Emmylou Harris Ventures Into Alternative Rock

On first listen, you won’t recognize her. And if you do, you’ll wonder what possessed her.

Emmylou Harris, country’s silvery-voiced visionary, has recorded the most experimental album of her 20-year career.

“Wrecking Ball,” a dark, moody collaboration with producer Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel), demolishes her rootsy undertones and transports her into alternative rock territory.

That’s a grand statement for a woman who frequently stretched the boundaries of country by venturing into folk, rock, gospel and zydeco. She once took Donna Summer’s disco chestnut “On the Radio” and transformed it into an achingly beautiful ballad.

But she’s never tackled anything like “Wrecking Ball.”

Recorded live in Nashville and New Orleans with two core session bands consisting of Lanois, Malcolm Burn, U2’s Larry Mullen Jr., Brian Blades and the Neville Brothers’ Tony Hall, the album includes songs by Harris contemporaries Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Rodney Crowell. She also plunges into material by rock icons Bob Dylan (“Every Grain of Sand”), Neil Young (the title track) and Jimi Hendrix (“May This Be Love”).

“I do think it’s not such a drastic departure in the sense that I have never done anything but country material in a traditional country way, and then, all of a sudden I would make this record,” Harris says by phone from the Nashville office of Asylum Records. “Certainly, this is a natural move for me, but there is an overall sound to this record that is different from anything else I have done, and that is due to the presence of Daniel Lanois. He made it rougher and rockier and a little rustier and moodier and still kept it very musical.”

To his credit, Lanois never lost Harris’ sterling voice in the mix. Throughout the album’s 12 tunes, Harris remains an integral part of the project. Even on a song such as “Deeper Well,” a piece drowning in minor chords, tribal drum beats and booming guitar riffs, we still hear Harris’ vocal performance.

“That song really eluded us,” she says of “Deeper Well.” “We cut it three different ways. Just by studio accidents and letting the magic sort of happen, we ended up with a pretty unusual reading of the song.”

The new album is being targeted to triple A (album adult alternative) radio, not mainstream country or pop outlets. It may face some resistance: “Wrecking Ball” may be too musically adventurous even for the most enlightened program director. But radio airplay is no longer Harris’ major concern, she says.