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Apr 26, 2011Harris' vocal approach to her folk-based songs, ballads or mid-tempo, is infused with the presence of a time-traveler, visiting modern America from a pre-pop-culture place where music is in the air rather than the airwaves.
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May 6, 2011Emmylou Harris has rightly earned a reputation as an interpreter of songs and as a songwriter. Most on this offering are her own and not all hit the spot.
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MojoMay 18, 2011Longtime fans might be appeased. Others may find themselves a trifle bored. [May 2011, p.104]
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Apr 22, 2011The lingering sense, though, is one of repetition. Now the novelty of her songwriting has worn off, she needs to find a whole new language again.
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Q MagazineJun 7, 2011If Hard Bargain doesn't quite hit a career high, it runs close on tearful eulogies to Gram Parsons and Kate McGarrigle, and the stunning My Name Is Emmett Till, a Cash/Dylan-esque civil rights songs. [Jun 2011, p.116]
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Apr 22, 2011While the arrangements, built around producer Jay Joyce's shimmering guitars and Giles Reaves' keyboards and percussion, offer atmospheric settings for Emmylou's harmonies, the glistening, featherlight textures leave the album drifting in the doldrums.
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Apr 26, 2011It is stately, rather imperious music, conveying emotion through the deployment of technical effects rather than through the revelation of a voice.
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Apr 28, 2011It's an album marinated in sadness, so much so that in places it veers into the maudlin, but Harris's poetic steel usually saves the day.
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UncutApr 21, 2011Beneath its appealing veneer this remains a work wracked with personal anguish and doubt, and any positive engagement with life is welcome in it--even if, from necessity, it has to come from someone else. [May 2011, p.84]