Album Review,
Tiny Voices, Joe Henry
By John Defore
4 stars: More beautifully fractured fictions from jazz-inflected songwriter-producer
It may have taken Joe Henry a while to find a sound that avoids the dreaded singer-songwriter ghetto, but since 1996’s Trampoline he has been refining something all his own-a densely layered, darkly shimmering sound that’s part late-night jazz, part avant-garde chamber pop. Tiny Voices sucks the listener into fragments of weird fiction, such as a tale of a maid’s kid fighting off molestation (“This Afternoon”), and pictures of emotions potent enough to leave a bruise (“Flesh and Blood”). Most tracks are less song than atmosphere, with Henry’s seductively raspy voice competing with A-list improvisers like clarinetist Don Byron. But the record’s instrumental voices always gel - if not into a groove, then as a roomful of smoke revealing just as much of the story as the lyricist wants to show.