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Joe Henry (Work Song, 2014)
Joe Henry (Work Song, 2014)Joe Henry may always be thought of as the T Bone Burnett of his generation. After all, his career began when the legendary producer pulled his demo off the slush pile. In recent years, as a producer himself, Henry seems to have worked with every rock and soul legend that Burnett didn’t have time for.
As a singer-songwriter, Henry has outpaced his mentor by releasing a dozen fine albums with styles ranging from alt-country to jazz. But this bare-boned and openhearted collection may be his best. A theme about marriage runs through it, and the title track reels off a wild list of metaphors for human coupling that includes “tooth and nail, tongue and groove . . . tar and feathers, forks and spoons” before affirming that “we come alive in bodies that are not our own.” You could almost say that it wraps up the sacrament of matrimony and the doctrine of the communion of the saints into one neat aphorism.
The Christian references on Invisible Hour are hard to ignore. “Grave Angels” features the refrain, “Foolish we are in the presence of God and what all his grave angels have done.” And “Lead Me On” proclaims, “This is my body already broken for thee.” Henry comes by his religious imagery naturally. He had a devout Methodist upbringing but told Image, a Christian arts journal, “I don’t identify myself as a Christian any more than I identify myself as an American.” In that same interview, however, he quoted Thomas Merton and cited Flannery O’Connor as one of his most important influences.
The tunes that carry Henry’s odes to love carnal and divine are sturdy and folk-derived, and the rattle of acoustic guitars dominates the soundscape. At times I felt I could be listening to outtakes from Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, which is a masterpiece about a marriage falling apart. Invisible Hour isn’t that good. But Henry does have a better singing voice than Dylan, and his tale has a happier ending.
This article appeared in the October 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 79, No. 10, page 42).