TALK MAGAZINE
"His new album, Scar is already causing a stir."


Every serious musician - hell, every serious artist of any kind - knows the work would be impossible if you ever stopped to think about it. You're not allowed to imitate yourself, but at the same time you have to stay true to yourself -- in the process of reinventing yourself. So all you have to do is follow your instincts and not overthink the damn thing -- except that you also have to not be stupid. All it takes, basically, is every bit of your intuition and your intelligence -- and some third faculty to keep the one from strangling the other.

Somehow or other, Joe Henry has always managed to thrive under these no-win rules. I've never dared ask him how, because I didn't want it to be my fault if thinking about it put sand in his crankcase. But I do know that in the ten years or so I've been listening, admiring and proselytizing -- from his austere, acoustic Shuffletown to his bass-heavy, looped-and-sampled Fuse (1999) -- he's become more and more himself: the voice grainier, the heartache rawer, the sense of love and awe more rapturous. Now, on Scar, he's managed to find the exactly right place to go next.

I did finally get around to asking Joe what his story was. He sent me an email saying he was born in Charlotte, N.C., in 1960, lived there until 1965, then Atlanta and Ohio, where he spent fourth through seventh grade as a classmate of Jeffrey Dahmer's. (You know, one of those things that means nothing, but how could you not mention it?) And then to Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where he met the Ciccone family -- and, to jump ahead a little, married one sister and wrote a hit single called "Don't Tell Me" for the other. Let's see, went to college in Ann Arbor, moved to New York around the time his first record came out, in 1985, then to L.A. in 1990. Still there. He also told me -- I'm just going to quote this -- "I wear an 8 1/2 shoe, usually, though (depending on the manufacturer) I can sometimes make a 9 work. I am a fabulous cook. I have tried to start smoking many times, but just can't get it to 'take.' I am allergic to many brands of exterior oil-based paint. I am an excellent driver."

Okay, stop right there. See, that's Joe for you. Feigning to tell all, yet giving nothing away. Not a word about his politics (good), manners (ditto), who does his hair (woman on Ludlow Street, when he's in New York), favorite food (don't know), favorite composer (I'm guessing Duke Ellington), and exactly how he gets a size 9 to work (I'm guessing Kleenex in the toe). Won't tell you that he's been known to drink a martini -- I've seen this done. Won't brag about his taste in selecting people to play on his records -- he's got to be the only guy who's played with Mick Taylor, Brad Meldhau, T-Bone Burnett and the late Don Cherry -- and in choosing songs to cover. (He's also got to be the only guy to have recorded both the World War II weeper "We'll Meet Again" and Tom T. Hall's "I Flew Over Our House Last Night.") And ask him sometime about being in Bob Dylan's backup band on that episode of "Dharma and Greg" -- maybe he'll tell you, maybe he won't. Your basic man of mystery.

So here's Scar. And the real mystery, of course, is where he pulls these songs out of, how he knows the things you thought only you knew, and how he makes the music sound like these fluctuations of inner weather. Joe's always had a gift for songs about the utter and absolute misery of love, and in "Mean Flower" it's stretching him on the rack to a new pitch of unbearableness; yet in the title song, the prospect of two damaged souls truly seeing into one another verges on a state of grace. More artfully than ever, he's mixing textures and genres, from tango "Stop" (his "uncover" of Madonna's single) to blues dirge ("Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation") to neo-'70s jazz-funk ("Nico Lost One Small Buddha"), while always sounding exactly like himself. (Told you he listened to Duke Ellington.) And he's made his single smartest choice of collaborators: on "Richard Pryor," the free-jazz giant Ornette Coleman bestows a solo that's the perfect aural analogue of the spiritual free-fall in the lyric.

Scar captures that sense of wonder when you've dared to wish for a fresh impossibility and something more than you thought you deserved drops right out of heaven -- after you've worked your ass off. It's Joe Henry's best record. Hands down. So far.