Review Summary: While Emmylou Harris’ voice fits the Gospel idiom like a glove, the lack of variety on Angel Band prevents it from being one of her greats
Emmylou’s voice always tended to fit better with songs that expressed a sense of yearning. Wayfaring Stranger, My Father’s House, Pancho and Lefty and many others were all imbued with an indelible sense of heartache when subjected to the plaintive melancholy that pours out of Harris’ voice, a heartache that made her versions of those songs some of the most emotionally expressive examples of country music on record. It would only make sense then, that gospel music would be a genre that she would visit: after all, what could express more yearning than the hope for eternal life? Emmylou had dipped her toe into the genre on previous records, but it was only on the back half of the 80s that she would commit an entire record to it, with all the ease and success that would be expected from such a country music veteran.
The light rasp that Emmylou’s voice had begun to pick up in previous years is more prominent on this album, and it puts a thread of steel through her sweet melodies, a sense of experience and world-weariness that makes the religious subject matter that much more poignant. The melancholy carried by her voice is, when paired with the subject matter, that of hard lives that have nonetheless managed to carry some hope with them through it all. Without this element, Angel Band would have been an engaging listen for most of its runtime, with it, the album is, for the most part, gripping.
Electing to go with a live sound on the album is perhaps the best move her production team could have made. Each song sounds warm and intimate, there’s none of the sense of distance created by an overly-polished production style. For this style of music, it’s a natural, organic choice, and one that brings the goodhearted simplicity of the songs to the forefront. The backing band is likewise stripped down to only the necessary elements: guitar, bass, dobro, fiddle, mandolin. It was this kind minimalist arrangement that had allowed Emmylou’s voice to shine on past albums, and here it gives just enough backing for her voice and the subject matter of the songs to take center stage.
It’s too easy to pick any of the tracks on Angel Band as being representative of its overall sound, both to its benefit and detriment. It’s a consistently strong selection of songs, and each of them would grace any compilation of either gospel or Emmylou’s music. But in sequence, as an album, most every song is bringing the exact thing to the table as every other one. It’s a negligible complaint when everything sounds as gorgeous as it does, I mean, since when does a Gospel album need sonic variety to be good? But given the limitations of the genre, both in subject matter and sound, the album does tend to drag on the back half, as what has been explored earlier is given very nearly the exact same treatment, in the exact same way. While it may not make the second half of the album completely redundant, it’s only really going to be essential for those who continue to be enthralled by the strength of Emmylou’s vocals and the seamless way she integrates them into the gospel music idiom.
