with Harris as among the highlights of their career. One of the most powerful harmonizers in the genre, her delicate singing style had a thread of iron running through it, a strength that gave her mournful twang a heartrending power that made her contributions to ballads and breakup songs essential to the evolution of country as a whole. It’s a shame then, that her solo career should be, while overall consistent, somewhat of a letdown, with a string of minor classics early in her career followed by a slew of releases that never really lived up to everything she offered as a singer. There are, to my mind, two albums that fully live up to the enormous artistic talent Emmylou’s displayed over the years: the titanic comeback that was 1995’s Wrecking Ball, and Roses In the Snow, perhaps the most complete expression of Emmylou’s potential and the perfect closer for the early period of her career.
The 80s found Emmylou at a bit of a crossroads, an impasse which she would deal with by shooting for a variety of styles throughout the decade. A foray into pop-country would prove to be an uneven mediocrity and there would be a Christmas album that would be better left unmentioned. Later in the decade she would revisit past glories with a series of revisitations of straight outlaw country, which, while great in their own right, didn’t quite live up to the potential her vocals and her earlier career had promised. It was in the first year of the decade, however, that she would fully embrace the genre which best suited her voice by far: bluegrass. Her style had always had something of the mournful, earthy tones of bluegrass but at this point in her career, she hadn’t really given the genre the wholehearted attention that it deserved from her. By pairing for the second time with Ricky Skaggs, who would go on to become one of the iconic fiddlers and singers of bluegrass in his own right, Emmylou found a collaborator who would provide just the kind of backing she needed.
Roses In The Snow, for the most part, stays true to bluegrass convention, although the music occasionally tends toward gospel and her country roots, two styles which have always had significant overlap with bluegrass. Ranging from wellworn classics to new compositions, she effortlessly makes each piece her own, indelibly marking her takes on the old classics and claiming the new cuts as incontrovertibly her own. Her take on Wayfaring Stranger, one of the archetypal examples of traditional American song, instantly becomes the standard against which all other iterations of the song are measured, the doleful hymn to the hope of a better world beyond this one a clear highlight in Emmylou’s career. No less astonishing is her take on Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer, which, by staying largely faithful to the original within her bluegrass framework, she more than lives up to, although she can’t quite lay claim to the song like she can with Wayfaring Stranger. The tender gospel of Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn is another highlight, a Ralph Stanley cover that finds her doing a duet with Skaggs, who also supports on mandolin. The pickin’ and grinnin’ hoedown of I’ll Go Stepping Too is another strong duet between Harris and Skaggs, who showcases some of the fiddle skills that would send his star blazing in the bluegrass scene throughout the ensuing decades.
While the second half of the album is the barest step down from the instant classic status of songs like Wayfaring Stranger and The Boxer, it does showcase typically strong work from Harris and the backing band, the only minor misstep being the less than stellar You’re Learning, a Louvin brothers cover which features the awkward line “You are learning that a flirt can cause a hurt”, a line that, along with the fair to middling melody it's paired to, makes it the least necessary track on the album. The one song on the second half of the album that can match the best moments of the first half is the foot-stomping gospel number Jordan, featuring a fantastic contribution from none other than Johnny Cash himself, a talent who's contribution shows that Emmylou was at her absolute best when paired with another singer. The album closes its brief, 29 minute runtime with the sunny nostalgia of bluegrass classic Gold Watch and Chain, another rendition that Harris renders definitive. It’s a fine closer to a collection of songs that, for possibly the first time in her career, showcases and delineates her talents to their fullest potential. Emmylou would continue to revisit bluegrass throughout her career, but it’s on Roses in the Snow that her affinity for the genre burns the brightest, making it one of the truly essential releases of her career.
