Epitaph / Ada
2003
Tiny Voices
About This Album
Welcome to the humid, claustrophobic, darkness of Tiny Voices, songwriter Joe Henry's ninth album and his first for the venerable renegade venture Anti. Fresh off his production stint for Solomon Burke, Henry settled into an old Hollywood recording studio with a band that included Don Byron, Ron Miles, Dave Palmer, Patrick Warren, Chris Bruce, Jay Bellerose, and Jennifer Condos -- plus übermensch engineer S. "Husky" Hoskulds -- and came up with a song-suite more adventurous, weird, and perhaps even reckless, thank God, than anything he's ever dreamed of before. Cut mostly live from the floor, Tiny Voices is an aural montage seemingly shot in cibachrome with no discernible center except the rumpled, disillusioned but unbowed singer who imparts skewed observations, bold-faced lies, and sacred truths with stale, liquored breath, too much makeup, and wearing impeccable clothes. Remember Ornette Coleman, Marc Ribot, and Brad Mehldau hanging around on Scar? Right, but this is even more so. Tiny Voices is the sound of Hemingway contemplating the Cuban Revolution with William Gaddis, the sound of Buddy DeFranco and Jimmy Giuffre trying to talk to Miles Davis about electric guitars in an abandoned yet fully furnished Tiki bar in Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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